Long concealed in communist Yugoslavia, in the 1990s, Bleiburg became the central event in the formation of a new national identity for Croatia, now an independent state.

In response to Serbia’s appropriation of the victimhood of the concentration camp at Jasenovac, where the Ustasa killed over 80,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews, and anti-fascists, contemporary Croatia began commemorating Bleiburg as “Croatia’s greatest tragedy”.

The day of the surrender was officially named the Day of Memory of Croatian Victims in the Struggle for Freedom and Independence.

Commemorations have long taken place at the Bleiburg field, where former members of Ustasa forces, known as the Honorary Bleiburg Platoon, PBV, began to mark the event in the 1950s.

Commemorating the event in Austria was an advantage before the 1990s, as the participants could mourn both the deaths and the fall of the Ustasa-run Independent State of Croatia, NDH, far from the Yugoslav authorities.

This changed in the 1990s, when the Croatian parliament became the official sponsor of the commemoration. The event’s location now became an international issue.

Austria was getting increasingly tired of tolerating an event that was becoming infamous as the biggest far-right neo-Nazi gathering in Europe.

In 2018, it took a tougher line on the commemoration, as its authorities began work on officially banning the public display of Ustaša insignia.

In 2019, the Catholic Church in Austria even initially refused to allow a religious ceremony to take place at Bleiburg. Although a mass did take place in the end, after the Croatian authorities complained to the Austrian Church, it became abundantly clear that Bleiburg was causing international turbulence.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the PBV cancelled the 2020 commemoration in Bleiburg and moved it to Sarajevo. So, while Croatia-Austria relations did not suffer this year, the commemoration presented yet another chance to radicalise Croatia-Bosnia relations.

Catholic priests wearing face masks walk as protesters stage a demonstration in front of the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

While anti-fascist groups across Bosnia condemned the event, Croat nationalists used the criticism of the mass as “proof” that Croats suffered discrimination in Bosnia.

Peaceful activism against the mass soon became “The New Way of the Cross” for Croats, as one news portal put it. Public discontent over the commemoration was labelled “an attack on Croats”.

After Bosnia’s Catholic Cardinal, Vinko Puljić, expressed shock over the public reaction, in defence of Puljić, the Croatian daily Večernji list adapted the title of the legendary Partisan movie Valter Defends Sarajevo to become: “Puljić Defends Sarajevo”.

While the Croatian state’s official support for the event was a problem in itself, the legacy of the war in the 1990s between Croatia and Bosnia represents an additional burden on already fragile relations.

The assumption cannot be ignored that Croatia either has a hidden agenda in further destabilising Bosnia – in line with its wartime engagement there in the 1990s – or at least is helping the Bosnian-Croat nationalists in their internal struggles.

So, regardless of arguments about whether the mass should have been allowed or not, what is undeniable is that it has raised ethnic tensions.

The mass for the victims of Bleiburg functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy; on one side, it has intentionally drawn a strong reaction from the other – which is then used and cited as proof of discrimination and oppression.

The right-wing Bosnian Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, has also used the events to mobilise voters ahead of upcoming local elections in Bosnia. Although ideological disputes connected to 20^th-century history now have less impact than in previous years, they still grab voters’ attention.

People in Sarajevo stand at a certain distance to each other as they attend an anti-fascist protest in front of the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

Its sister party in Croatia, meanwhile, is also relying on the ethnic mobilisation of voters ahead of Croatia’s own general elections in July.

Although the HDZ leader, Andrej Plenkovic, has tried to rebrand it as a moderate conservative party, the Croatian HDZ still fears that a new right-wing group led by the singer Miroslav Skoro could take one of the three MPs in parliament representing the diaspora and the Bosnian Croats.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Plenkovic has kept a few HDZ right-wingers on, and is trying to balance a liberal pro-EU course with support for far-right issues like Bleiburg.

The HDZ, moreover, still tends to view Bosnia as part of historically Croatian territory, taken away by foreign powers and by Yugoslavia.

Its founder, former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, once referred to Bosnia as “a colonial entity,” and, in line with Ustasa ideology, included the whole of present-day Bosnia within Croatia’s borders, even if, unlike the Ustasa, he did recognise the Bosniaks as a separate people.

Instead of trying to create a state that included over 3 million Bosniaks and 2 million Serbs – as the NDH attempted to do in the 1940s – Tudjman was more interested in Croat-dominated, or supposedly dominated, territories in Bosnia.

With his support, the Bosnian Croats briefly formed a statelet known as Herzeg Bosnia in the 1990s, which was a partial realisation of the Ustasa ideal of an ethnically cleansed state. Herzeg Bosnia thus became an important piece of the puzzle for a more ethnically “realistic” version of Greater Croatia.

This ideology is linked to the contested Bleiburg mass; the leading men in the PBV, like Vice Vukojević, are an embodiment of both Ustasa revisionism and the attempt to create Herzeg Bosna.

He headed a parliamentary commission in the 1990s that downplayed the crimes committed in Jasenovac, while also taking a direct part in the formation of Herzeg Bosna.

For years, both the Croatian and Bosnian HDZ parties included only Bosnian Croats at the Bleiburg commemoration, with Bosniaks represented only through members of Croatia’s Muslim community. Although the main Bosniak in Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, has anti-communist roots, Bosniak representation from Bosnia was not welcome, as it did not fit the narrative of Croat-Bosniak conflict.

But, since the commemoration of Bleiburg in Croatia would complicate Plenkovic’s options when it comes to forming a new coalition government with centrist parties after the election, it was easier to export the explosive commemoration to Bosnia – while still reaping the benefits.

The idea clearly was to mobilise the Bosnian Croats before the July elections – and try again to prove how everyone, from the World Jewish Congress to Bosniak and Serbian officials to anti-fascist groups, are against the Croats.

Time will tell how much another international incidents of Croatia’s own making will both further tarnish the country’s reputation, and worsen relations with Bosnia.

Sven Milekic is a PhD candidate at Maynooth University, funded by the Irish Research Council under the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Programme.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.

This article was written as part of the regional program “Western Balkans: Understanding and Preventing Anti-Western Influence,” implemented by the International Republican Institute in Sarajevo.

The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of IRI.