ZAGREB, March 9, 2019 – The president of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Davor Bernardić, in Požega on Saturday commented on the decision by the Roman Catholic Church in the Austrian federal state of Carinthia to withhold permission for this year’s memorial mass at Loibach, a field near Bleiburg, saying that the time had come for Croatia to ban fascist symbols, recalling that Austria, regardless of the right-wing and conservative government, had banned the display of fascist symbols and the use of Holy Mass for political purposes.
“The time has come for those who lead the Croatian government to raise awareness about that issue and ban those symbols and for Croatia to finally turn to the future. But to do so, it first must cut all ties with ghosts of the past once and for all and ban the use of fascist symbols,” Bernardić said.
The commemoration in Bleiburg is being exploited for political purposes and you can see there uniforms for failed fascists, Nazi and Ustasha regimes under whose insignia millions of people were killed.
The Roman Catholic Church in the Austrian federal state of Carinthia has turned down a request by the Croatian Bishops Conference (HBK) to hold a mass at Loibach, a field near Bleiburg because the event is used for political purposes, the local church said on Friday.
The Bleiburg commemorations are held in tribute to tens of thousands of Croatian civilians and soldiers of the defeated Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia who surrendered to allied forces there in May 1945, but were handed over by British troops to Yugoslav forces. Many were executed on the spot, while many perished during so-called death marches back to Yugoslavia.
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