The Croatian water polo team is on the verge of boycotting the World Cup because of the name of the pool that bears the name of a war criminal.
The Croatian water polo national team has great prospects for qualifying for the finals of the World Cup, which will be held from April 11 to 13, but there is a possibility of boycotting it. The reason is that the household is assigned Kotora town on the Montenegrin coast of the Adriatic, more precisely the pool that bears the name Zoran Gopcevic Jimmy.
Zoran Gopcevic he was one of the best Montenegrin water polo players of all time. He won a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980, and has European silver and world bronze.
However, during the nineties he was the commander of the guard in Morinje campa collection center mainly for civilians and a small number of Croatian veterans from the area Dubrovnik regions.
Gopcevic was born in 1955 in Kotor Varoš in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and died on September 30, 2000 during training. By the way, the swimming pool in Kotor used to bear the name Nikša Bućinan anti-fascist fighter who died in 1944 in the fight against the Chetniks. Three years ago, the city of Kotor decided that the honor would go to Gopčević.
During the aggression of the JNA, the army of the former Yugoslavia and Montenegrin reservists on Konavle and Dubrovnik In 1991, they were brought from that area to Morinje and imprisoned men of Croatian nationality.
There they were exposed to physical and psychological torture. According to the final court verdict from the trial for war crimes in Morinje, “witnesses claim that every day beatenforced to each other they are beating, they sing Chetnik songs, and some of them are based on mock shooting“.
Through the camp Morinj between 300 and 450 Croatian prisoners passed through. According to unofficial information, 8 of them died as a result of torture.
For violating the rules of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War convicted are four former JNA reservists sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison. He was sentenced to four years in prison for abuse Ivo Menzalina Spiro Lucic and Boro Gligić for three years, while Ivo Gojnic sentenced to two years in prison.
Montenegro was sued 207 former Croatian inmates of the Morinje concentration campand the state has so far paid 1.4 million euros in compensation to 145 inmates.
Montenegro was also sued by two JNA soldiers for mental pain, and after they were acquitted of torturing prisoners Croatsthey were paid 120,000 euros. Croatia has already sent protest notes to Montenegro, but the pool has not been renamed.
A compromise was found in the regional water polo league, so VK Primorac from Kotor hosts Croatian clubs at other pools.
