The Serb National Council (SNV) on Monday paid tribute to the Serbs killed by pro-Nazi Ustasha forces in a church in Glina, about 70 kilometres south of Zagreb, on 29 July 1941.

The Serb Orthodox church was burnt down and on its site a museum and a sculpture were erected in 1969. A monument, bearing the names of 1,564 victims, was completed in 1995 but was destroyed after the Croatian military operation Storm that same year during the war of independence and the museum was converted into a community centre.

SNV president Boris Milosevic said that a memorial function and archive material should be restored to the present building so that the crimes committed would not be forgotten. Speaking of the victims, he said that they came to the church believing that they would be converted to Catholicism and were not aware that they would be massacred.

MP Milorad Pupovac of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) said that this was one of the worst atrocities committed by the genocidal Ustasha regime. He wondered if any of the Catholic clergy had ever paid their respects in the place where once an altar had stood and if anyone thought of regarding, if not declaring, this site as a place of reverence.

Pupovac called for paying tribute to all the victims, both Croats and Serbs, who had perished both in World War II and in the 1991-1995 war, which he said had broken out “because of bad blood.” He said that the Serbs who had committed war crimes against Croats in 1991 and 1992 because of what happened to the Serbs of Glina in 1941 “committed a grave sin towards the people killed in this place. And it is also a grave sin for all those who think that the Serbs who remained here after Operation Storm should be victims.”