Croatia’s war of independence ended almost 30 years ago. However, the EU and NATO member’s lawmakers felt some matters still needed to be laid to rest.
On Wednesday, the MPs overwhelmingly voted in favour of the new Graveyard Law, replacing the two-decades-old legislation with a fresh set of rules, which now demand removal of graveyard inscriptions and plaques erected during the 1991-1995 conflict “not in line with the constitutional order”.
The new law, as explained in a statement released by the Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction, and State Assets, outlaws inscriptions made during the “occupation and peaceful reintegration” and contains “symbols that might offend the morals and feelings of citizens.”
The law particularly targets gravestones made after 30 May 1990 — the day when the then-Socialist Republic of Croatia inaugurated its first multi-party parliament, an initial step on its path to independence from the rest of Yugoslavia.
Its ethnic Serb minority, backed by Belgrade and the nationalist regime of Slobodan Milošević, increasingly disagreed with Croatian President Franjo Tuđman’s push for independence.
The ethnic Serbs, who were at the time Croatia’s largest minority, representing some 12.2% of the population according to the 1991 census, soon unilaterally declared a breakaway state of Republika Srpska Krajina, or the Republic of Serb Krajina, in the country’s east.
By April 1991, the armed rebellion escalated into a full-fledged war, with the newly-founded Croatian armed forces on one side, and the rebels, paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People’s Army troops on the other.
A series of initial skirmishes and sieges laid waste to cities like Vukovar, in Croatia’s northeast, and led to an international community-arranged stalemate monitored by UN peacekeepers.
However, in 1995, the regrouped and rearmed Croatian army’s Operations Flash and Storm ended the war by effectively pushing out the Serb forces — and most of the ethnic Serb population — from its territory.
Now, the new law plans to remove any memorials glorifying either the Republika Srpska Krajina or otherwise celebrating the enemy forces, including referring to Croatia as “Serb land”.
The legislation states that any citizen can report a tombstone or other monument as potentially problematic. If found to be at fault, plot owners or relatives of those interred will have 30 days to change the inscription. Otherwise, they would face a fine of €1,000 to €5,000.
The decision on what might be in breach of the law will be in the hands of a local commission, consisting of five independent members, including a historian, an art historian and a lawyer.
Earlier in April, Minister of Construction, Spatial Planning and State Property Branko Bačić said that the changes to the law were prompted by the fact that “after the occupation of part of Croatia during the Homeland War, certain graves remained, where monuments and memorial plaques with inappropriate names contrary to the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Croatia were inscribed.”
‘We are afraid of what might bother you next’
Serb minority representatives have blasted the new legislation, arguing it has turned a communal issue into a political one.
Lawmaker Milorad Pupovac, from the SDSS party, earlier criticised the law, saying it creates an impression that Croatia was “pockmarked with (Serb nationalist) graveyards,” which he said was not true.
“There are people who are bothered by symbols associated with the Ustasha ideology and idea, which can also be found in certain cemeteries, but also outside the cemeteries on monuments, and they offend their religious and national feelings,” he said at a parliament session in late April, referring to the Croatian Nazi collaborationist units from World War II and their tombstones and other memorials, which the law does not ecompass.
While his party was in favour of removing any troubling remnants of the 1991-1995 war, Pupovac added, “We are now afraid of what might bother you next”.
This is not the first time in recent years that Croatian authorities have attempted to tackle this sensitive issue.
In August 2024, a judge in the city of Zadar on the Adriatic coast fined two Croatian citizens who are singers in a local folk band over references to the Republika Srpska Krajina and the Serb participation in the war.
In his rationale, the judge stated that “songs with this content cause unrest among citizens, especially among citizens who were directly exposed to war suffering,” and “disturb the coexistence of Croat citizens of Croatia and citizens of Serb ethnicity.”
Most ethnic Serbs have not returned to Croatia following Operation Storm, and the minority now comprises some 3.2% of Croatia’s population, according to the 2021 census.
