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Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic in Bleiburg. Photo: President’s office.

Croatia’s president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic visited the sites of massacres of thousands of Croatian civilians and soldiers of the defeated pro-Nazi Independent State of Croatia (NDH) on Wednesday, laying flowers and lighting candles at Macelj, Bleiburg and Huda Jama.

The President paid tribute to “innocent victims killed by members of the Yugoslav Army after the end of World War II”.

“The massive killing of prisoners of war and civilians, including wounded people and children, violated all civilization norms and provisions of humanitarian law, primarily the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War,” Grabar Kitarovic wrote in a press release.

“It was, in fact, the largest post-war mass crime in Europe after World War II, for which there is no justification, nor for any other crime committed against anyone and anyone,” she continued.

To strike a political balance, the President on Thursday also paid tribute to the victims of Nazi rule and occupation.

She wrote on Twitter: “Marking Victory Day, May 9, we remember the Croatian anti-Fascists who gave a remarkable contribution to the ultimate victory over Fascism and Nazism”.

The Croatian government also published a press release marking Victory Day, the day that marks Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945.

“We recall many Croatian anti-Fascists who contributed to the victory over Nazism and Fascism in World War II, the end of the war in Europe and Croatia on the side of the winners,” the government wrote, adding that it also wished to remember “many innocent Croatian victims … killed in the time of Communist Yugoslavia”.

Asked about the visit by the President to Beliburg, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that he didn’t know about it, but that it was the “President’s choice”.

A Presidential press release said the visit was made ahead of the Day of Remembrance of Croatian Victims in the Struggle for Freedom and Independence, which is marked on the Sunday closest to May 15.

Commemorations of the end of World War II have been increasingly complex in Croatia since it gained independence from the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s – since right-wingers began demanding commemorations of the victims of the newly victorious Yugoslav communist regime.

The Yugoslav Partisan army massacred tens of thousands of Croats fleeing the collapse of the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, NDH, in 1945 without trial in the Austrian border area of Carinthia.

The bodies were dumped in a series of pits and the dead included both NDH military and civilians as well as smaller numbers of Slovenes and Serbs fleeing the communists. The massacres were a taboo subject during the Yugoslav communist era.

But the annual commemorative events now held in their memory have become the subject of numerous controversies in Croatia – and also between Croatia and Austria – owing to to the presence of far-right groups and display of symbols of the former Fascist regime in Croatia.

Symbols of the Croatian Fascist Ustasa movement, which governed the NDH, have often been seen at the annual gatherings in Bleiburg.

At the commemoration in 2018, Austrian police arrested seven people and filed nine complaints about violations of the country’s law against praising Fascism.

In March, the Catholic Church in Carinthia in Austria rejected a request from the Croatian bishops to hold a mass at the Bleiburg commemoration this year. The Church said the event was being used to promote nationalist ideas.

Last week, Austria decided that the gatherings at Bleiburg will be officially designated as public gatherings, which means that they will be under the supervision of the Austrian police.

The police spokesman in Carinthia on Monday told N1 regional television that any display of prohibited symbols could lead to the cancellation of such commemorations.