ZAGREB

Croatian leaders' contrasting attitudes towards Tuesday's annual commemoration of the murder of a Croatian family during the independence war drew equally contrasting responses.

Zagreb's new Left-Green mayor, Tomislav Tomasevic attended the commemoration of the murder of the Zec family in 1991 in person.

The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee has called on EU external border state Croatia to stop police ill-treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in its borders.

On Friday, its report called on authorities to take "determined action to stop migrants from being ill-treated by police officers and to ensure that cases of alleged ill-treatment are investigated effectively".

Former Bosnian defence minister Selmo Cikotic was charged on Monday with having abused his official position as defence minister from 2009 till 2011 by unlawfully favouring a buyer to the detriment of the ministry he led when planning the export and sale of surplus outdated weapons, ammunition and military equipment.

There were minor incidents last Saturday, but organizers point out that there will be no banners or speakers this Saturday.
"We are gathering in silence and protesting against covid confirmations, against discrimination and division. We will be in silence, without speakers," reads the invitation to the protest, 24sata.hr reports.

The Croatian parliamentary committee for war veterans' affairs endorsed a proposal on Tuesday to establish a military graveyard in the central Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb for soldiers who fought for the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia, NDH, a Nazi-backed puppet state.

Russians are travelling to Croatia to get EU-approved vaccines since at home they can only get the Russian Sputnik vaccine, which the EU and many other countries don't recognize,

Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday rejected claims that he participated in a war crime in Croatia in 1991, after a Croatian newspaper reported that a trial witness testified that Vucic threatened him with death.

Vucic told media in Belgrade that he was in Croatia several times in the 1970s and 1980s as a child and a teenager, but not in 1991.

He pointed out that there are many sources of misunderstanding in Bosnia-Herzegovina and that relations must be considered in more detail.
"When it comes to Mr Dodik, his unusual expression, someone may like it or not, but he is supported by the largest number of representatives of the Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Covic told HRT, as reported by Srna.

ITAS Prvomajska, which produces machine tools and employs around 125 workers, is unique among factories in Croatia in that those who work there own roughly half of the shares in the company, a model known as 'workers' self-management' with roots in socialist Yugoslavia, of which Croatia was once a part.

Huddled around cooking fires as winter looms in Bosnia, refugees are risking beatings and humiliation from Croatian police in the desperate hope of a new life in the European Union.

Largely from Afghanistan, many of them have endured months or years of flight from war and poverty, only to be met by Croatian police clubs and pointed guns at the gates to EU territory.