Denial of the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia: Difference between revisions

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→‎Hate speech and the rehabilitation of fascist ideology: this information has nothing to do with denial of genocide of Serbs
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== Hate speech and the rehabilitation of fascist ideology ==
== Hate speech and the rehabilitation of fascist ideology ==
[[File:20130609 Zagreb 041.jpg|thumbnail|[[Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia|Anti-Cyrillic]] Graffiti depicting the “U” symbol of the Ustaše]]
[[File:20130609 Zagreb 041.jpg|thumbnail|[[Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia|Anti-Cyrillic]] Graffiti depicting the “U” symbol of the Ustaše]]
However the Croatian courts regularly prosecuted cases of defamation and insult to the honor and reputation of persons. These offences were classified as serious criminal offences under the Criminal Code.<ref name=Amnesty/> According to the 2018 [[European Commission against Racism and Intolerance]] report, racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating in Croatia; and the main targets are Serbs, LGBT persons and Roma.<ref name=ECRI>{{cite web|url=https://rm.coe.int/fifth-report-on-croatia/16808b57be|title=ECRI Report on Croatia 2018 |accessdate=28 April 2020}}</ref> Furthermore, there is a growing rise of nationalism, particularly among the youth, which primarily takes the form of praising the fascist Ustaše regime. The responses of the Croatian authorities to these incidents cannot be considered fully adequate.<ref name=ECRI/>
According to the 2018 [[European Commission against Racism and Intolerance]] report, racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating in Croatia; and the main targets are Serbs, LGBT persons and Roma.<ref name=ECRI>{{cite web|url=https://rm.coe.int/fifth-report-on-croatia/16808b57be|title=ECRI Report on Croatia 2018 |accessdate=28 April 2020}}</ref> Furthermore, there is a growing rise of nationalism, particularly among the youth, which primarily takes the form of praising the fascist Ustaše regime. The responses of the Croatian authorities to these incidents cannot be considered fully adequate.<ref name=ECRI/>


In November 2016 in [[Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County|Jasenovac]] a plaque commemorating members of [[Croatian Defence Forces]] killed in action 1991-2 was unveiled, containing emblem with the Ustaše salute "[[Za dom spremni]]".<ref>[http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/plaque-near-wwii-concentration-camp-scandalises-region-12-05-2016 "Plaque near WW2 Concentration Camp Scandalises Region"]</ref> The [[Serb National Council|Serb National Council of Croatia]] in its report on [[anti-Serb sentiment]] in 2017 reported that the salute was used 11,309 times in the comment sections of the 4 far-right Facebook profiles.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.portalnovosti.com/bilten-snv-a-duznosnici-poticu-govor-mrznje|title=Bilten SNV-a: Dužnosnici potiču govor mržnje|work=portalnovosti.com|access-date=2018-05-22|language=en}}</ref>
In November 2016 in [[Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County|Jasenovac]] a plaque commemorating members of [[Croatian Defence Forces]] killed in action 1991-2 was unveiled, containing emblem with the Ustaše salute "[[Za dom spremni]]".<ref>[http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/plaque-near-wwii-concentration-camp-scandalises-region-12-05-2016 "Plaque near WW2 Concentration Camp Scandalises Region"]</ref> The [[Serb National Council|Serb National Council of Croatia]] in its report on [[anti-Serb sentiment]] in 2017 reported that the salute was used 11,309 times in the comment sections of the 4 far-right Facebook profiles.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.portalnovosti.com/bilten-snv-a-duznosnici-poticu-govor-mrznje|title=Bilten SNV-a: Dužnosnici potiču govor mržnje|work=portalnovosti.com|access-date=2018-05-22|language=en}}</ref>

Revision as of 20:54, 2 June 2020

Part of a series on
Denial of mass killings
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Denial of the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi German puppet state existed during World War II, is a historical revisionist claim that no systematic mass crimes and genocide against Serbs took place in the NDH, as well as an attempt to minimize the scale and severity of genocide.

One of the strategies includes the claims that the Jasenovac concentration camp was just a labor camp, not an extermination camp. The Croatian Wikipedia has also attracted attention from international media because of bias and historical revisionism about the crimes of the NDH.

Furthermore, about 3,000 monuments dedicated to the anti-fascist resistance and the victims of fascism were destroyed after Croatia gained independence in 1991, while the Jasenovac Memorial Site was vandalized and documentation was destroyed or damaged.

High officials and politicians

Some Croats, including politicians, have attempted to minimise the magnitude of the genocide perpetrated against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia.[1]

By 1989, the future President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman (who had been a Partisan during World War II), had embraced Croatian nationalism, and published Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy, in which he questioned the official number of victims killed by the Ustaše during the Second World War. In his book, Tuđman claimed that between 30,000 and 40,000 died at Jasenovac.[2] Some scholars and observers accused Tuđman of racist statements, “flirting with ideas associated with the Ustaše movement”, appointment of former Ustaše officials to political and military positions, as well as downplaying the number of victims in the Independent State of Croatia.[3][4][5][6][7]

Nonetheless, in his book, he did confirm that genocide happened:

It is a historical fact that the Ustaše regime of NDH, in its implementation of the plan to reduce the 'hostile Serb Orthodox people in Croatian lands', committed a large genocidal crime over the Serbs, and proportionately even higher over the Roma and Jews, in the implementation of Nazi racial politics.[8]

Franjo Tuđman sparked controversy over racist statements and downplaying the number of victims in the NDH

In 2006, a video was leaked showing Croatian President Stipe Mesić giving a speech in Australia in the early 1990s, in which he said that the Croats had "won a great victory on April 10th" (the date of the formation of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941), and that Croatia needed to apologize to no one for Jasenovac.[9] Later on, Mesić apologized for his indecent statement and stated that he undoubtedly considered anti-fascism to be the basis of modern-day Croatia, appreciated Yugoslav Partisans and considered it necessary to "reaffirm anti-fascism as a human and civilization commitment in the function of the unavoidable condition for the building of a democratic Croatia, a country of equal citizens."[10] In 2017, two new videos Mesić from 1992 were made public in which he stated that Jasenovac wasn't a death camp and praised Ustashe minister Andrija Artuković.[11]

Croatian historian and politician Zlatko Hasanbegović, who previously served as the country's Minister of Culture in 2016, has been accused of downplaying the crimes of the Ustaše and trying to rehabilitate their ideas in his work.[12] In 1996, Hasanbegović wrote at least two articles in the magazine "The Independent State of Croatia", edited by the small far-right Croatian Liberation Movement party (HOP), in which he glorified the Ustaše as heroes and martyrs and denied crimes committed by the regime.[13] In response, Hasanbegović denied being an apologist for the regime, stating that Ustaša crimes during the Second World War were "the biggest moral lapse" of the Croatian people in their history and that his words were taken out of context for political manipulation.[14] An old black-and-white photo also resurfaced from the 1990s, published in the same magazine of Hasanbegović wearing a cap with what is allegedly an Ustaše Militia badge.[15] He claimed the photo had been manipulated and that he wore a black cap of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS).[16]

Condemnation

On 17 April 2011, in a commemoration ceremony, Croatian President Ivo Josipović warned that there were "attempts to drastically reduce or decrease the number of Jasenovac victims", adding, "faced with the devastating truth here that certain members of the Croatian people were capable of committing the cruelest of crimes." At the same ceremony, then Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said, "there is no excuse for the crimes and therefore the Croatian government decisively rejects and condemns every attempt at historical revisionism and rehabilitation of the fascist ideology, every form of totalitarianism, extremism and radicalism... Pavelić's regime was a regime of evil, hatred and intolerance, in which people were abused and killed because of their race, religion, nationality, their political beliefs and because they were the others and were different."[17]

Since 2016, anti-fascist groups, leaders of Croatia's Serb, Roma and Jewish communities and former top Croat officials have boycotted the official state commemoration for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp because, as they said, Croatian authorities refused to denounce the Ustaše legacy explicitly and they downplayed and revitalized crimes committed by Ustaše.[18][19][20][21]

Historiography

The genocide of Serbs was not properly examined in the aftermath of the war, because the post-war Yugoslav government did not encourage independent scholars.[22][23][24] They recognized that ethnic tensions stemming from the war could had the capacity to destabilize the new communist regime, tried to conceal wartime atrocities and to mask specific ethnic losses.[25] The Josip Broz Tito's government attempted to let the wounds heal and forge "brotherhood and unity" in the peoples.[26]

Historian Mirjana Kasapović explained that in the most important scientific works on genocide, crimes against Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH are unequivocally classified as genocide.[27] However, she concluded that there are three main strategies of historical revisionism in the part of modern-day Croatian historiography: the NDH was a normal counter-insurgency state at the time; no mass crimes were committed in the NDH, especially genocide; the Jasenovac camp was just a labor camp, not an extermination camp.[27] Croatian textbooks justified the existance of the NDH with an emotional narrative: the “millennial thread” of Croatian statehood had been annulled under by “the greater-Serbian regime’s attempt to destroy all signs of Croatian nationness”.[28] Futhermore, textbooks relativize terror against Serbs by claiming that was a result of “their previous hegemony”.[28]

Left: Josip Pečarić; Right: Josip Jurčević
The most prominent genocide deniers

In his review of Josip Jurčević's work, The Origin of the Jasenovac Myth, the German historian Holm Sundhaussen notes that while Jurčević is justified in his criticism of communist Yugoslavia's Jasenovac casualty numbers, he "willingly and thoughtlessly" adopts the term "Jasenovac myth" and tries to demonstrate, through the omitting of information, that Jasenovac was a "labor camp" and that genocide in the WW2 Independent State of Croatia did not occur.[29] Jurčević also wrote that concentration camp victims dying from poor hygiene and infectious diseases.[28]

Croatia's far-right often advocates the false theory that Jasenovac was a "labour camp" where mass murder did not take place.[11] One prominent peddler is the far-right NGO "The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp". Its members include journalist Igor Vukić and academic Josip Pečarić who have written books promoting this theory.[30] The Ideas promoted by its members have been amplified by mainstream media interviews and book tours.[30] The last book, "The Jasenovac Lie Revealed" written by Vukić, prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to urge Croatian authorities to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so".[31][32] When asked if the society engaged in genocide denial, Vukić responded by saying "When it’s about genocide, it is often linked to Serbs. If it’s about that, we do deny it".[33] Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, condemned the affirmative column about Vukić's book written by Milan Ivkošić in the Večernji list, emphasizing that “there are horrific realities of history that must not be questioned, distorted or denied by anyone”.[34]

In 2016, Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar released a documentary Jasenovac – The Truth which advocated the same theories, labeling the camp as a "collection and labour camp".[35] The film contained alleged falsifications and forgeries, in addition to denial of crimes and hate speech towards politicians and journalists.[36]

Revisionism in the Croat diaspora

In 2008, in Melbourne, Australia, a Croat restaurant held a celebration to honor Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić. The event was an "outrageous affront both to his victims and to any persons of morality and conscience who oppose racism and genocide", Dr. Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, stated. According to local press reports, a large photograph of Pavelić was hung in the restaurant, T-shirts with his picture and pictures of two other commanders who served in the 1941–45 Ustaše government were offered for sale at the bar, and the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia was celebrated. Zuroff noted that this was not the first time in which Croatian émigrés in Australia had openly defended Croat Nazi war criminals.

It is high time that the authorities in Australia find a way to take the necessary measures to stop such celebrations, which clearly constitute racist, ethnic, and anti-Semitic incitement against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.[37]

Hate speech and the rehabilitation of fascist ideology

Anti-Cyrillic Graffiti depicting the “U” symbol of the Ustaše

According to the 2018 European Commission against Racism and Intolerance report, racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating in Croatia; and the main targets are Serbs, LGBT persons and Roma.[38] Furthermore, there is a growing rise of nationalism, particularly among the youth, which primarily takes the form of praising the fascist Ustaše regime. The responses of the Croatian authorities to these incidents cannot be considered fully adequate.[38]

In November 2016 in Jasenovac a plaque commemorating members of Croatian Defence Forces killed in action 1991-2 was unveiled, containing emblem with the Ustaše salute "Za dom spremni".[39] The Serb National Council of Croatia in its report on anti-Serb sentiment in 2017 reported that the salute was used 11,309 times in the comment sections of the 4 far-right Facebook profiles.[40]

The Thompson, a popular Croatian rock band has garnered controversy for its purported glorification of Ustaše regime in their songs and concerts, and the most famous such song is Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara that promotes executions in camps of the same name.[41][42]

References

  1. ^ Drago Hedl (10 November 2005). "Croatia's Willingness To Tolerate Fascist Legacy Worries Many". BCR Issue 73. IWPR. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  2. ^ Sindbaek 2012, p. 178-179.
  3. ^ Sadkovich 2010.
  4. ^ Ciment & Hill 2012, p. 492.
  5. ^ Horvitz & Catherwood 2014, pp. 432–433.
  6. ^ Parenti 2002, pp. 44–45.
  7. ^ "Franjo Tudjman". The Guardian. 13 December 1999. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
  8. ^ Boris Havel (2015). "O izučavanju holokausta u Hrvatskoj i hrvatskoj državotvornosti". Nova Prisutnost. 13 (1): 105. Retrieved 16 November 2017. Povijesna je činjenica da je ustaški režim NDH, u provedbi svojih planova o smanjenju 'neprijateljskog srpsko-pravoslavnog pučanstva u hrvatskim zemljama' izvršio velik genocidni zločin nad Srbima, a razmjerno još veći nad Romima i Židovima, u provedbi nacističke rasne politike.
  9. ^ (in Croatian) Vijesti.net: "stari govor Stipe Mesića: Pobijedili smo 10. travnja!", index.hr; accessed 4 March 2014.
  10. ^ "STIPE MESIĆ O SVOJIM IZJAVAMA O NDH I USTAŠTVU U AUSTRALIJI 'Dopustio sam da me upregnu u kola jednostrane interpretacije povijesti'". Jutarnji Vjesti. 13 February 2016.
  11. ^ a b Milekic, Sven (24 January 2017). "Croatia Ex-President Shown Downplaying WWII Crimes". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
  12. ^ Hockenos, Paul (6 May 2016). "Croatia's Far Right Weaponizes the Past". ForeignPolicy.com.
  13. ^ Simicevic, Hrvoje (12 February 2016). "What were the Ustasa for Minister Hasanbegovic?". BalkanInsight.com.
  14. ^ "Hasanbegovic: Ustasha crimes biggest moral lapse in history of Croatian people". EBL News. 11 February 2016.
  15. ^ "Croatian Minister of Culture Hasanbegovic's Perceived Past Ustasha Sympathies Dominate National Media". Total Croatia News. 11 February 2016.
  16. ^ "Hasanbegović: Na slici sam ja, kapa nije ustaška već HOS-ova". 24sata.hr. 10 February 2016.
  17. ^ "Croatian Auschwitz must not be forgotten". B92. 17 April 2011. Retrieved 12 October 2012.
  18. ^ "Dokle će se u Jasenovac u tri kolone?". N1. 23 April 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  19. ^ "Jasenovac Camp Victims Commemorated Separately Again". balkaninsight.com. 12 April 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  20. ^ "Jewish and Serbian minorities boycott official "Croatian Auschwitz" commemoration". neweurope.eu. 28 March 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  21. ^ "Former top Croat officials join boycott of Jasenovac event". B92. 12 April 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  22. ^ "Jasenovac". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2007. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  23. ^ Odak & Benčić 2016, p. 67.
  24. ^ Bürgschwentner, Egger & Barth-Scalmani 2014, p. 455.
  25. ^ McCormick 2008.
  26. ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 47.
  27. ^ a b Kasapović 2018.
  28. ^ a b c Pavasović Trošt 2018.
  29. ^ Sundhaussen, Holm. "Rezension 55: Jurčévić, Josip: Die Entstehung des Mythos Jasenovac. Probleme bei der Forschungsarbeit zu den Opfern des II. Weltkrieges auf dem Gebiet von Kroatien". Osteuropa-Institut.
  30. ^ a b Vladisavljevic, Anja (7 January 2019). "Book Event Questioning WWII Crimes Planned for Zagreb Church". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
  31. ^ "Simon Wiesenthal Centre urges Croatia to ban Jasenovac revisionist works". hr.n1info.com. N1 Zagreb. 9 January 2019.
  32. ^ "Jewish rights group urges Croatia to ban pro-Nazi book". Associated Press. 9 January 2019.
  33. ^ Opačić, Tamara (24 November 2017). "Selective Amnesia: Croatia's Holocaust Deniers". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
  34. ^ Rosensaft, Menachem (27 August 2018). "Croatia Must Not Whitewash the Horrors of Jasenovac". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
  35. ^ Milekic, Sven (21 April 2017). "Dishonour for Zagreb Over 'Alternative Facts' About Holocaust". BalkanInsight. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  36. ^ "Jakov Sedlar bi zbog filma 'Jasenovac – istina' mogao u zatvor" (in Croatian). Telegram. 18 April 2016.
  37. ^ Lefkovits, Etgar (16 April 2008). "Melbourne eatery hails leader of Nazi-allied Croatia, Jerusalem Post, 16 April 2008". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
  38. ^ a b "ECRI Report on Croatia 2018". Retrieved 28 April 2020.
  39. ^ "Plaque near WW2 Concentration Camp Scandalises Region"
  40. ^ "Bilten SNV-a: Dužnosnici potiču govor mržnje". portalnovosti.com. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  41. ^ "Wiesenthal Center Expresses Outrage At Massive Outburst of Nostalgia for Croatian Fascism at Zagreb Rock Concert; Urges President Mesic to Take Immediate Action". Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
  42. ^ "Wiesenthal Center Slams Inclusion Of Fascist Singer Thompson In Croatian Football Team Celebration/ Reception In Zagreb". Simon Wiesenthal Center. Retrieved 18 May 2020.

Sources

Books

Journals


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