Sydney football fans’ fascist salute has its origins in ASIO’s post-war failure

Seventy years after Croatian WW2 criminals established cells of the Ustaše terrorist group in Australia, their legacy is alive and dangerous.

In April 1952, ASIO received information that Jure Krpan was living at 15 Duke Street in Western Australia. Their informant claimed that Krpan had been an “Ustasa police investigator” who had “participated in murdering several hundred persons” and was involved in organising “terroristic undertaking (sic)”.

ASIO took no action, failing to even advise the federal government of this disturbing development. As one of the key organisations involved in the naturalisation process, ASIO did nothing to prevent Krpan from obtaining citizenship, leaving him free to work with other Croatian war criminals to establish Ustaše cells in Australia.

This was a pity as ASIO’s failure led, some 70 years later, to the recent unsavoury scenes at a Sydney football match where Croatian supporters of the Sydney United team gave the Nazi salute and screamed “Za dom spremni”, which in Croatian means “Ready for the Homeland”.

The Ustaše was led by Ante Pavelić, who had formed this terrorist organisation in the late 1920s dedicated to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, carrying out violent acts such as the murder of Yugoslav King Alexander in 1934. Pavelić’s primary focus was the creation of an independent Croatia. He “succeeded” in this when the Nazis established the “independent” State of Croatia in April 1941, putting the Ustaše into power as their puppet “government”.

Pavelić and his Ustaše units adopted the slogan “Za dom spremni”, which was intoned while they gave the Nazi salute. Pavelić quickly proclaimed the Croatian equivalent of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws and signs were erected in parks and other public places proclaiming, “No Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Dogs Allowed”.

They immediately commenced bloody massacres of these groups, which were so medieval in their brutality that even hardened Nazi units were shocked. In addition to the usual method of dispatching their victims by mass shootings, these included slow decapitation with saws; ripping out intestines, cutting their throats; smashing their heads with sledgehammers; and cutting off limbs so that they suffered slow, excruciating death.

As I documented in my book War Criminals Welcome (2001 and 2020), Krpan, as a senior member of a Ustaše unit, was personally involved in the slaughter of thousands of Pavelić’s racial and political enemies, especially Serbs who was regarded as their main racial enemy.

Krpan was joined in Australia by hundreds of his comrades. By the late 1950s they had established flourishing organisations which, in pursuit of their desire to re-establish Pavelić’s “state”, carried out numerous terrorist actions in communist Yugoslavia, and in Australia, especially the bombing of Yugoslav diplomatic offices and also of their political opponents.

Their domestic terrorist campaign included the bombing of a pro-Yugoslav group in 1967, the bombing of the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney in 1969, followed by the bombing of the Yugoslav embassy in Canberra later that year, and the bombing of the Melbourne consulate in 1970.

The worst example of the Ustaše’s campaign occurred in 1972, when two travel agencies specialising in Yugoslav tourism were bombed in Sydney, injuring 16 innocent people who were unlucky to have been in the vicinity at the time. Although no charges were laid concerning such incidents, on the basis of concrete intelligence and much to its credit, ASIO concluded that local Ustaše cells were the main culprits, although it was also clear that the Yugoslav intelligence service also acted as provocateurs in some cases and may even have staged some such acts to discredit their Croatian critics.

The senior Ustaše leader at the helm of these activities was Srečko Rover, who had been at the forefront of mass killings in and around the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. At the beginning of the mass killings, Rover was a police officer with the power of life and death over his fellow citizens. But he soon was promoted to membership of the local Mobile Court Martial, which roamed around the countryside administering drumhead “justice” to Serbs, Jews and political opponents, especially communists.

These so-called “courts” were in fact instruments of Pavelić’s program of mass killings. The defendants weren’t permitted any defence and invariably were found guilty in a matter of minutes, weren’t allowed any appeal rights and were executed immediately after sentence was proclaimed.

In recognition of his loyal lieutenant’s important role in these mass killings, Pavelić rewarded Rover with a medal to celebrate his “bravery” in the fight against the “bandits”, also promoting him to his own “Personal Bodyguard”, an honour bestowed only on those who had demonstrated proficiency in these extermination operations.

By the early 1960s, Rover and his fellow Croatian war criminals had established seemingly harmless clubs throughout Australia, but their true character was shown by the photos of Pavelić and other senior war criminals adorning their premises. And behind these clubs stood clandestine Ustaše cells.

By this time, ASIO and the Commonwealth Police (forerunner of today’s AFP) had identified Rover as the leader of many of these cells, called troikas, consisting of three committed Ustaše militants.

By the late 1960s, ASIO had gathered enough intelligence to advise the Liberal federal government that Rover was directing these troikas and had directed several terrorist actions, including two incursions into Yugoslavia in 1963 and 1972. But still the government didn’t act, even publicly denying that there were any Ustaše cells operating in Australia.

The legacy of ASIO’s indifference towards Jure Krpan and the blind eye turned by successive governments towards the Ustaše’s activities was on clear display at the recent football game.

The young men who were filmed giving the Nazi salute and repeating Pavelić’s slogan, “Za dom spremni”, had been well tutored by their grandfathers and fathers in the politics of the Ustaše. Indeed, many young adherents went to Croatia during the 1990s wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia. Mostly they served not in the official government army but in paramilitary units formed and funded by the Ustaše’s Western diaspora, in the United States, Canada and, of course, Australia.

These third generation Croatians and their sons and daughters prefer to celebrate the founding of Pavelić’s quisling state on April 10, 1941, while mainstream Croatians observe the creation of the legitimate independent state on June 10, 1991.

While this odious organisation has never represented more than a (substantial) minority of Australians of Croatian descent, the poisonous influence of the Ustaše remains not only a real and dangerous presence in ethnic politics but, as demonstrated at the Sydney United football game, also in mainstream Australia, including among the vast majority of democratic Croatians who have made our country their home.

Guide to pronunciation
ć - soft ‘ch’, as in Pavelić/Pavelich
č - hard ‘ch’, as in Srečko/Srechko
š - ‘sh’, as in Ustaše/Ustashe

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