Why does Australia continue to honour Balkan Nazis?

Part of the leadership of the NSW Serbian Chetnik RSL (holding Chetnik flag) with neo-Nazi Greek Golden Dawn members, Sydney, 2018.

Australia has made great strides in confronting thorny issues like historic child abuse in religious institutions or Indigenous disadvantage, however when it comes to World War Two collaborators and their neo-Nazi contemporaries, Australia and in particular, its official peak war veterans’ body, the Returned and Services League (RSL) still lags well-behind behind the rest of the world.

While Australia’s 2013-2015 Royal Commission into child sex abuse uncovered decades of sordid abuse and institutional cover-ups by the Catholic and other Churches, the RSL and its 170,000 members to this day dodge questions as to why the veteran’s body continues to allow Nazi collaborators to celebrate the country’s official war veterans day - April 25 or ANZAC Day, by letting them march alongside legitimate Australian and other Allied veterans.

Representatives of the Serbian Chetniks with #RemoveKebab (Alt-Right) sign & Serbian national flag, Brisbane, 2014.

Not that the RSL is unaware of World War Two history. At the time of the Tehran Conference of 1943, the Allies (including Australia) broke off ties with a number of groups in occupied Yugoslavia who were found to be not fighting the Germans or even fighting alongside them in some cases.

Chetniks with Germans, eastern Bosnia, 1944.

One of these groups was the Royal Yugoslavian (Serbian) Chetniks, with the Allies eventually forcing the Chetnik’s own political head, King Peter II Karadordjevic to publicly disown them by September 1944 and throw his lot in with Tito’s Communist Partisans.

 For his part in this collaboration and other war crimes, the leader of the Chetniks, Draza Mihajlovic was executed by Yugoslavia on July 17, 1946.

Chetniks & German Officers meet in Bosnia, 1943.

 Mihajlovic’s execution was not only for Nazi collaboration or for massive and bestial war crimes against non-Serbs – it was also punishment for the killing of his fellow Serbs, some of who to this day still mourn the brutality of the collaborationist Chetniks.

 This collaboration was also Machiavellian in nature. Less than a year earlier, on October 6, 1945, Dr. Dusan Nedeljkovic, Chairman of Yugoslavia’s War Crimes Commission, described to foreign reporters in Belgrade the case of Chetnik commander, Pavle Djurisic who was decorated by King Peter with the Karadjordje Star (Royal Yugoslavia’s highest order) almost at the same time as Hitler bestowed on him the German Iron Cross “for services rendered to the German Reich.”

Serbian Chetniks surrendering (as enemy combatants) to British forces, May 5, 1945

Chetniks with Italian Fascist officers, 1942.

 In other words, a senior Chetnik commander simultaneously received the highest possible military award from the Allies and the Axis. According to the U.S.-based Shoah Resource Centre: “By the end of 1943, the break between the West and the Chetniks was complete. The Chetniks became collaborators and joined the forces fighting the Partisans. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans.”

Draz Brkljac, (far right), co-head of Serbian Chetniks RSL & serving NSW police officer with Greek Golden Dawn and Russian Cossack members giving Far Right Wing neo-Nazi salute.

 Although filmmakers have only recently exposed the evils of paedophile priests, most notably with the 2015 Academy Award-winning film Spotlight, when it comes to the Chetniks, Hollywood was well ahead of the curve - in 1978, it made Chetnik-Nazi collaboration central to the plot of the blockbuster movie Force 10 from Navarone.

 But the events of the 1940s are just the start. Last year it was reported that a number of Chetnik RSL members in Australia have formed alliances with neo-Nazi groups such as the Greek Golden Dawn, which was implicated in the Srebrenica Massacre, nationalist Russian Cossacks on ASIO watchlists and various local far-right extremists like Jim Saleam and Kim Vuga.

Chetniks at ANZAC Day march, Sydney, 2018.

 Others in this cabal have posted pictures of themselves on social media holding "Remove Kebab" signs – a clear reference to white supremacists and support of the likes of New Zealand mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant and Norwegian mass murderer and neo-Nazi Anders Breivik.

 Equally disturbing is the fact that some of their supporters have trained and fought alongside pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in breach of Australia’s Foreign Incursions Act .

 But much like the Catholic Church’s historic child abuse, the facts are no longer in dispute, but rather, the issue now is all about the subsequent cover-up, in this case, Australia’s Nazi collaborator ‘protection racket’.

Chetniks with Italian Fascists, Montenegro, 1941.

 Like in 2017, when two former Serbian Chetniks, both in their 90s and living in Melbourne, brothers Marko and Toma Banjanin were made Life Members by RSL Victoria.

 This was quite a baffling decision considering both brothers have for decades publicly  admitted to membership in the Chetnik’s Dinara Division, part of the ‘Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia (Milizia Volontaria Anti Comunista - MVAC), a component of the 18th Corps of Mussolini’s fascist army, which after Italy’s capitulation in September 1943, promptly transferred its allegiance to the Germans, with who it collaborated until the end of the War.

Chetnik leader Blagoje Jovicic (centre), with two of his Nazi German 'friends’ on either side.

 In mid-May 1945, the entire Dinara Division surrendered to Allied forces in Italy, whereby its soldiers were forcibly disarmed and placed under armed guard by British troops.

 The granting of RSL ‘Life Membership’ to those who participated in this unit echoes the ‘promotions’ and sanctuary in remote country parishes given to known paedophile priests by the Church.

Chetniks in front of Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 2016.

 On April 25 2019, an attempt was made to ban the Chetniks from all Anzac Day activities by the Victorian RSL, however, the branch’s leadership lost its nerve and quickly reversed this decision for reasons still not fully explained.

 What Australia’s RSL fails to grasp is what many religious and community institutions have learned the hard way, i.e. you can’t go on honouring evildoers forever – sooner or later, reality and the law catch up with you.

Chetniks marching, ANZAC Day, Sydney, 2016.

 It may want to look to examples like the Cardinal George Pell case or even the recently-convicted Harvey Weinstein as to what happens to those who think they can hide from society.

 Maybe Australia needs to set up another Royal Commission, this time examining the RSLs Nazi collaborator ‘protection racket’ for it to fully appreciate that reality.