Croatia has declared three top Montenegrin government officials persona non grata amid a diplomatic row over a death camp operated by the pro-Nazi Croatian government during World War II.
The Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday told neighbouring Montenegro that Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Becic, parliamentary speaker Andrija Mandic and parliamentarian Milan Knezevic were unwelcome in the European Union country owing to “systematic actions to disrupt good neighbourly relations”.
The ban comes weeks after the three officials led the passage of a declaration in Montenegro’s Parliament stating that “genocide” had been committed in the Jasenovac prison camp.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-Nazi Croats were killed from 1941 to 1945 at Jasenovac, which was run by the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.
Zagreb had described the Montenegrin declaration as “unacceptable, inappropriate and unnecessary” and having the intention “not to build a culture of remembrance” but to exploit the “memory of the victims of Jasenovac for short-term political goals”.
In recent years, Croatia has seen a growing tolerance for its pro-Nazi past, and critics accuse authorities of failing to sanction the use of Ustasha symbols.
Bitter legacy
The legacy of World War II still provokes bitter arguments across much of the Balkans.
After that war, Croatia became part of Communist-run Yugoslavia together with several other Balkan nations, including Montenegro. Yugoslavia broke up in a war in the 1990s.
The Jasenovac camp came back into focus after Montenegro supported a United Nations resolution commemorating the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, in which Serb forces slaughtered 8,000 Bosniak Muslims.
That resolution angered Serbia, a country that holds considerable sway in Montenegro, where about a third of the population of 620,000 people declare themselves as ethnic Serbs.
The three pro-Serb, pro-Russian Montenegrin officials banned by Croatia subsequently demanded that parliament also pass a declaration condemning the Jasenovac concentration camp.
“Their actions cannot in any way be considered as well-intentioned and in good neighbourly spirit, nor is it in line with Montenegro’s path toward [membership] in the European Union,” Croatia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Montenegro is seeking entry into the EU after joining NATO in 2017 in defiance of Russia and Serbia.
But this week, the country reshuffled its pro-EU government to include pro-Serb and pro-Russia parties, sparking US concerns.
