EURACTIV: Croatia president quits state ceremony in protest at Nazi-era salute

“But one of the participants, who was in line to lay the wreath before me, was dressed in clothes with the emblem ‘For the homeland ready’, which is something I do not want to be a part of,” Milanovic said.

‘For the homeland ready’ is a salute used by the Ustasha movement which ruled Croatia during World War Two, when the country was formally allied with the Nazis and brutally persecuted Jews, Serbs and anti-fascists. [...]

Croatia, which became independent in 1991 and joined the EU in July 2013, has paid lip service to anti-fascism but has been ambivalent about its fascist past. The legacy of the country’s Ustasha regime, as well as of the subsequent 45 years of communism, is a topic that sharply divides the Croatian society to this day.

read the article

The Guardian: Croatian police use violence to push back migrants, says president

In an interview with Swiss television, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović appeared to admit the pushbacks were taking place. She denied they were illegal and also admitted that police used force when doing so.

“I have spoken with the interior minister, the chief of police, and officers on the ground and they assured me they have not been using excessive force,” said Grabar-Kitarović, according to reports of the interview. “Of course, a little bit of force is needed when doing pushbacks.” [...]

Last year in the Bosnian border towns of Velika Kladuša and Bihać the Guardian spoke to dozens of men who said they had been subjected to violence at the hands of Croatian police. Often they were apprehended deep inside Croatian territory and driven back to the border. Women and children generally said they had not been physically assaulted, though there were some exceptions. Many said police had destroyed their telephones and stoleb money before driving them back to the Bosnia-Croatia border and dumping them on the other side. [...]

In a statement last year, the Croatian interior ministry accused the migrants of carrying weapons and inflicting injuries on themselves. The ministry said the Croatian police force always respected the “fundamental rights and dignity of migrants”. Human Rights Watch said that in a meeting in May with the interior ministry, the secretary of state said migrants had fabricated claims of violence and suggested activists were impersonating Croatian police officers.

read the article

UnHerd: Is Croatia a nation of Eurosceptics?

The union Croatia finally joined – after this protracted and fraught negotiation process – was not what it had been. The EU was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, meaning the economic advantages Croatians were promised were not forthcoming. For instance the shipbuilding industry, in private hands, has been steadily sinking. The closure of Uljanik seems to be the last nail in the coffin. “Croatia no longer has a shipbuilding industry as of today,” commented the President of the Adriatic Union Boris Cerovac on the news. “If Uljanik is gone, so is shipbuilding.” [...]

Many say they will abstain because they don’t like the idea of casting a vote that would enable corrupt and incompetent elites to enjoy astronomical wages and the high life in Brussels. In the latest Eurobarometer polls (held last month), a mere 17% said they’ll cast a ballot, compared to an EU average of 35%. The poll also suggested that, if a referendum on leaving the EU were to be held tomorrow, only 52% of Croats would vote to remain. 

In other European nations – France, Sweden, Italy – the rise of Euroscepticism has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of far-Right parties; in Croatia, the far-Right has been weak and poorly organised. Its agenda focuses on primitive racism aimed at Serbs and nostalgia for the WWII-era, ultranationalist Ustashe state. Unusually, for a country along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, anti-immigrant sentiment isn’t widespread. [...]

And the UK was – is – a key player in the EU, whereas Croatia is the most recent country to become a member. Located on the fringe of the Union, and hometo few citizens who understand what it is or does, Croatia could easily be submerged by the rising tide of Euroscepticism. And this week’s election will tell us whether this rising tide could usher in a stronger, smarter far-Right.

read the article

Jakub Marian: Nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments per capita by region in Europe

The map below shows the number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments (which includes hotels, holiday cottages, camping grounds, etc.) in a region divided by the number of people living in that region. In other words, it is a kind of tourists-to-residents ratio, including tourists from other parts of the same region. The map is based on data provided by Eurostat. There are no data for the UK, for some reason.

The map does not really do justice to some of the regions above the “10+” cut-off point. There are five regions with more than 50 nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments per capita (which means, essentially, that more than 50/365 ≈ 14% of their population are tourists, barring “intra-regional” tourism):

read the article and see the map

Political Critique: Where does equality start?

It is the directive concerning unfair commercial practices, which, makes it obligatory to place the product’s ingredients on the label. A product with the same name, but not always the same ingredients, can be sold in different countries but only under the condition that it is properly labelled. Meglena Kuneva, the Bulgarian Commissioner for Consumer Protection from 2007 to 2010, admitted that using well-known brands for selling low-quality products could mislead the consumers, but in her opinion, such situations should be addressed individually by state legislatures or offices for consumer protection. [...]

Politicians in the Czech Republic, the most Eurosceptic of V4 societies, are particularly eager to attack the EU on the issue of food quality. The state parliament has debated this problem on several occasions. In November 2016, Simeon Karamazov (conservative Civic Democratic Party) argued that the EU should focus on the problems of its citizens, and not foreigners, as it did during the refugee crisis. In March 2017, Marek Černoch from the populist Úsvit (Dawn), stated that Western corporations view the Czech Republic as a second-class country and “the landfill of Europe”. [...]

The V4 countries’ complaints did not go unheard. Commissioner Jourova and her superior, Jean-Claude Juncker, admitted that the problem is real and the Commission must play a role in solving it. Both of them are treating this issue as a political challenge and an opportunity to improve the relations with the Visegrad Group after the battles about the relocation of refugees and the still ongoing conflict over the breach of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. [...]

Slovakians were the first to conduct research on this issue. In 2011 they compared food products sold in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe (including Poland). The analysis of the Slovak Association of Consumers (partly financed by the EU) uncovered differences not only between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ union, but also among countries in the East. For example, Coca-Cola sold in the West, in Poland and the Czech Republic contained natural sugar (sucrose) but in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania – isoglucose – a cheaper, poorer quality sweetener.

read the article

Quartz: The fastest shrinking countries on earth are in Eastern Europe

The top 10 countries with the fastest shrinking populations are all in Eastern Europe (with a few in Central and Northern Europe), according to UN projections. Bulgaria, Latvia, Moldova, Ukraine, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Hungary, are estimated to see their population shrink by 15% or more by 2050.

In Bulgaria, the world’s fastest shrinking country, the population is expected to drop from 7 million in 2017 to 5.4 million in 2050. In Latvia, the population is estimated to drop from 1.9 million in 2017 to 1.5 million, whilst in Moldova, the population is estimated to shrink from 4 million to 3.2 million. [...]

At least 11 countries have shrunk by more than 10% in terms of their population size since 1989, Sobotka says, including, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine. Latvia lost over a quarter of its population (27%), Lithuania 23%, Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina 21%. For instance, Bulgarian population contracted from 9 million in 1989 to 7.1 million in 2017. “That’s a massive population loss, unprecedented in peace times,” he explains.

Sobotka puts this population loss down to three factors—falling fertility rates, massive out-migration and relatively high mortality. “So whereas Western and southern European countries have attracted a lot of immigration which largely offset the effects of low fertility, the East is in a double bind, experiencing both out-migration and low birth rates,” he says.

read the article

Political Critique: European Union LGBT activism in the Western Balkans: a regional fight for rights

One of the fundamental conditions for a gay and lesbian movement to emerge in the region was the decriminalization of homosexuality, which first occurred in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina, in 1977, as part of wider legal reforms in Yugoslavia. [...]

The first notable LGBT activism in the region was organized in Ljubljana in April 1984, when the students’ cultural center, SKUC Forum, put on the Magnus Festival that included films, exhibitions of gay publishing, and lectures and discussions on gay culture. Later that year, a group called Magnus, which embraced both gay men and lesbian women, was constituted as a section of the SKUC Forum, becoming the first LGBT group in the region. [...]

“When the war started some women backed away for personal reasons, some because of the wartime conditions,” Pamukovic said. “It just wasn’t possible to pursue that kind of political activism.” [...]

EU mechanisms that have been used in the precession phase such as insistence on reformed legislation have also been accused of putting form before substance, as once a country has joined the EU the rights of LGBTI persons are left to the whims of its government.

read the article

openDemocracy: A mass for a fascist: a troubling history haunts modern Croatia

The persistent beating of rain on a particularly gloomy winter evening in Zagreb did not stop a crowd of devout churchgoers from gathering in front of the Basilica of the Heart of Jesus in the center of the Croatian capital. For twenty years, this towering Jesuit church has been the setting for an annual mass held on the anniversary of the death of Ante Pavelic, the head of one of the most murderous regimes in Europe during the Second World War. [...]

Openly “worshipping” Pavelic is not commonplace in modern Croatian society, and the use of paraphernalia and symbols associating to the Independent State of Croatia (cro. NDH), the official name of the WWII Nazi puppet state that he headed, is also punishable by law. This did not stop some of the men seen later sitting in the front pews of the church from sporting t-shirts bearing the recognizable letter “U”, the emblem of the fiercely nationalist Ustasa organization formed by Pavelic, and others gathered in front of the church from exchanging calendars depicting the image of Pavelic and a map of Greater Croatia. [...]

“The people who organize these masses do not do so without the knowledge, and possibly even the blessing, of the greater part of the Catholic church and the Church has never distanced itself from these groups,” says Markovina. “The more mainstream centre-right movements in the country, on the other hand, see these groups and their positive opinions of the NDH and Pavelic as a vehicle for their own survival on the scene, helping them legitimize their right-leaning political visions for the future.” [...]

As recently as this summer, a dispute over a plaque bearing this chant in the vicinity of the memorial site dedicated to the Jasenovac concentration camp threatened to bring down the ruling government coalition, with HDZ and other right-leaning parties refusing to openly condemn the existence of the plaque and its placement on a building close to the former concentration camp. Representatives of the Jewish and Serbian minority communities have refused to participate in the official commemoration for the victims of the camp, citing the government’s tolerance of fascist ideologies as an affront to the victims of the camp.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: My Europe: 'Foreigners can be racists too'

I can well imagine this homeless man standing with the 60,000 far-right extremists in Warsaw on Polish independence day, bellowing, "All Poland sings with us: Piss off, refugees,” or calling for a "white Europe of brother nations”. And as he stood there, demonstrating against Muslims and refugees – of whom there are hardly any in Poland – the far-right demonstrators would be looking at him with contempt because he's homeless. Simply being the object of discrimination doesn't make someone a better person. [...]

Things start getting particularly complicated when xenophobes flee abroad and meet other xenophobes. Is that too abstract? I can offer you a concrete example as an explanation: At a demonstration by the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement of Austria in Vienna, I heard the language spoken by my parents. Many Serbs and Croats were there to demonstrate against "Umvolkung” ("ethnicity inversion,” a term historically used by the far right to describe demographic change through immigration), "Islamification,” or whatever else it is they fantasize about. [...]

Serbs, Croats, Poles and other people from Central and Eastern Europe are now marching in Germany and Austria alongside the people who not long ago wanted them thrown out of the country. Ever since the war in Syria, we Balkan refugees suddenly find ourselves a little further up the pecking order. We're now deemed good enough to join in demonstrations against refugees. If that's what you call integration, it's worked beautifully. European nationalists have a very efficient cross-border network. The bogeymen they all have in common are refugees and Muslims – regardless of whether or not there actually are any in their respective countries.

read the article

Political Critique: From civil society to political society

Civil society is a great idea. In a perfectly liberal-democratic world, where parliament really represents society and its diversity, where politics (and the space between politics and business) is not always populated by the same people, and where political parties articulate interests and develop ideas (or at least take seriously what think tanks are telling them), instead of just serving citizens the daily pulp called ‘message of the day’ – that’s where civil society can do a lot. [...]

At the same time, in our world, we have been persuaded that politics is ugly (or maybe it has itself shown us its ugly face, so that no decent person ventures there?). Civil society was to be strictly non-political, and to keep politics at a healthy distance. This even makes sense, since back in the 90s in Poland we had an opportunity to have true politics, democratic elections and local authorities that were close to the people… And so we understood the division of labour. It was theoretically sound. [...]

I believe that, for years, the arrangement between politicians and civil society in Poland was clear. Politicians did not pick on the NGOs as long as NGOs did their work – work which the State did not want to do. And NGOs did not pick on the politicians too much, because it was clear that sooner or later, one would have to find ways to work together. This was convenient for politicians – the smaller organizations, which often financed their activities from money assigned by a given ministry or the local authority, could barely afford to wage a war with those in power. This characteristic division of labour has been in operation since the1990s, even though it finally turned out that the NGOs took upon themselves more than they should have.

Finally, the political situation that, as Romanians said, turned ‘toxic’, the disillusionment brought by lack of change, and the general dissatisfaction took over. How long can one ‘do’ debates, workshops, festivals, write reports? 25 years of work and very little to show for it. We in Poland have been given some little bits – participatory budgets, election lists quotas, Culture Pact. Some people amongst us got jobs in public institutions and in city halls. Great! Local authorities can learn a lot from activists, and vice versa. But this is all too little, considering the challenges. And when Law and Justice came to power even these little bits became unreliable, and the third sector – excluding the part deemed ‘proper’ – became no longer a nagging petitioner, but an open enemy of the authorities.

read the article 

Political Critique: Surprise Breakthrough for the Radical Left in Croatia

In the 27 years since the collapse of Yugoslavia, Croatia has endured a profound crisis of deindustrialisation, agricultural collapse and a dearth of social services. Two figures in particular show the results of the capitalist experiment. In 2015 real wages were 27% lower than in 1978. In 2013, meanwhile, GDP was 7,1% lower than in 1986. [...]

Despite this bleak reality, the devastation of capitalist Croatia is masked by very strong nationalism, which was forged in the 1991-5 war with Serbia. This is grounded in strong anti-communist rhetoric the ideological goal of which is to deny any positive reminiscence of socialist times, and prevent the advance of any kind of new radical ideas. In the last few years this has also been accompanied a resurgence of neo-fascist tendencies. In the town of Jasenovac, for example, the Croatian equivalent of Auschwitz, there is a notorious plaque on which the salutation, za dom spremni the Croatian version of Sieg Heil, is written. The current government has no intention of removing this, satisfying itself by nominally condemning “both totalitarianisms.” [...]

In the capital, the United Left Front (consisting of five mostly new or newer parties – covering wide ideological range, from left-liberal, green, social-democratic to anti-capitalist) reached a remarkable 7.64% in the elections for the City Assembly. It won some 24,000 votes and four seats, thereby surpassing the much-publicized Bridge party (4.93%) and Human Shield (4.53%). In city districts and local councils the united left front did even better than Zagreb, winning tenths of positions on all levels, with results which occasionally went up to 30%, sometimes beating both HDZ and SDP. [...]

Although at first glance these results might seem small they are the highest the radical left has been able to gain since 1990. Entering local political structures will mean not only greater media attention, but increased key financial and spatial resources thus paving the way for further growth. What is particularly significant is that the Croatian national government is currently undergoing a great crisis, only temporarily deferred until the end of the local elections (the run-off is in just ten days or so). Snap parliamentary elections could be held again in the autumn.

read the article 

Jakub Marian: ‘January’ in European languages

The English word “January” comes from Latin ianuarius, which means “of Janus” (Janus was an ancient Roman god of doorways, gates, transitions, beginnings, and endings). The corresponding names for the first month of the year in other European languages are also mostly derived from ianuarius (shown in red in the following map):

Other etymologies are as follows: Polish, Ukrainian, and Croatian words styczeń, січень, and siječanj trace back to Proto-Slavic *sěčьńь, which referred to a time when trees were being cut down. Czech leden is derived from led, “ice”, and Belarusian студзень comes from a Slavic root meaning “cold” (note, however, that Russian is also commonly spoken in Belarus). Lithuanian sausis comes from sausas, “dry”. Scottish Gaelic Faoilleach comes from faol (“wolf”) and teach (“burrow”).

Finally, the Turkish, Finnish, and Basque translations are not related to any word mentioned above, which should not surprising, since they are not Indo-European languages. Turkish ocak literally means “stove, fireplace”, likely referring to the fact that January is a cold month, during which one spends a lot of time at home, in front of a fireplace. Finnish tammikuu comes from tammi (“heart, core”) and kuu (“month”), as January the “centre” of winter. Basque urtarril comes from urte (“year”) and berri (“new”).

see the maps

Jacobin Magazine: Neoliberalism in the Rose Garden

During the campaign, most candidates advocated a “return to real social democracy” and the working class. Unfortunately, with the exception of Karolina Leaković — who called for a Jeremy Corbyn–like turn in the party, but won less than 1 percent in the first round of voting — these were empty populist slogans. And members, well aware that their party has become a social-democratic formation in name only, seemed to see the rhetoric as just that.

The SDP, though one of Croatia’s two major parties since Yugoslavia’s collapse, has largely spent its life in opposition. Only when the HDZ is experiencing great inter-party crisis has the SDP been able to take over.

Historically, the party, a successor to the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH), found support in the industrial centers and ethnically mixed regions. During the war in the 1990s, however, the party’s power collapsed, violence and deindustrialization eroding its former strongholds. [...]

Rightward-moving electoral alliances have been underpinned by a deep commitment to Third Way policies. During a recent stint in power, from 2011 to 2015, the party busied itself not with fighting for workers’ rights but with weakening labor law and pushing privatization. This experience turned the last remnants of the party’s working-class base against it. The party now relies on voters in the most economically developed regions and the most educated segments of the population.

read the article 

The Guardian: Croatia’s election is a warning about the return of nationalism to the Balkans​

On Sunday, Croats went to the polls in a snap election, returning the ruling nationalist party HDZ as the biggest party, but changing nothing. Just 53% of all Croats voted: the likely outcome is a coalition of the same old “centrist” parties – nationalists and social democrats. On the face of it, the country faces the same old problems. Unemployment at 16%, rising to 40% among the young; debt at 90% of GDP; the coast dependent on tourism, the interior sending migrant workers to Germany and Austria by the coach load.

What’s new is the return of nationalism. By 2013, Croatia’s conservative nationalist politicians had made enough liberal noises to convince Brussels they could meet the basic criteria for EU membership. Since then, they’ve been sucked into the surge of nationalist rivalry that’s gripped the Balkans. Just across the mountains lies Republika Srpska – the Serb enclave created in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Dayton Agreement in 1995, after a bitter civil war. Republika Srpska’s leaders are threatening to hold a referendum on independence, which would blow up the deal that has brought peace to the region for 20 years. [...]

If the EU is to live up to the hope and trust placed in it by young people in the Balkans, it needs to start by being firm with the incoming Croatian government. All cultural nods and winks towards the fascist regime in the second world war must go. Ultimately, the EU must be prepared – as it has threatened with Poland and Hungary but not done – to trigger the Article 7 processes that can see member countries warned over inadequate rule of law, and ultimately be suspended from membership, or see their voting rights curtailed.

read the article 

Slate: Trump’s Wall? Also Terrible for Animals, Conservation, and Scientific Collaboration

Bears and humans have been in conflict in Texas since, well, pretty much as long as we’ve kept track. By the time the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted the first organized survey of Texas mammals in the 1890s, black bears were in decline after having been persecuted for more than half a century. They were trapped, poisoned, hunted, and pushed out of their habitat by development and agriculture. By the mid-20th century, they were nearly extirpated throughout West Texas. [...]

By militarizing the border—building walls and fences, Border Patrol outposts, spotlights and service roads and clearing vegetation—we sever the connections that wildlife relies on. We cut animals off from habitats, resources, and breeding partners and block migration routes, just as climate change and habitat loss makes every bit of land ever more important. We know how bad this kind of fragmentation is ecologically—scientists have seen the consequences of constructed barriers on farms, ranches, and national parks, as well as across international borders in Europe and Central Asia. They also know that once the barriers are built, it becomes even harder for conservationists to work to protect animals just when they need it the most. [...]

In order to get a better sense of the problem, we can look to Europe, where there are roughly 18,000 miles of border fences and walls, many hundreds of which have gone up just since the start of the refugee crisis last year. In Slovenia, for example, new security fences erected late last year cut through range of one of Europe’s largest populations of gray wolves, isolating packs on either side of the Slovenia-Croatia border. The same fence goes through the habitat of a small, threatened population of Eurasian lynx, and a recent study led by ecologist John Linnell argues it may be “last push for the population to spiral down the extinction vortex.”

read the article

The Guardian: A museum devoted to the wreckage of lost love

The Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles exhibits the wreckage of lost love. On show are everyday objects submitted by ordinary people who have gone through a breakup or lost a loved one – the jilted and bitter, the nostalgic, the relieved. It is a collection of personal mementoes that permits a voyeuristic glimpse into a very private realm. The most mundane tokens – a watch, a bottle opener, a Zippo lighter – take on a strong emotional charge. [...]

The Museum of Broken Relationships was originally conceived in 2006 by two Croatian artists who, having split up, were about to throw out the detritus of their love affair – the small gifts, the photos – but decided that their time together should instead be celebrated. They opened premises in Zagreb in 2010 and now their collection has a second permanent home in LA. What better location than the heart of Hollywood – where dreams are supposed to come true but so often don’t and where shining new stories turn out to be full of tawdry cliches? Equally fitting, it has opened on the Hollywood Boulevard site of an iconic lingerie shop that went bankrupt.

read the article