Croatia Ban on Red Star Carries Risks, Professor Says

The possible adoption of a law in Croatia banning the diplay of all totalitarian symbols, announced by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Monday, carries potential risks and dangers, an expert has said.

As the new law would ban all totalitarian symbols, it opens the possibility of including the red star, symbol of the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisan army which fought the Axis powers in World War II and took power in Yugoslavia in 1945.

Professor Tihomir Cipek, from the Zagreb Faculty of Political Sciences, said he was uncertain if such a law could be passed because it might open up a constitutional issue.

"If it is seen as changing the constitution, a two-thirds majority of MPs will be needed for this, which is impossible," he said.

"But if it is passed as just one of law, which isn't changing anything essential, it is possible since [the junior government party] MOST seems keen to support the initiative," he said.

He explained that Croatia was constitutionally founded as the successor to the State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia from World War Two.

As this body was led by the Communists, "the two can't be completely separated", and criminalising one would lead to criminalising the other", he maintained.

Although a moderate politician, Plenkovic's governing centre-right party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, often claims that Communist-run Yugoslavia was a totalitarian regime, like the Ustasa Fascist-led wartime entity, the Independent State of Croatia.

Plenkovic's statement on Monday followed a row in Croatia over the erection of a plaque in the municipality of Jasenovac, which was home to a notorious wartime Ustasa-run concentration camp where over 83,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti...