ZAGREB, September 30, 2018 – War Veterans Minister Tomo Medved condemned on Saturday an attack on MPs Milorad Pupovac and Boris Milošević of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), saying veterans knew best what suffering was.
“We, Croatian war veterans, who know best what suffering is, condemn any form of violence, absolutely and always. Therefore we condemn this attack too,” Medved told reporters after a meeting of the “Gojko Šusak” association of war veterans from the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party.
Asked if it was under the law that ministers’ chauffeurs, including his, were retired disabled soldiers, he called the articles published about this by some media web portals ill-intentioned and tendentious. He said that Josip Šarić, a driver in his ministry, did not have the status of disabled war veteran, although he was wounded twice in the war, or the status of a person suffering from PTSD.
Medved refuted some media claims about high disability pensions, saying the amounts mentioned were aimed at drawing negative public attention to Homeland War volunteers and disabled veterans.
Asked to comment on a decision by the HVIDRA association of disabled war veterans to delay its sports games that were to have taken place in Vukovar on October 12-14, the minister said that was their decision. Asked if Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava had been manipulated regarding a protest he announced for October 13 in Vukovar, Medved reiterated that all veterans wanted to see the prosecution of everyone who committed a war crime intensified.
The re-elected president of the “Gojko Šusak” association, Major General Miljenko Filipović, said the Vukovar protest, announced by the mayor due to the inefficiency in the prosecution of the war crimes committed in that eastern town, might have started with good intentions but that it was being increasingly politicised.
He said veterans had had enough of being manipulated and that members of this association would not take part in the protest. Asked who was manipulating and politicising this matter, he said “certain stakeholders who want to earn certain cheap political points.”
