In a document titled “Ten Points on Jasenovac”, the Serb National Council (SNV) is asking the Croatian government for stricter and more consistent sanctioning of the Ustasha greeting and historical revisionism, to construct a new annex at the Jasenovac Memorial Site, restore and properly mark execution sites, finance research, and organise more school visits.
BY: Goran Borković / Novosti
If the authorities – the Croatian Parliament and Government – accepted the proposal of the Serb National Council (SNV) summarized in the informal document “Ten Points on Jasenovac” and translated it into an action plan, i.e., an operational program with clearly defined deadlines, funding sources, and executors, Croatia would genuinely make a step forward towards building a more tolerant society deprived of the rehabilitation of the Ustashas and historical revisionism, which for three decades, with a few exceptions, have not allowed a way out of the right-wing darkness. According to SNV’s President Milorad Pupovac, the first step in that direction has already been taken at a meeting with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on April 15. As Pupovac says, although the meeting was held at the last minute before the commemoration in Jasenovac, it was “one of the best and most decisive so far”. If not, Pupovac warned, there would be even more separate memorial walks at the site of the concentration camp, alluding to the fact that representatives of the Jewish community and the Anti-fascist League (AFL) still did not want to accompany the Croatian Government to the official commemoration in Jasenovac. That the meeting went really well could be heard from Plenković in Jasenovac, who announced imminent changes in the attitude towards commemorating the victims and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The Prime Minister particularly emphasised the mistake that the Government, or, more specifically, the Ministry of Croatian Veterans made by sending an envoy to mark the anniversary of the IX battalion of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), “Rafael Vitez Boban,” in Split, when retired Brigadier Matko Raos said that there would be no Croatia today without April 10, 1941, the day when the Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed. I am not sure that we need to send our envoys to such events in the future. Support should be given to the victims, including those from the HOS, but such events are more likely a provocation than a commemoration. We need to be careful of what we do,” said the Prime Minister.
Of the ten points from the SNV document, eight relate to the Jasenovac camp complex, the exhibition display at the Memorial Site, the manner of its media presentation, financing the construction of the annex, new research, and strengthening its educational function. The ninth point warns of inconsistent and inappropriate sanctions for glorifying the Ustasha, Nazi, and fascist regimes, as well as unequal court practice, while the tenth point refers to the problematic gathering in Udbina, which certain circles would like to use to replace the one that was regularly held in Bleiburg until recently and that was banned by Austria for being pro-fascist. This is a particularly sensitive issue because interethnic relations in Udbina can be a model for everyone else in Croatia, a situation which could be changed by holding neo-Ustasha rallies.
The most interesting point for the media is point number nine, which calls for harsher punishments for glorifying the Ustashas. Despite a series of verdicts by the Constitutional Court rulings against the former president of the Croatian Pure Party of Rights (HČSP) Josip Miljko (who led the audience in Slunj to chant the Ustasha greeting “Za dom spremni” (“For homeland – ready!”) at a rally in honour of the Ustasha criminal Jure Francetić), the soccer player Josip Šimunić (who invited the audience over a microphone to chant the greeting “Za dom spremni!”) and views on naming a street in Slatinski Drenovac after April 10, which the court found to be inconsistent with the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, the case-law is still not fully uniform. The preamble to the Croatian Constitution clearly states that Croatia is based on the foundations of the State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH), not the NDH, as it is trying to appear. It is also pointed out that the fines are too lenient. According to Pupovac, this act is most often tried according to the “inoperative provisions” of the Misdemeanour Law for disturbing public order and peace, for which a fine of 50 to 300 German marks was imposed, which is certainly too small an amount for preventive action. Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide a legal basis for consistent and appropriate sanctions for glorifying Nazism, fascism, Ustashism, and Chetnikism, as well as relativising the victims and crimes thereof. One possibility is to amend the Misdemeanour Law and significantly increase the fines, which could be up to three thousand euros, while another is to make changes to the Criminal Code. An informal initiative launched by Ognjen Kraus as President of the Jewish community in Zagreb last year, supported by a number of MPs, most notably those representing national minorities and one from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), called for six months to three years in prison for publicly displaying Nazi symbols, but that proposal never appeared in parliamentary procedure.
Special emphasis in the document is placed on the location and treatment of the Jasenovac Memorial Site. The document warns of insufficient funds for fully carrying out the program and its mission. To illustrate this point, the ratio of allotted budget funds received by the Memorial Documentation Centre for the Homeland War Vukovar is as high as one to eight. The document also points out to the insufficient amount given for research, and it even proposes opening a research unit in Zagreb. Emphasis is also placed on the need to change the exhibition display, which proved to be inadequate and unacceptable from day one, something which international organizations agreed with, and on the construction of a multimedia annex, which has been discussed for 15 years, but without results so far. The document also states that many places of suffering in the camp complex have not been restored, maintained, and properly marked, especially those towards Strug. The monument in Krapje (“The Flower Bud” by Ninoslav Janković, a student of the author of “The Stone Flower” Bogdan Bogdanović), where the camp began operating in August 1941, was demolished, and was never rebuilt. The so-called Camp 2 in Bročice cannot be reached due to flooding, while the most famous camp in the complex, which operated until 1945, the Brickyard in Stara Gradiška, has still not been restored. The Jasenovac Memorial Site (JMS) states that they received money from the Ministry of Culture for rebuilding and restoring Janković’s “Flower Bud”, which is an indication of things starting to move along.
Point number six refers to the problem in education. School visits to Jasenovac are left to the personal affinity of teachers. For example, in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, Jasenovac was visited by only 17 school groups from Croatia, and 23 from other countries, out of which 12 were from Italy. In total, there were 121 groups, but only 33 from Croatia. Altogether, 16,500 people visited Jasenovac in 2019, and 40,000 visited the Memorial Documentation Centre for the Homeland War Vukovar. This also proves to show that Jasenovac is treated as secondary, which, as Pupovac said, especially suits those who claim that it had never existed at all. During a visit to Krapje last week, the SNV President said that Bleiburg had been more relevant in comparison to Jasenovac in recent years, which had also been used to glorify the criminal Ustasha regime. Because of all this, it should come as no surprise that young people write graffiti with the eared letter U and draw Nazi swastikas.
– For that reason, this issue is not exclusively a question for the representatives of the Serb, Jewish, or Roma communities, but also for everyone else wondering what kind of Croatia we want today and what it will be like tomorrow – concluded Pupovac.
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