- Title: Sarajevo protests Mass for slain Nazi allies with march for their victims
- Date: 16th May 2020
- Summary: RED BANNER SPREAD BETWEEN TWO BUILDINGS, READING (Bosnian): "...I am also an antifascist!" THE MEMORIAL 'ETERNAL FIRE' - A MEMORIAL TO THE MILITARY AND CIVILIAN VICTIMS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN SARAJEVO THREE POLICEMEN WITH FACE MASKS ANTI-RIOT POLICE STANDING BEHIND A FENCE BLACK VAN DRIVING INTO CHURCH PERIMETER, POLICEMAN MOVING THE RIOT CONTROL FENCE TO LET THE VEHIC
- Embargoed: 30th May 2020 16:28
- Keywords: Bosnia Croatian Nazi Sarajevo Second World War WWII World War Two church protest soldiers
- Location: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
- City: SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
- Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace
- Reuters ID: LVA003CE6JX2X
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Thousands marched through Sarajevo on Saturday (May 16) to commemorate victims of the Ustasa regime, a puppet state founded by Croat fascists and allied to Nazi Germany, and to oppose a Catholic Mass held in the city for Ustasa and their families, slain at the end of World War Two.
The Mass is part of annual commemorations that Croatia introduced three decades ago for the tens of thousands of Croatian and Bosnian Ustasa members and their supporters, who were reportedly killed by the partisans of Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito at the end of the war.
The commemorations usually take place in the Austrian village of Bleiburg, on the border with Slovenia, but this year Austrian authorities cancelled the planned open air Mass due to bans on large gatherings and travel restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Croatian and Bosnian Bishops' Conferences then announced they would hold the Mass in Sarajevo instead, in a move which outraged anti-fascist and Jewish groups who said it would honour a regime that killed more than 10,000 Sarajevans, most of them Jews.
Saturday's protest in Sarajevo stretched from the site in the city where Ustasa militias hanged 55 local anti-fascists in spring 1945 to the central memorial for the city's World War Two liberators, Tito's partisans.
As a cellist played, the crowd started gathering and many people were seen wearing protective masks and t-shirts with five-pointed red stars, symbols of the anti-fascist forces from World War Two led by the communist party.
Meanwhile, police forces sealed off the area around the Sarajevo landmark Catholic Cathedral, where Bosnian Archbishop Cardinal Vinko Puljic served the mass to the audience of several dozen of chosen Croat dignitaries and priests.
The mass was part of the memorial that Croatia introduced three decades ago in the Austrian village of Bleiburg for tens of thousands of members and supporters of the Nazi puppet Ustasa regime, who were reportedly killed by the partisans of Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito.
The commemorations usually take place in the Austrian village of Bleiburg, but this year Austrian authorities cancelled the planned open air Mass because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Production: Dado Ruvic, Branko Filipovic, Hanna Rantala, Fedja Grulovic, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Gabriela Boccaccio ) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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