The Croatian Antifascist League and the Serb National Council (SNV) commemorated on Friday in Glina 1,564 Serbs from the region of Banija, victims of Ustasha atrocities in 1941, noting that crimes should be commemorated but that victims must not be politicised.

The commemoration of the 81st anniversary of one of the Ustasha atrocities was held at what was once a Serb Orthodox church in Glina, near a former memorial museum.

One should remember crimes and the ideas that led to them while doing everything possible to enable reconciliation, SNV president Milorad Pupovac said, calling for opposing undignified treatment of victims, disregard for moral values and fomenting of hate among young people.

“Some do not acknowledge the crime that happened here, in the Church of the Theotokos as well as in other places, and we understand acknowledgement as an act of condemnation of the crimes and as distancing from such ideas and acts,” Pupovac said.

That acknowledgement should come from the Croatian side at Glina, as well as from the Serb side in some other places, he said.

“We should distance ourselves from those who committed crimes ‘in our name’,” Pupovac said.

Vesna Teršelič, vice-president of the Antifascist League, recalled that several hundred Serb boys and men were set on fire in the Church of the Theotokos in Glina, which used to be at a site near what today is the Croatian House, once a memorial museum that was renamed in 1995.

“We have been calling for the restoration of the memorial museum for more than ten years, so far without success, as well as for the restoration of the memorial plaque that was removed. It is time to build a culture of remembrance for all victims,” she said.

This is why before the commemoration for the WWII Serb victims, representatives of the event’s organisers and Sisak-Moslavina County also paid tribute to Croat civilian and military victims of the 1991-95 Homeland War at a memorial in Glina.

The commemoration was also addressed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s envoy Veran Matić, who called for a consensus on the commemoration of victims, noting that prolonging disputes only wasted time that could be used for improving people’s quality of life.

“I pray that we stop abusing the victims,” Matić said, asking if the search for around 2,000 people gone missing in the war could not be conducted in the atmosphere of general cooperation and empathy as existed between Croatian and Serbian institutions during the search in Belgrade for Matej Periš, a young man from Split who went missing in the Serbian capital in late 2021 and was later found dead.