54TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLEIBURG TRAGEDY MARKED

BLEIBURG, May 16 (Hina) - Wreaths were laid and a mass served by a monument on Bleiburg field in Austria on Sunday to mark the 54th anniversary of the suffering of Croats killed on Bleiburg and during the Way of the Cross marches towards the end of World War Two. The marking was attended by high-ranking Croatian parliament and government officials, and several thousand faithful from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria, and other European countries populated by the Croat minority. After a minute of silence and Croatia's national anthem, Vice Vukojevic, a Croatian parliament president's envoy and chairman of a council in charge of marking the remembrance day for Bleiburg and Way of the Cross, spoke about the Bleiburg tragedy. According to Vukojevic, the Yugoslav communist authorities, after the crimes committed in the past, for 45 years continued to kill the Bleiburg victims a second time by imposing public oblivion over their fate. But the Croatian people has not forgotten them, he pointed out, adding that after 1990 and the creation of independent Croatia, the doors were opened to historical truth and it became possible to pay the victims full homage. "The path to that truth and the respect of the victims is President Tudjman's project. The project's aim is to establish the number of victims of and after WW2," Vukojevic said. He also reminded of the centuries in Croatian history full of victims, and of the tragedy of Croatian suffering in the 20th century, particularly during WW2 and its immediate aftermath. "In the last 900 years, Croats fought in different uniforms, often among themselves. That history testifies to how difficult it is for a people which dresses its army in foreign uniforms. Likewise, the Homeland War is proof that the Croatian people was capable of creating an independent Croatian state only in one, Croatian uniform," Vukojevic said. He stressed that contemporary Croatian society and state must finally take an unambiguous stand regarding all Croatian victims. "Today, when access is possible to historical sources, we must bury the crime mythology on which Yugoslavia's historiography, the Jasenovac myth, and a series of other myths were founded and which created a racist matrix on the genocidal in the Croatian people. That mythology can only be buried by acknowledging the facts," Vukojevic said. A special mass was served by Sebastijan Golenic, parish priest of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Klagenfurt. At the end of WW2, Croatian soldiers, fearing retaliation by the then Yugoslav army, decided to surrender to the Allies (English) in Austria. Their families and numerous civilians followed them. However, according to previous arrangements with the Partisans, the Allies handed them over to the Partisans on the Bleiburg field on May 14 and 15, 1945. The exodus included about some 500,000 Croatian soldiers and civilians, many of whom were killed on Bleiburg on May 14 and 15, 1945, making it one of the gravest tragedies of the Croatian people in this century. According to data collected by a commission whose task was to establish the number of victims of WW2 and its immediate aftermath, in the second half of May 1945 the Yugoslav army returned columns of over 200,000 captured Croats from the Austrian border to the then Yugoslavia. Many of them died of exhaustion or were killed on the long marches, later called the Way of the Cross. Today, wreaths were laid by Vukojevic on behalf of the Croatian parliament, Construction Minister Marko Sirac and Croatian Veterans' Minister Juraj Njavro on behalf of the government, Assistant Defence Minister Miljenko Galic on behalf of the Defence Ministry, by Croatia's Ambassador to Austria Ivan Ilic, and Bosnian Croat representatives. (hina) ha jn