ZAGREB: Several thousand people rallied in Croatia’s capital on Sunday in an anti-fascist march protesting against the rise of World War II revisionism and far-right views in the country.
In recent months, Croatia has been seeing right-wing nationalists increasingly trying to impose their agenda, with subsequent incidents targeting the ethnic Serb minority and the use in public of the country’s World War II pro-Nazi regime salute.
In early November, masked men disrupted a Serb cultural event in Croatia’s second-largest city of Split, replicating the Ustasha salute.
Relations with ethnic Serbs have remained fragile since Croatia’s 1990s war with Belgrade-backed rebel Serbs who opposed its independence.
Hundreds of thousands gathered in Zagreb at a July concert of ultra-nationalist singer Marko Perkovic, known by his stage name Thompson,
One of Thompson’s most popular songs starts with the Ustasha salute and his fans are often adorned with affiliated symbols.
In the days that followed the concert, two MPs made the salute from the parliamentary podium, while in October the assembly hosted a round table that downplayed the number of Croatia’s WWII death camp victims.
“Fascists are no longer ashamed, nor do they hide,” the organizers of Sunday’s march said in a statement, calling for resistance to “violence, historical revisionism, and intimidation.”
More than 10,000 people rallied in Zagreb, according to organizers, while the police did not provide a figure.
“We currently have a problem with widespread revival of Ustasha ideology,” said protester Kristijan Kralj, an electrical engineering student.
The Ustasha organization persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats.
Although their Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was a Nazi puppet state, their modern sympathizers see them as the nation’s founding fathers.
Dado Gazda arrived from Bjelovar, some 85 kilometers (53 miles) east of Zagreb to “support all these people in their fight against the far right.
“The time has come to say what is bothering us, why we are worried about our country,” he told AFP.
Chanting “We are all anti-fascists,” the marchers walked through central Zagreb on a sunny and cold day to the city’s main square, carrying a giant “United against Fascism” banner in front.
Similar marches were held in three other Croatian towns — Rijeka, Pula and Zadar — all on the Adriatic coast.
Croatia’s shifted right began after the April 2024 elections, when the right-wing Homeland Movement became a junior partner in the coalition government led by conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s HDZ.