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The threatening letter received by Hrvoje Klasic. Photo courtesy of Hrvoje Klasic.

Historian Hrvoje Klasic received the death threat letter at his office at Zagreb University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences on Wednesday after making public statements critical of the rehabilitation of the WWII fascist Ustasa movement in Croatian society.

The anonymous sender or senders, who signed the letter ‘Ustasa’, said they regretted that Klasic had not been “liquidated” yet but hoped he would be.

“We will be glad to attend your funeral in HOS [Croatian Defence Forces, a 1990s wartime paramilitary unit] uniforms on which Za dom spremni [“Ready for the Homeland”, a Ustasa slogan] is nicely highlighted,” the letter said.

It concluded with the words: “Death to traitors – freedom to the people.”

Attached to the letter was a newspaper excerpt in which Klasic said he would welcome a decision by the Austrian authorities to ban and sanction the public display of the WWII Ustasa movement’s symbols.

Earlier this year, the Austrian Interior Ministry banned the display of two Ustasa symbols – the letter ‘U’ with a grenade, and the checkerboard coat of arms of the Nazi-backed WWII-era Independent State of Croatia.

These symbols are often seen at the annual Bleiburg commemoration in Austria, which commemorates the killings of Croatian Nazi collaboration troops and civilians at the end of WWII.

Klasic told BIRN that this was not the first such letter he has received, but that it was the most explicit death threat, and that he will report it to the police.

He said that the fact that he received the letter showed there was a real problem in Croatian society.

“This [letter] is perhaps the best answer to the political elite in power about their thesis that the atmosphere [in society] is normal,” Klasic said. Speaking after a spate of recent attacks on Serbs in Croatia, he said that here had been “too many incidents” in which “those who are different” have been targeted.

“If someone who is named Hrvoje, who is from a 100 per cent Croatian family, who was a volunteer in the ‘Homeland War’ in 1991 and who, as a doctor of historical sciences, speaks publicly about the things that he deals with scientifically [and is threatened for it]… then really, how it is for the people who belong to the ‘wrong groups’?” he asked.