Croatia’s Controversial Bleiburg Commemoration Cancelled Due to Pandemic

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.

The organisers of the event, the Honorary Bleiburg Platoon, said that it was forced to cancel because Austria has restricted public gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic, and because the governments of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have restricted cross-border travel.

"We will inform the Croatian public shortly about an alternative programme to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Bleiburg Tragedy… on which we are working with the Croatian parliament as a sponsor of the central commemoration," the organisers said in a statement.

In May 2016, the Croatian parliament decided to reintroduce state sponsorship of the Bleiburg event after it was withdrawn in 2012 due to concerns that it served to rehabilitate the ideology of the Ustasa regime.

In recent years, symbols of the WWII fascist Ustasa movement have been seen at the gathering. Last year, Austrian and Croatian anti-fascist activists protested at the site, describing the event as a "fascist gathering".

The Austrian Interior Ministry meanwhile banned the display of two Croatian Ustasa movement symbols - the letter 'U' with a grenade, and the checkerboard coat of arms of the Nazi-backed WWII-era Independent State of Croatia.

The Catholic Church in Carinthia in Austria last year rejected a request from the Croatian Bishops' Conference to hold an annual mass at the Bleiburg commemoration because it said the event was being used to promote nationalist ideas.