ZAGREB, May 11, 2020 - The Israeli Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Sunday condemned a plan to hold a memorial mass for the Bleiburg victims in Sarajevo, saying that it constituted a dangerous and destructive attempt to equate the victims and perpetrators of World War II Ustasha crimes.

Attempts to depict all WWII victims in the same way are not only unfair but are also extremely dangerous and destructive for the process of reconciliation to which all nations should aspire, the embassy said in a statement.

A clear distinction has to be made between the victims who without any guilt on their part were forced to concentration camps like Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška and killed there and those who are responsible for those crimes even if they did not have the opportunity to stand a fair trial for them, the embassy said.

The Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina last week opposed the memorial service for Croatian civilians and soldiers of the Nazi-allied Ustasha forces, which is due to be held in Sarajevo by the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Cardinal Vinko Puljić, on May 16.

Its head Jakob Finci and the head of the Jewish Community of Sarajevo, Boris Kozemjakin, said in a joint statement that they "condemn the announced commemoration and Mass for the Ustasha who were defeated a long time ago."

"The memorial service for criminals responsible for the suffering of Sarajevans, including Maks Luburić and Jure Francetić, not to mention others, commemorates the killers of our mothers, fathers, grandfathers, our compatriots and all the other innocent people killed by the fascists of the para-state Independent State of Croatia," reads the statement.

Plans for the memorial service were earlier condemned by the Bosniak and Croat members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Šefik Džaferović and Željko Komšić respectively, as well as by leaders of all major political parties based in Sarajevo.

It is evident that the commemoration is clearly condemned by citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina many of whom can be proud of their ancestors' contribution to the legacy of antifascism and to the fight against fascism, said the embassy.

More news about the Jewish community can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, May 1, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on Friday dismissed the president's claims that the appearance of a few men wearing T-shirts with the salute "For the homeland ready" at the Okučani celebration was intentional provocation, adding that it is Milanović's right to leave, and the obligation of others to stay.

President Zoran Milanović abruptly left the central commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Operation Flash in protest against the salute "For the homeland ready" on T-shirts of some of war veterans who arrived in the town of Okučani on Friday morning to participate in the commemoration. The salute concerned, which was used during the Ustasha regime in the Second World War, was also used by the HOS volunteers during the 1991-1995 Homeland War.

"I have understood. We have held a brief conversation, for a minute. He was obviously informed by someone that some of the participants in the commemorative event had T-shirts with the HOS insignia. It is his decision (to leave). It is his right to leave, and it is our obligation to stay," Plenković said in his comment to Milanovic's behaviour at the Okučani celebration.

Plenković dismissed Milanović's claims that those T-shirts were an intentional act of provocation.

Asked by the press whether such T-shirts bothered him, Plenković answered that "all who gave their lives for Croatia, including the fallen HOS members, have deserved my respect."

"Making differences and what the president has done is not good. We have come here to pay tribute to the fallen defenders. You can see these 51 cubes here (as part of the Okučani monument to the fallen soldiers), we have come here because of those people. There is no place for provocation, we are here also on behalf of the institutions," the premier said.

As for the said salute, the premier recalled that his cabinet had made a clear position.

"The council for dealing with the past, which we have established, has adopted a document which very clearly identifies the moments in which some insignia, used during the Homeland War, can be used and those are commemorations and times when we remember our victims," Plenković said. "We pay our deepest respects to Croatian defenders," said the premier.

Plenković recalled that during the recent commemoration in Jasenovac, Milanović said that a memorial plaque with the names of the fallen HOS soldiers which contains the "For the homeland ready" salute should be thrown away.

"You will never hear any of us saying that a plaque with the names of the fallen soldiers who defended Croatia should be thrown away," he explained.

More politics news can be found in the dedicated section.

ZAGREB, May 1, 2020 - President Zoran Milanović abruptly left the central commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Flash Operation in protest against the salute "For the homeland ready" on T-shirts of some of war veterans who arrived in the town of Okučani on Friday morning to participate in the commemoration.

The salute concerned, which was used during the Ustasha regime in the Second World War, was also used by the HOS volunteers during the 1991-1995 Homeland War.

"I am sorry. I came here to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for Croatia. We had agreed about all elements of the protocol. However, one of the participants who was supposed to lay a wreath before me, appeared in the T-shirt with the message 'Ready for the Homeland'," Milanović said explaining why he had left abruptly the commemorative event and was not among the state officials during the wreath-laying ceremony.

Milanović considers the whole situation as an act of provocation. "I find that this was an act of trampling on the sacrifice and on the memory of this (liberating) operation., Milanović said.

"I will not participate in any commemoration in the future with such events. I understand the prime minister and the parliament speaker. They have to," Milanović said alluding to the fact that the commemoration was held as planned with the PM Andrej Plenković and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković.

Operation Flash was launched on 1 May 1995, and within 31 hours Croatian military and police forces liberated about 500 square kilometres of territory occupied by Serb insurgents and restored control over the A3 motorway.

More politics news can be found in the dedicated section.

ZAGREB, April 21, 2020 - This year's memorial ceremony for Croatian soldiers and civilians killed at Bleiburg, Austria in 1945 has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, organisers announced in a statement on Tuesday.

The decision was made at a conference call by the Bleiburg Guard of Honour on Monday after the Austrian government restricted the right to public assembly and the governments of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina restricted travel abroad or transit through their respective countries.

The statement said that an alternative programme to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Bleiburg tragedy would be announced in due course.

The commemoration is held annually in Loibach Field near Bleiburg, Austria for soldiers of the Nazi-allied Croatian Ustasha regime and civilians killed there at the end of World War II.

More Bleiburg news can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, March 12, 2020 - Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković on Thursday met with representatives of the Church and the Honorary Bleiburg Platoon about the organisation of the 75th Bleiburg commemoration in Austria.

This year's commemoration should take place on May 16 under the auspices of the Croatian parliament. The participants in the meeting said its taking place would depend on developments with coronavirus.

They underlined the importance of constant contacts between Croatia and Austria in preparing the commemoration and of holding a dignified event by respecting the law and prohibiting the display of unacceptable symbols.

There will be no political speeches at this year's commemoration either, it was said.

The commemoration is held annually in Loibach Field near the town of Bleiburg, Austria for soldiers of Croatia's Nazi-allied Ustasha regime and civilians killed there at the end of World War II.

Last year's gathering was held under tighter security after Austria added symbols of the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia to the list of banned symbols from the Nazi period.

More Beiburg news can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, January 26, 2020 - The Anti-Fascist League of Croatia organised a rally in Zagreb's Victims of Fascism Square on Sunday to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on 27 January, and on that occasion activists laid 75 carnations on the wall of building in the square in which Ustasha police and Gestapo used to operate during WW2.

The 75 flowers were laid to mark 75 years since Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated on 27 January 1945.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a memorial day on 27 January commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust that occurred during the Second World War, was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution in 2005. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews and 11 million others, by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

During today's rally, activists recalled that the Holocaust had been also performed in Croatia during the Ustasha regime in the so-called Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945.

The lessons about the Holocaust teach us that in the societies hit by the evil of anti-Semitism, also the doors are open for the persecution of other minorities, said the Anti-Fascist League's leader, Zoran Pusić, adding that anti-Semitism lurks in "some obscure part of the society and is potentially always present."

He said that in Croatia, some 3,000 monuments, which had been erected during the Socialist Yugoslavia in memory of the Tito-led Partisans had been destroyed in the meantime. Pusić said that the national resistance movement (NOB) in the country had been the biggest resistance against Nazi forces and local Nazi collaborators in Europe.

He also warned of the rising anti-Semitic mood in the present-day Europe recently.

More news about Croatia and Holocaust can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, November 10, 2019 - A ceremony commemorating Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, and the Nazi pogrom of Jews in Germany and Austria on 9 November 1938 was held in Zagreb's Square of Victims of Fascism on Saturday evening, organised by the Croatian Antifascist League.

Addressing those gathered, the head of the coordinating committee of the Jewish communities in Croatia, Ognjen Kraus, said: "We are here to remember the Night of Broken Glass, to pay tribute to the victims of racial laws, not to allow equating Ustashism with antifascism, and to warn of the danger of xenophobia and nationalism which is on our doorstep."

Kraus warned of rising antisemitism in Europe, saying that armed Nazis had attacked a synagogue in the German city of Halle last month during the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur and that similar incidents were recorded elsewhere in Europe.

Kraus said that in Germany and Austria, or in any other Western European country, it was not possible to downplay or deny the existence of concentration camps during World War II and equate the victims of Nazism and antifascism, the Axis powers and the Allies, while in Croatia that was possible.

"The antifascist movement and the Ustasha movement, the victims and butchers, continue to be equated, and pseudohistorians continue to write a new history of Croatia, rehabilitating the NDH (Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia). On the other hand, they are inventing crimes and the President is calling for a recount of the victims of the Jasenovac death camp. Why?" he said.

Kraus called the Croatian reality a disgrace, saying that the history of the children's concentration camps in Sisak and Jasenovac was being changed to portray them as reception centres where children were looked after, and adding that senior state officials attended a commemoration for victims of totalitarian regimes at a cemetery where Ustasha and German troops had been killed.

He drew attention to NDH and Nazi Germany symbols and hate graffiti that could be seen across Croatia and to physical attacks. He also mentioned the initiative to abolish Antifascist Struggle Day as a national holiday.

"This day was not mentioned in any of the television or radio programmes today. The event of global significance which actually marked the beginning of the Holocaust, or Shoah, and the Second World War, the worst thing that happened in the history of humankind," Kraus said.

In the Night of Broken Glass, over 1,300 people were killed, 1,400 synagogues and more than half of the buildings in the Jewish communities in Germany and Austria were destroyed or severely damaged, and 7,500 shops were ravaged. The next day, 10 November, over 30,000 men were taken to concentration camps, he recalled.

The ceremony was attended, among others, by Ombudsman Lora Vidović, Independent Democratic Serb Party leader Milorad Pupovac, Israeli Ambassador Ilan Mori and activist Rada Borić.

More info about events connected with the World War II can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, November 7, 2019 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Thursday he would not allow the de-Tuđmanisation of his HDZ party because Franjo Tudjman, the first president of the HDZ and Croatia, included June 22, Antifascist Struggle Day, among public holidays.

He was responding to the proposal by Josip Đakić, chairman of the parliamentary committee on war veterans, that Antifascist Struggle Day no longer be a national holiday.

"I don't know if that's his idea... It's necessary to put an end to the policy of de-Tuđmanisation also within the HDZ. This means that I, as HDZ president and prime minister, say that June 22 is a holiday which was included in the law on public holidays by the first Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and so it will be," Plenković told reporters.

He said everything that was said at Wednesday's session of the veterans committee was not the policy of the either the HDZ National Council or Presidency or the government, and that party bodies had clearly supported and formulated amendments to the law on public holidays, memorial days and non-working days which the government sent to parliament and "which will be adopted as such."

"I'm telling (Đakić) and everyone else who wants to de-Tuđmanise the HDZ: I won't allow it."

Asked if there would be sanctions, Plenković said the HDZ National Council or Presidency would meet on Friday and that it was necessary to clearly say, "enough with the policy which tears apart the foundations of what Tuđman created and what the HDZ should be."

"Who doesn't understand that, doesn't understand either Croatia's past or present, and sees Croatia's proper future even less. They should clear their heads," he said, adding that the possibility of sanctions would be discussed.

War Veterans' Minister Tomo Medved told the press, while coming to a government meeting on Thursday, that the government-sponsored bill on public holidays was a well-prepared legislative solution, and that the cabinet would give its opinion to a suggestion that Antifascist Struggle Day, observed as a national holiday, should be a memorial day.

"In my opinion, the government has forwarded to the parliament a very good legislative proposal. During the preparation of the draft act, we have analysed all circumstances and I believe that the solution tabled to the national parliament provides best answers," said Medved of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)

On Wednesday morning, the parliamentary War Veterans Committee, chaired by HDZ MP and HVIDRA disabled war veterans association head Đakić, put forward an amendment to the government-sponsored bill on holidays proposing that October 8, Independence Day, should remain a national holiday while Antifascist Struggle Day, June 22, currently a national and non-working day, should become a memorial and working day. The government's proposal of the new calendar of holidays will be discussed by the parliament on Friday.

The committee's proposal was criticised as unacceptable by Social Democratic Party (SDP) parliamentarian Arsen Bauk on Wednesday afternoon.

On Thursday mornings, several ministers in the HDZ-led government, including Transport Minister Oleg Butković, Environment Protection and Energy Minister Tomislav Ćorić, said that they did not think that the Anti-Fascist Struggle Day should be relegated to a memorial day.

Butković said that the HDZ leadership had not at all considered a possibility that this national holiday should become a memorial day. Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlić Radman also said that such proposal had not at all be considered by the government.

In the meantime, the Croatian People's Party (HNS) a junior partner in the ruling coalition also stated that it found it unacceptable that the Anti-Fascist Struggle Day be relegated to a memorial day.

More info about events related to the Second World War can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, November 7, 2019 - Social Democratic Party (SDP) whip Arsen Bauk said on Wednesday that the proposal by the Parliament's Committee on War Veterans that Antifascist Struggle Day, June 22, no longer be observed as a national holiday and non-working day but as a memorial day, was unacceptable and cowardly.

"The proposed amendment is absolutely unacceptable and cowardly... They should have proposed that it be completely removed from the calendar (of holidays) because that is probably how they feel about it, rather than reducing it to a memorial day," said Bauk.

He described the amendment as absolutely unacceptable but added that parties of the ruling coalition and the government as the sponsor of amendments to the law on holidays, memorial days and non-working days should state their position on the proposal.

"I believe that this is about the (HDZ) party's right wing provoking a little and striking back at (PM and HDZ leader) Andrej Plenković, but that's his problem, even though it could become a state problem," Bauk told reporters in the parliament.

The War Veterans Committee, chaired by HDZ MP and HVIDRA disabled war veterans association head Josip Đakić, put forward at its session earlier in the day an amendment to the government-sponsored bill on holidays proposing that October 8, Independence Day, should remain a national holiday while Antifascist Struggle Day, June 22, currently a national and non-working day, should become a memorial and working day.

The government's proposal of the new calendar of holidays will be discussed by the parliament on Friday.

More news about historical revisionism can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 27, 2019 - The Croatian government finds SDSS leader Milorad Pupovac's claims comparing the present-day Croatia to the 1941-1945 the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and about Croatia's being a factor of instability in the neighbourhood completely inappropriate and unacceptable.

The Andrej Plenković cabinet on Tuesday issued a press release recalling that the contemporary Croatian state was founded thanks to the sacrifice of people who defended the country in the Defence War and it is not a successor to the NDH either politically, ideologically or legally.

The Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) leader Pupovac said in an interview with the Sarajevo-based Radiosarajevo.ba web portal on Saturday that Croatia was turning into a factor of instability in the area of the former Yugoslavia. Pupovac, whose party is a junior member of the ruling coalition, claimed that in Croatia there were also attempts to rehabilitate the idea of the Ustasha movement.

Considering Pupovac's long-standing political experience, it is expected of him to refrain from statements that will raise the tensions and social polarisation and benefit protagonists on the extreme sides of the political spectrum in their attempts to impose more radical rhetoric, the government said in response to Hina's query.

The statement recalls that the government and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic have condemned in the strongest terms assaults directed against members of the Serb minority which happened recently in Knin, Đevrske, Viskovo, Split and Supetar.

They welcome the prompt response of the police that have detected and pressed charges against the perpetrators of the incidents in Đevrske and Viskovo.

In all such cases the government expects the competent agencies to establish all relevant facts and sanction perpetrators appropriately.

Those are offences impermissible in the contemporary Croatia. Croatia is home to all its citizens and all citizens need to feel that they are safe and protected.

There is no place for violence in Croatia, and the government is aware of its responsibility and is committed to the strengthening of the social inclusiveness and the respect for the rights of all minorities in Croatia in compliance with the highest European and world standards, notably in the context of a growing populism and xenophobia throughout Europe.

The press release recalls that during the formation of his cabinet it was Prime Minister Andrej Plenković who insisted on including parliamentary representatives of all ethnic minorities in the parliamentary majority. At the same time, Plenković expects all political parties and protagonists to behave responsibly so as to prevent the utilisation of incidents for scoring cheap political points and heightening the tensions among the Croatian citizens.

More politics news can be found in the Politics section.