Ustasa

The 'Facing the Past' programme at the Sarajevo Film Festival, which opens on Friday evening and is being held online this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, is intended to honestly examine the legacy of past conflicts in the Balkans.

This year, the strand showcases a true story about people trying to do the right thing in the worst of times.

A photograph that was circulated on social media of a group of Dinamo Zagreb fans holding lighted flares and a banner with an obscene anti-Serb slogan has provoked outrage.

"There does not seem to be a rock bottom," Dario Brentin, associated researcher from the University of Graz in Austria, an expert on sport and nationalism in Croatia, wrote on Twitter on Friday.

The Court of High Misdemeanours in Zagreb on Wednesday ruled that the controversial nationalist singer Marko Perkovic, widely known as Thompson, did not violate public order and breach then peace with his use of the chant "Za dom spremni" ("Ready for the homeland") in his song Bojna Cavoglave.

The World Jewish Congress, an international organisation representing Jewish communities, praised on Monday the Austrian parliament's adoption of a proposed ban on the annual commemoration of the killings of Croatian Nazi-allied troops and civilians at Bleiburg in Austria by the Yugoslav Partisans at the end of World War II.

Serbian ambassador Vladimir Bozovic outside the Foreign Ministry in Podgorica. Photo: Government of Montenegro.

Bozovic said after the meeting at the ministry he had no intention of interfering in RTCG's editorial policies.

"I respect the state of Montenegro. But like all Serbian people, I am especially sensitive about the fascist Ustasa movement," Bozovic told media.

Ivo Tomasevic, secretary-general of the Bishops' Conference, the permanent assembly of Catholic bishops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN on Friday that a mass to commemorate the killings of Croatian Nazi-allied troops and civilians by the Yugoslav Partisans at the end of World War II will not be cancelled despite condemnation from politicians, anti-fascist activists and many public figures.

On that day in 1945, anti-fascist Partisan forces reclaimed the city from Nazi-allied administration of the Independent State of Croatia, NDH, a puppet state established in 1941 and run by the fascist Ustasa movement with the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, which passed harsh racial laws against Serbs, Jews and Roma people.

The HOS, significantly, wasn't just any nationalist militia. It was marked by its unapologetic defence of the World War II Nazi-collaborationist Ustasa movement.

The annual gathering in Bleiburg in Austria, which commemorates tens of thousands of Croatian Nazi-allied Ustasa troops and civilians who were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans in 1945, will not be held this year as planned on May 16, media reported on Tuesday.

Charges have been pressed against 13 people who rallied in front of a Catholic church in Sirobuja, a suburb of the coastal city of Split, flouting a ban on public gatherings during the coronavirus epidemic, Croatian media reported on Tuesday.