A parliamentary committee proposal to establish a new memorial graveyard in Zagreb for soldiers of the Nazi-allied World War II-era Independent State of Croatia has been strongly criticised by anti-fascists. The Croatian parliamentary committee for war veterans’ affairs endorsed a proposal on Tuesday to establish a military graveyard in the central Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb for soldiers who fought for the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia, NDH, a Nazi-backed puppet state. The soldiers of the World War II fascist Ustasa and Home Guard forces should be described in the new memorial graveyard as members of “the Croatian army”, the committee suggested. The committee said that “every man is entitled to a civilised and dignified burial and a marked grave”, adding that both the War Veterans’ Ministry and the former mayor of Zagreb, Milan Bandic, had agreed to the graveyard. Around 550 soldiers who were part of Ustasa forces are buried at the Mirogoj cemetery. But the proposal to describe the soldiers as Croatian army troops was described as “completely unacceptable” by Katarina Peovic of the Workers’ Front party, who is also a member of the parliamentary committee for war veterans’ affairs. Peovic’s own proposal to condemn this was rejected by the committee, however.
The Alliance of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of Croatia, SABA said it strongly opposed plans to established the memorial graveyard. “One must not under any terms accept that the Ustasa were ‘a Croatian army’,” SABA’s president Franjo Habulin told a news conference on Tuesday. Habulin argued that describing the Ustasa and Home Guard fighters as ‘Croatian army’ troops “dignifies” the NDH puppet state’s institutions. The Alliance of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of Dalmatia and the Association of the Homeland War Veterans and Anti-Fascists also opposed the plans for the memorial graveyard, writing in a Facebook post that “the Croatian Army in World War II was the National Liberation Army of Croatia [Croatian Partisans], which put Croatia on the side of the victorious anti-Hitler coalition”. Croatian news agency HINA reported that other members of the committee insisted that issue was not ideological. “This is about the victims, regardless of which army they belonged to,” said Ante Deur, an MP from the governing Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ party. The proposal for the memorial graveyard was endorsed by the committee on the same day as an expert report for Austria’s Interior Ministry called for a permanent ban on a controversial annual commemoration at Bleiburg in Austria for tens of thousands of Ustasa troops and civilians who were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in 1945.
via balkaninsight: Croatian Anti-Fascists Criticise Memorial Graveyard for Nazi-Allied Troops