SARAJEVO – Thousands of Bosnians demonstrated Saturday against a Catholic Mass commemorating Croatian Nazi-allied soldiers and civilians killed by partisan forces at the end of World War II.
The Mass in Sarajevo was a replacement for a controversial annual gathering usually held in Bleiburg, Austria, which was canceled due to restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Another small replacement event took place Saturday at a cemetery in Zagreb, Croatia. The decision to hold the Mass in Sarajevo provoked a strong public backlash in a country where the memory of ethnic war in the 1990s is still fresh.
It was condemned by Bosnia’s Serbian Orthodox Church, the Jewish and Muslim communities and several antifascist organizations.