Austria has banned the annual Sabbath of Croatian Nazis, allowing commemorations without symbols
Deputies of the Austrian Parliament voted to ban the traditional Ustasha gathering in Bleiburg in memory of the mass execution of Croatian Nazis by Yugoslav partisans.
The people's representatives did this after they approved a report from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, according to which the ban on Ustashe gatherings was in accordance with the law.
As a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, earlier an expert group formed under the Austrian Ministry of Internal Affairs analyzed the legal aspects, as well as the event itself, which was assessed as the largest gathering of neo-Nazis in Europe. The department's report notes that every year Ustashe symbols were present in Bleiburg, that is, the glorification of Nazism, which is a violation of Austrian law.
Austrian People's Party MP Wolfgang Gerst expressed satisfaction that all five parliamentary parties accepted the Interior Ministry's report. MP from the Social Democratic Party Sabina Schach noted that the party has long raised the issue of banning the Ustasha gathering in Bleiburg, since it is the largest gathering of neo-Nazis and fascists in Europe, and that there are no more excuses for not banning this gathering.
Local authorities have already decided to dismantle the memorial to the Ustashes shot by partisans on the Loibash Field due to the presence of Nazi symbols on it.
At the same time, deputies allowed “neutral” commemoration of those executed (without symbols), as well as church events in memory of them.
In May 1945, thousands of collaborators of the Third Reich - the Croatian Ustashes and the Slovenian Domobrans who joined them - fled to Austria in the hope of surrendering to the British. However, the British command did not accept them and handed them over to the Yugoslav partisans, who, remembering the savage cruelty of the Ustasha, shot thousands of them without trial in the vicinity of the Austrian Bleiburg and the Slovenian Tezno.
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