2025 is a significant year for Croatian history, suffering, plights for freedom, achievements, stumbling blocks … It is the year Croatia marks the 1100^th Anniversary of the crowning (i.e. elevating as KIng by Pope John X in the Vatican) in 925 as the First King of Croatian Pannonia and Dalmatia, to which regions, Slavonia was added, King Tomislav, having from 910 ruled as Duke. This Croatian state grew into a powerful military force under King Tomislav in Europe (reigned c. 910–928). Croatia retained its independence under native Croatian kings until 1102, when the crown passed into the hands of the Hungarian dynasty, remaining a distinct entity within the Kingdom of Hungary; maintained its own distinct legal and political institutions. Croatia became in 1527 part of the Habsburg Monarchy, later Austria-Hungary Empire from 1804 and although not an independent kingdom or state Croatia retained its Croatian identity and plights for independence and freedom throughout the said centuries since 1102,

2025 is the year that marks the 107^th Anniversary of Croatia being forced immediately after the end of World War One into the Serb-led Kingdom that eventually became known as Kingdom of Yugoslavia that crumbled in 1941, and Croatia declared itself independent of any shape or form of Yugoslavia.

It is the year of the 80^th Anniversary of Communist Yugoslavia genocide against Croats known as the Bleiburg Massacres, Operation Slaughterhouse and Way of the Cross, mass murders and purges. It is the year that the communist operatives celebrate the 80^th anniversary of World War Two victory under the pretence of having brought freedom to Croatia despite their goal to eliminate from Croatia as many Croatian patriots as possible! There was no freedom for Croatia then, just a terrible continuance of Yugoslavia, this time communist as opposed to the previous monarchy.

It is the year that marks 30^th Anniversary of military Operation Storm that in August 1995 liberated Serb-occupied areas of Croatia and ended the military engagement in Croatian Homeland War (the remainder of Croatian occupied territory was liberated via peaceful negotiations that concluded in 1998).

Above is a rather simple way of portraying in main points Croatia’s thousand-year plight and fight for freedom, but it does portray a strong and compelling frame. Acknowledging the deplorable fact that by celebrating communism people of that political past or close association with it use such celebrations to justify communist crimes, it is beyond comprehension to see a country like Croatia, that seceded from communism (communism Yugoslavia) (1991) with 93.24% votes at referendum, shed rivers of blood and sustained untold destruction during its war of defence, tolerates the public and official marking of the 80^th Anniversary of communist victory of 8 May 1945. They pay tribute to liberation and yet they immediately engaged in mass murders and purges of Croats, whom they supposedly liberated! Marking the 80^th Anniversary of Bleiburg Massacres, victims of communist crimes, has not yet been elevated to official status in Croatia.

In the history of authoritarian regimes, purges have been a common tool rulers used to maintain control by removing perceived threats. In the case of Croatia people rejecting and opposing communist Yugoslavia were perceived as threats and dealt with brutally. Mass murders, political assassinations, and imprisonment. One of the most notorious episodes of purges of Croats took place during Josip Broz Tito’s reign of communist terror and oppression. That is a historical fact but not recognised or acknowledged by the former communists and their flock, that has taken up positions of power particularly in the past couple of decades.

For eight decades now the world’s public has been exposed to the idea and public pursuits that the Holocaust should be thought of as the worst case of genocide in the modern era. The United States of America, for example, strongly advocated for the inclusion of group political murders within the genocide categories. In contrast, the Soviet Union, having been itself engaged in purges of the political opposition when the convention was being discussed, vehemently opposed this inclusion (UN Assembly 1948). Communist Yugoslavia did the same as Soviet Union. Ultimately, political groups were excluded from the definition during the drafting process, to encourage more states to become parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (LeBlanc L.J. 1988/ “The United Nations Genocide Convention and Political Groups: Should the United States Propose an Amendment.” Yale Journal of International Law 13 (2): 268–295.).

By falsifying World War Two history, especially as far as the number of victims supposedly killed under the World War Two Independent Croatia Ustashi regime, Tito’s communist Yugoslavia ensured that Croatia was listed as one of the European countries where the Holocaust occurred in all its terrible contents. That way purposefully omitting to place Serbia in that spot even though Serbia was one of the first countries in Europe in 1942 to declare itself “Jew free” (Judenfrei) by assisting the Nazi occupier in exterminating some 94% of its Jewish population. The motives behind such a strategy employed and devised by the communist Yugoslavia were clear – the Yugoslav Communists wanted to gain the maximum possible value of war reparations from Germany after their long and bloody conflict to retain Yugoslavia. While this financial motive was significant, a symbolic motive was also important. Communist Yugoslavia would rely on a series of myths of ‘anti-Fascist liberation’ to strengthen its legitimacy (DB MacDonald, Balkan Holocausts).      

In the past 80 years, and particularly in the past 30, nations have fought tugs of war over the official definition of the word “genocide” itself – which mentions only national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. Look at the disagreements between countries whether the 1945 Bleiburg Massacres, Operation Slaughterhouse, the Way of the Cross murder of several hundred thousand anti-communist Croats, including women and children, and fighters for Croatian independence, communist purges, constitute genocide. Look at disagreements in that 1990’s Serb-led aggression against Croatia, marked by ethnic cleansing and mass murders, constitutes genocide. Look at the disagreements on national levels that the Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995) massacre of Muslim men by Serb aggressor constitutes genocide even though the International Court of Justice has ruled it so in 2014. Look at the incessant international tussle over whether the 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of millions of Armenians “counts” as genocide… The term genocide obviously needs reappraising, and the world needs a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. Otherwise slaughter under the pretence of good political goals for a country will continue as “justified” and untouchable. When it comes to genocide all human beings should stand on equal footing, regardless of their varied political goals or political groupings.

The points of comparison between Josip Broz Tito (communist Yugoslavia) Joseph Stalin (communist Russia) and Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany), Nazism and Communism, are evidently too many to ignore. It is just somehow difficult for a large part of the world to accept that and move forward with justice for all. Both were dictatorships that killed vast numbers of people on the European continent. Both chewed up the lives of human beings in the name of a transformative vision of Utopia. Both destroyed their countries and societies, as well as vast numbers of people inside and outside their own states. Both — in the end — were génocidaires.

In any recounting of the horrific deeds of Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito the list is long, painful to recite, and rife with incalculable suffering and death. To date some 2000 mass graves filled with the remains of victims of communist crimes across Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have been unearthed since independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Facts of history that are emerging show that Tito replicated in Yugoslavia Joseph Stalin’s cruelty and purges despite putting on a public face of having broken away from Stalin in 1948. Tito became the dictator of Yugoslavia and was shockingly ruthless when it came to killing his people. Tito has been placed in the category of most cruel, evil men in the 20th century who practiced and ordered ‘State murder’ on large scales. He has made the “list” of mass murderers with the likes of Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, King Leopold II, Pol Pot … and even if one were to delve into credible and independent historical research results on “top 100” mass murderers of the 20^th century one will not come across the name of Ante Pavelic, the Ustasha regime Head of the WWII Independent State of Croatia, despite the fact that he had obliged the occupying Nazi Germany with the so-called “Race Laws” that saw Jews in particular, perish. No crime against humanity, small or large, can ever be justified. And yet, Tito appears still as a “popular guy” of history among the uninformed and politically left, liberal and stubborn world and it is difficult to ascertain whether this is so because some Allied forces served to him, for slaughter, hundreds of thousands of Croats seeking asylum in the West in 1945 onwards (e.g. the Bleiburg Massacres).

Josip Broz Tito clearly has his place among history’s most murderous ideologues. But through his direct order, hundreds of thousands of patriotic Croats died by execution, dumped alive into pits, and more perished in camps such as Jasenovac camp that remained used by communist Yugoslavia several years after 1945 (confirmed by recent historical research of historic documents) and the victims murdered there pinned onto the numbers killed there while it was a so-called concentration camp run by the Ustashi regime of the WWII Independent State of Croatia. A further example of similar cover up of communist crimes is in the significant landmark of Dubrovnik, Fort Lovrijenac/Lawrence which was first turned into a prison by the Italian occupier then in September 1943 taken over by the Ustashi only to turn into hell from October 1944 when communist partisans took over Dubrovnik. According to testimonies of those that escaped sure death there in one impossible way or another, Lovrijenac was then turned into killing chambers, prison cells, and fields where the communists imprisoned Croatian Home Guard soldiers and repeated executed cell by cell until the war’s end. After the war ended the communists covered up their takeover of Lovrijenac Fort prison, ripped the prison cells away, renovated Fort Lovrijenac and stuck a plaque on its walls that, there, was a terrible prison of their war enemy! Millions more left or fled Croatia and other Yugoslav states in the two decades after the end of World War Two, due to Tito’s ill-conceived and often purposely cruel policies that, via their subtle and overt implantation using cruelty, denied many a patriot Croats the right to work, the right to practice their religion …

 Even though the Second World War ended 80 years ago, ushering in communist Yugoslavia,  and the Croatian Homeland War ended 30 years ago, ushering in independent, democratic Croatia, the dichotomies inherent in the act of remembering the WWII conflict still stigmatises people as either communist or fascist. Being a patriot in Croatia is labeled as being a fascist by those who belonged to or stem from the communist Yugoslavia regime! There is a perpetual reproduction of an atmosphere of permanent struggle in Croatia. Who is more important, as it were, in achieving a free and independent Croatia: the former communists or the forces that successfully fought for independence in the 1990’s .Commemorating the past serves not only as a means to remember victims, but it also maintains a certain system of values.  Croatia as not yet succeeded in cementing into its national identity the values of the 1990’s Homeland War. It has not yet rid itself of communist Yugoslavia values! The guilt for this obviously goes to the former communists who evidently find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept their responsibilities in officially condemning communist crimes of former Yugoslavia. History has proven that communists did not liberate Croats and Croatia in 1945. A new prison was created for them with the dawn of communist Yugoslavia. Why then attend any event that pretends communists and Josip Broz Tito liberated Croatia! It is an affront to humanity, let alone Croatian people and their millennial struggles for freedom. Ina Vukic