Goli Otok Croatia's Guantanamo!

by Pero Milos
(Italy)

It is over!

Goli Otok (Naked Island) was political prison until 1988. The prisoners were all who was against the Tito.

In 1949, the entire island was officially made into a high-security prison run by the authorities of Socialist Yugoslavia. Until 1956, all throughout the Informbiro period, it was used to incarcerate political prisoners.

They included known Stalinist, but also other Communist Party members or even regular citizens accused of exhibiting any sort of sympathy or leanings towards the Soviet Union. In some cases, the accused were imprisoned without a trial and even in the event one did take place, it was often marred with irregularities.

The prison inmates were forced to do heavy labor in a stone quarry, regardless of the weather conditions: in the summer it was 35-40 °C, while in the winter they were subjected to chilling bora wind. Inmates were also regularly beaten and humiliated.

After Tito's regime normalized its relations with the Soviets, Naked Island prison was passed down into provincial jurisdiction of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (as opposed to the Yugoslav federal authorities). From that point on, it was used to imprison nationalists and later common criminals and even some juvenile delinquents.

The prison was shut down in 1988, and completely abandoned in 1989. Since then it has only been frequented by the occasional tourist, and some sheep-herders from Rab.

The text has been taken from Wikipedia - Goli Otok