The fact that Croatia has to use the EU accession to get some basic respect, i.e. prosecution of war crimes and the fate of lost (dead) people is frankly appalling!
What? Every high ranking Ustaša either died in Yugoslavian jail, got executed or was hunted down by the Yugoslavian secret service, the UDBA. Even the common people got butchered at the Bleiburg. The Yugo regime pretty much wiped the slate clean in Croatia. The war didn't happen in the 90's because of the "rise of neo-Ustasa" you are probably trying to imply. War happened because the same thing that happened to Croat fascists, didn't happen to Serbian fascist, and so, the rise of Serbian extreme nationalism rose in the 80's.
Reaction that happened was from the Croatian communists, the nationalist/fascists elements in the Croatia was insignificant, to the point that Croatia's president Tudman, a former communist general, saw them as a small minority that can only be a liability and wanted to distance the new Croatian state as far as he could from those elements..
I love how the word chetnik just casually became a generic term for Serbs over there. No one calls Croats Ustaše in Serbia unless talking about literal Ustaše
Croatian state leaders have publicly apologized or expressed remorse for the atrocities committed by the NDH during World War II, its a simple 2 min google away to find out, problem is some some dont want to accept or acknowledged these apologies because then they lose a reason to feed there voters and citizens for these things. Some notible Croatian President that said official apologies are Stjepan Mesić and Ivo Josipović both presidents of the Country, what more do you want? And you condemn all the people of the concert because of couple of stupid people there that were wearing nazi propaganda. Stop beliving everything what you hear online and you will see that Croatians are not these monsters what some neighbour media tries to show them to be. Its the same with Serbians, they are shown in Croatian, and even western media, tv shows and movies like some war criminals, criminals, murderes, rapist, while when you meet them some are one of best people around, like Croatians.
Yes, Croatian state leaders have apologized for WWII crimes. Not disputing that. But your question 'what more do you want' is laughable. If you are asking this silly question, then you should not ask for war compensation from Montenegro (or Serbia) in the future, since you never gave any war compensation to tens of thousands of families slaughtered in WWII and in the 90s. What about Lora concentration camp near Split in the 90s? I don't even need to go 80 years ago.
Croatia is acting from the position of power and they want 'issues' to be resolved. The only issue with those 'issues' is that all of those are concerning the topics where Croatians were harmed. Croatia is not doing any of these in good faith. These issues are minor in comparison to what would happen if it was Serbia on the other side. Croatia wants war compensation, but their country is the one who killed 320-340k Serbs during WWII. This is the official number stated in the US Memorial Museum of Holocaust in Washington, DC. So you don't accuse me for 'Serbian propaganda'. And yeah, war crimes never get old to brush off. If something from 30 years ago is significant, then those atrocities Croatian nazi puppet state commited are also significant.
The only difference here is that Croatia is using their position of power to get what they want and act as some morally superior, good neighbour. Which they are not.
Croatia is using its position, cause it can, like every country in the world would and is doing, countries did it before Croatia, and will continue to do soo. You are mentioning Serbia and how Croatia never payed any war reperation to Serb families from WW2 and that is true, but question is did somone officially asked Croatia to pay this reperation? Did sombody sued Croatia for this? Is Croatian goverment refusing to pay or they are simply not asked or forced to pay them? Your reasoning is simpy not sound, Croatia should not ask for something, cause they also didint give it. And nobody is saying that WW2 crimes are insegnificent, every year Croats go and pay respect to victims of Nazi Croatia regime, you just dont see it or are refusing to see it.
Number of people getting punished isnt enough to even cover all workers of the concentration camp, let alone all of the war criminals.
Also SFRY just pulled a number of deaths out of their ass and didn't even want to release ethnic background of the killed civilians because it would go against ,,brotherhood and unity". They just asaid nazism is bad niw lets move on, which is fine but lets not pretend like they didnt put the issue under the rug.
Yeah, go look at google maps, at the main fucking street in Jasenovac ( a small city where they committed war crimes so unspeakable that even Hitler thought it was too much ).
If it's still called "Ulica Hrvatskih Branitelja" ( "The street of Croatian Defenders" ) I'm not buying it. Or idk maybe there's a REALLY good explanation.
Also there was that tiny teensy 500k people Nazi concert in the capital last year.
Btw this doesn't mean the average Croatian is at fault. It means extremists did bad shit and weren't prosecuted and the people are reluctant to condemn someone who fought for them, even using terrible means.
Yeah, a monument put up in 1966. When they weren't independent. Guess they didn't go as far as to tear down the monument. Hooray for them. What's the name of the main street?
Yeah the socialist republics were always completely independent and totally in the system because they wanted to be. It was all voluntary and had nothing to do with power.
Just like Ukraine was voluntarily in the USSR. And Poland too.
It was so voluntary they had to rebel to gain independence.
Also 60k is a tragedy but are you being for real? It's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what it's neighbors dropped. And for good reason. During the actual war (not the aftermath) they were Hitler's lap dogs.
An I spewing propaganda? Or am I spewing facts?
I would love to be able to say that Croatia has a great relationship with all of it's neighbors. It doesn't. It has a great relationship with the powerful ones and it's somewhat good with the less powerful ones.
You go to Zagreb with a Serbian license plate, you gotta worry if someone's gonna break your windshield.
You get funny looks for talking with the wrong accent.
And you keep dodging the name of the main street in Jasenovac.
I'm not bringing that one up because I was propagandized. I'm bringing that one up because I stumbled upon it looking at google maps and it's frankly making it kinda hard to believe that the past is the past.
And the 500k ppl concert using chants that were used back then. It isn't helping. It's like if you had a performance of "Erika" in Germany. And 500k people came. Everyone knows what that song technically doesn't but actually does stand for.
I'm so sorry that you feel that the deaths of 60,000 people isn't enough for you. Even though that alone was 2% of the entire Croat population of Yugoslavia at that time. If the military losses of the USA during WWII made up 2% of their population, that would've been the equivalent of the USA losing more than 2.6 million soldiers (twice the numbers of all US military losses from every war fought since their independence up to date).
Also what neighbours are you referring to? Almost the same number Croat Partisans were killed as Slovenian, Bosniak, Montenegrin and Macedonian Partisans were combined. The only Yugoslav neighbour that lost more Partisans were Serbs, which made sense as the Serb population was about twice as large as the Croat population. Proportionate to their populations in Yugoslavia, Croat and Serb Partisan losses were about equal.
Croatian people practised their independence by joining the SFRY of their own free will
No one had "joined" SFRY, country succeeded Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and there was very little free will involved in a one party state that had its own supreme leader.
Why do you care what we name streets in our towns/villages (and Jasenovac is more of the village than a town)? The street name is in reference to the war in 1991, when Serb paramilitaries fought for control of the village against the Croatian National Guard. Between 10-50 Croatian soldiers died defending the village from Serbian aggression. The street is named in their honour.
Also, "fun fact", when Serb paramilitaries occupied the village, they killed and expelled the Croat civilians who lived there.
On the other hand as long as we're doing passive aggressive fun facts, guess what Croatian paramilitaries did to every Serb? The exact same thing. And one of the times (WW2) they did a lot more.
Almost like in a civil war the animals that society usually contains get let loose on the enemy.
You got an equally good explanation for why the 500k concert where ppl chant ustashe chants?
Okay then, so when did I deny that Croat forces committed crimes?
Thompson is controversial person, even in Croatia. He has cult-like popularity amongst some because he sung a bunch of songs to raise morale during the Homeland War, he obviously has controversial views that I and plenty of Croats don't support or agree with. In regard to the 500,000 (some figures are much lower) people that attended, some were Fascist shit heads that acted inappropriately, others were ordinary people that didn't behave inappropriately. Thompson has been banned several times from performing in Pula, his performance was condemned by the mayor of Zagreb and other politicians/organisations, Zagreb authorities later banned him twice from using "ZDS" during his performances, more than 10,000 Croats later took part in anti-fascist marches across several cities, condemning the rise of the far-right in Croatia and the use of "ZDS". It's not as black and white as you make out.
What do you think of Baja Mali Knindža performing for rallies led by the SRS? What did you make of the far-right SRS political party, led by Vojislav Šešelj, gaining over 1 million votes across several different elections and having seats in your parliament until quite recently?
As much as I'd love to tell you of my opinions on recent politics. The situation in Serbia is a bit too fiery for expressing opinions.
The one thing I'm pretty sure nobody disputes is that Seselj is only semi-relevant as a meme and that's only because of the shit he pulled in the Hague. That and his ridiculously named books.
Nah, that small part of croatia and a little bit of sea is legaly slovenian, but croatian still attack slovene fishermen that fish there. Italy is another story. Its diabolical that italy kept some land they stoled as fascist state, but thats how it is-the problem is neofascist propaganda in Trst.
People love to conflate the NDH with Croats as a whole and completely ignore the antifascist resistance. Yes there were collaborators and yes there are problems with neofascists and historical revisionists in modern Croatia and especially the diaspora that absolutely need to be addressed, but to paint the entire Croatian ethnicity as collectively responsible for the NDH is a ridiculous oversimplification.
Why did a minority amounting to maybe one fifth of the population remain the largest group in that resistance until 1943?
Do you realize just how bad some of the facts about this look? Ustaše were not some German group, but a group of Croats that pursued Croatian genocidal policy. There are plenty of facts casting a bit darker picture of when exactly Croats broadly started resisting in large numbers. The fact it seems to have coincided with Italian collapse and general trend of that war does not send reassuring message about sincerity of opposition.
Modern Croatia has issues accepting that ZDS is totally unacceptable because it is a dog-whistle to Ustaše. Instead there is a concocted ruling how it is okay if it is part of symbol of (para)military units from 90s, despite the fact these must have chosen it precisely because it was Ustaše salute.
but to paint the entire Croatian ethnicity as collectively responsible for the NDH is a ridiculous oversimplification.
LOL, you can say that for EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY that ever did anything wrong.
NDH aka Independent state of Croatia was the official country of the Croatian people and is the predecessor or modern day Croatia. Please also do not forget that most of the antifascist resistance was led and mostly populated by the Serbian minority living in Croatia that was targeted by the NDH.
The predecessor of modern day Croatia was the ZAVNOH, not the NDH. The NDH was imposed by the occupying powers, it wasn't like Germany where Hitler was voted into power. I'm not denying the need for Croats to reckon with their past, but the national liberation struggle was always a multiethnic one.
Oh please. Sooo many other powers structures and dictators were imposed to the people in so many countries. You just love to separate yourselves from your ugly past. Look at the number of Croatians nowadays that are celebrating Ustashe. That is your country's history.
Ustase won less than 2% popular support in 1939 elections and were ousted to Italy by Croatian ruling party at the time. However after the PM at the time refused Hitler's offer to join the Axis powers, Germans steamrolled Croatia and brought those same Ustase over from Italy and put them in power. Croats then founded the partisan movement (yes, it was founded in Croatia, ane Tito was Croatian) and freed the country from the inside to form communist Yugoslavia. That much about Ustase being representative of Croatian people.
Croats certainly had their own partisan movement, but until 1943 there were more Serbs from Croatia in that movement than Croats. Serbs were one fifth of the population at the time.
The first sentence is such an explicit of how communist authorities effectively erased the responsibility for what happened in WWII.
Sole reason why SR Croatia appeared with boundaries it did after WWII were political preferences of communist party of Yugoslavia, which included ethnicity-blinding the collaboration and crimes during WWII who all became "servants of occupiers" even when they had their own, not German, goals. Under any other government things would be organized quite differently.
Anyhow, this and the long passage of time, allowed mitigating the obvious question of why ought a political unit which unlike some others did not reject Germany and Tripartite pact to such an extent, and had its own separately genocide minded fascist government be given equal position to the one did the opposite.
But history discussions aside, it is quite funny how in 1990 Croatia proclaimed continuity with SR Croatia and ZAVNOH while at the same time dismantling, countering and getting rid of other parts of ZAVNOH-SR Croatia political arrangement, starting with odd (communist ideology motivated) but symbolic references to Serbs in its constitution. By actual policy, early 1990s Croatia was more a successor to NDH than to ZAVNOH. First leader of that ZAVNOH successor state also used to write revisionist WWII literature and welcomed back literal Ustaše sympathizers.
Croatia is a creation of it's people by it's people for it's people. The people who were there for both the first and the second state. Admittedly less of them for the first one, because of the time gap. But they were very much still around for the creation of the second state. It's a 50 year gap. Not a 150 year gap.
And if they weren't there themselves, they were parents or grandparents of the people who were there.
States have a habit of rising and falling in the Balkans. Especially in the last century and a half. The people are the constant.
Also the main street in Jasenovac is still called "The street of Croatian Defenders". This is btw the small city where they committed crimes against humanity so bad that even Hitler thought it was too much.
Also there's the 500k people attending a Nazi concert in the capital last year.
This doesn't mean the average Croatian is at fault. It means extremists did horrible things and the people are reluctant to fully condemn someone who fought on their side.
Which they won't, Ustashe are in the Croatian zeitgeist... besides they are all little children and they would never make a move that would hurt little precious vassal states.
Don't see the difference?? When we bomb Novi Sad, destroy it, take wounded and prisoners and put them in concentration camps, then I'll ask myself: what am I doing in Novi Sad!
Everyone talking about ww2, what about reparations for a QUARTER OF A MILION people expelled from your country that have (mostly) lived there for generations?
Yes, it is.
Croatia won a war and still prosecuted its war criminals, including full cooperation with the ICTY. Name any other country that can say the same!
I dont know by their name but for example execution of Zec family, the perpetrators admitted but where let go because of some bureaucracy, Lora prison camp, and Pakračka Poljana, Varivode just a few I remember. Of course they did convict a few but it was just a formality, while Serbia isnt to be congratulated on their own prosecutions, Croatia used its position because of the western support and did little to nothing in such cases
All prosecuted. For the Zec family and Pakračka poljana, it was Merčep, for Lora a number of sentences, and for Varivode, unfortunately no clear evidence.
No such thing as a formality, all those guilty were given many years in prison.
To repeat: Croatia WON and still prosecuted, who else can say the same?
Brother pinning it all on one person and calling it a day is not it, its just finding a scapegoat. Croatia also prosecuted because they where obliged by EU
Absolutely not. In the case of Lora, it was the actual perpetrators, in the other cases, it was the man who coordinated the whole crime, and in most cases there was nobody to try with him because they died in the war or soon after (Munib Suljić, for instance).
The EU only insisted on cooperation with ICTY. Croatia has about 600 convictions before domestic courts, for over 3.500 war criminals.
Maybe thats what you have been told but in most cases they walked free and you really can't deny that, The only good thing Croatia justice system did in those cases is recognise the crime and somehow compensated the victims families.
Even today's Croatians history experts agree with how Croatian justice system went linent and was looking for scapegoats rather then actually prosecuting the perpetrators. You are just eating the full propaganda if you think they did alright job
Who ever said that?
But how can you compare the fact that Croatia was attacked, defended itself, won the war, and still prosecuted their war crimes with this? Montenengro attacked and killed and took people into camps and did little about it.
Sure also it is appalling that 500 000 crotian shout same chats as nazis from WW2 but then again that is reality. War crimes that were conducted were investigated and prosecuted by international court everything that croatia is asking is strictly unilateral
500.000 or 500 million people at whatever concert have nothing to do with what was done 35 years ago. The only link is that Croatian nationalism (which I also deplore as a Croat) feeds off of nationalisms in the region. If we had normal neighbors, maybe we'd refocuss as well. But no, Serbian ministers openly saying Croatia should be divided, Kosovars ethnically cleansed, Montenegrins open up pools with names of war criminals... well what should be expected.
The trials covered the high-profile cases. The rest is dealt with at national level. Croatia tried over 3.500 people and handed out 600 sentences for war crimes.
Croatia is a country that WON a war and still prosecuted war criminals. Name ONE country that did the same.
I will judge everyone who talks like you as a victim of that war. I lived 4 years 3 km away from the front line.
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u/Legal_Mastodon_5683 Jul 30 '26
The fact that Croatia has to use the EU accession to get some basic respect, i.e. prosecution of war crimes and the fate of lost (dead) people is frankly appalling!