SABAH issued the statement on Tuesday to protest against such commemorations of Croats killed in the Bleiburg field, Austria, and on death marches back to Yugoslavia, known as the Way of the Cross, towards the end of the Second World War. It said such commemorations did not honour but politically manipulated the victims.
Asked by Hina to name those individuals, associations and institutions, SABAH president Kresimir Piskulic declined to answer. He said through his secretary that the public knew who they were and that if necessary he would give the names.
In the statement, SABAH said that after 1945 Croatian and Yugoslav authorities made a big mistake by unnecessarily keeping silent about the events at Bleiburg and the death marches. SABAH said it felt obliged to correct that mistake by establishing the truth as it had done about the victims of Jasenovac, a Croatian WWII death camp.
The statement said only the truth could help overcome the traumas left behind by Bleiburg and Jasenovac, and that SABAH had asked the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts to research the events at Bleiburg. It added that not one victim should be forgotten.
SABAH thanked President Stjepan Mesic and all institutions which at the recent 60th anniversary of victory over fascism acknowledged the WWII struggle against Nazism and fascism. It also welcomed the parliamentary Declaration on Antifascism, and applauded Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's address during the April commemoration of the breakout of inmates from Jasenovac in which he paid respects to the victims of Ustasha crimes.
SABAH concluded by saying that it is unacceptable to link the 1990s war of independence with the 1941-5 Nazi-style Independent State of Croatia (NDH).