Thousands protest far-right surge in Croatia following incidents

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) – Thousands of people on Sunday joined protest marches in Croatia against a surging far right following a spate of incidents that have fueled both ethnic and political tensions in the European Union country.

Gatherings dubbed “United against fascism” were organized in four major cities, including the capital, Zagreb. The crowd chanted “we are all antifascists!” as they pledged to counter what they described as a bid by right-wing groups to spread fear and silence opponents.

Protesters demanded also that the authorities curb hard right groups and their frequent use of pro-fascist symbols relating to Croatia’s World War II pro-Nazi puppet state, which ran concentration camps where tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and antifascist Croats were executed.

A protest declaration stated that “we will not agree to treating national minorities as a provocation and to an idea of patriotism that draws its symbols from the darkest episode of our history.”

“All that has been happening around us is very dangerous,” journalist Maja Sever told participants at the Zagreb rally. “You have shown you will not be quiet but that we will fight for a democratic society.”

Groups of young men wearing black clothes showed up in counter-gatherings in the northwestern port city of Rijeka and the central coastal town of Zadar, where they shouted insults and threw firecrackers and red paint at the protesters, according to the HRT public broadcaster.

Extremist incidents in November targeted ethnic Serb cultural events in the capital Zagreb and in the coastal city of Split, sparking fears of ethnic violence decades after a Serb-Croat war in 1991-95.

Extremists also have turned against liberal groups or politicians, as well as foreign workers in Croatia. They often use the “For the homeland – Ready!” salute of the Nazi-era puppet Ustasha regime that ran Croatia during World War II.

“We have groups throwing smoke bombs and firecrackers and threatening violence, raising their right hand in the air and shouting ‘For the homeland – Ready,'” Iva Davorija, an organizer of the march in Zadar, told HRT public broadcaster. “They are doing this freely.”

Croatia’s tilt to the right first started after the governing conservatives of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic formed a coalition with a far-right party after last year’s parliamentary election, leaving an ethnic Serb party outside the government for the first time in years.

The trend, however, culminated with a mass concert in July of a right-wing singer whose use of the World War II slogan in one of his most popular songs has been a source of controversy and divisions for years. Singer Marko Perkovic – whose stage name is Thompson after a U.S.-made machine gun – has been banned from some European cities but remains hugely popular in Croatia.

Prime Minister Plenkovic has denied turning a blind eye to spikes in far-right extremism and neo-fascist hate speech. He, in turn, has accused his leftist opponents of blowing the problem out of proportion and thus deepening the divisions.

Croatia was part of the Communist-run Yugoslavia after World War II. But the federation broke up in a series of nationalist wars in the 1990s. In Croatia, minority Serbs rebelled against the split and took control over swaths of Croatia’s territory with an aim to join Serbia. More than 10,000 people died in the conflict.

Croatia joined the EU in 2013 after becoming a member of NATO four years earlier.