ZAGREB, October 3, 2018 – A parliamentary debate on a bill on firearm possession on Wednesday went off on a tangent, focusing on “historical topics”, after Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) MP Stevo Culej said that “every able-bodied Croat in areas bordering with Serbia should have a firearm within their reach,” with Social Democratic Party (SDP) MP Nenad Stazić retorting that Culej was making fascist statements.
Culej said that he would support the bill on firearm possession particularly if it enabled “every mentally and physically fit Croat who lives in areas bordering with our former enemy Serbia, to possess weapons because who knows what the night and future may bring.”
He said that after he heard the “debate by fellow MPs on the left side of the parliament, it is clear why we were disarmed in the 1990s and had to buy guns at a thousand and a half Deutsche marks a piece and bullets at two and a half marks a piece.” “That’s their style – disarm Croats and arm someone else,” Culej said.
“Your statement that Croats and Croats alone should be armed is not just dangerous, it is openly fascist,” Stazić retorted. He wondered how Culej would determine who was a Croat. “We can’t count blood cells to determine who is a Croat,” he added.
Citing an article on Wikipedia, MP Ivan Pernar (Živi Zid) claimed that the SDP had in fact advocated the disarmament of Croatia in the early 1990s, “and it appears that that continues to be a thorn in their side.”
SDP MP Gordan Maras said that “Wikipedia lives off what someone writes on it”, adding that then SDP leader Ivica Račan deserved credit for the establishment of the Republic of Croatia and its independence, and that even the late president Franjo Tuđman had admitted that.
