ZAGREB, April 18, 2018 – Živi Zid MP Branimir Bunjac said on Wednesday that it was disgraceful of the Parliament’s Presidency to have rejected the patronage of Victory in Europe Day.
“For those who don’t know, on May 9 the anti-fascist coalition defeated the criminal Nazi regime. According to Hitler’s ethic, murder was proof of someone’s ability to be a member of the supreme Arian race, and that insane policy resulted in 70 million dead, hundreds of millions of the wounded, displaced, detained, tortured and humiliated,” said Bunjac at the start of today’s parliamentary session.
“By participating in the anti-fascist struggle, Croatia became a member of the victorious coalition and earned its rightful place in the history of the world. But while all countries observe May 9 as Victory Day, Croatia does not, even though according to its contribution to the anti-fascist struggle it should be in the first row because we are the only country in Europe that practically liberated itself on its own from the occupation,” said Bunjac.
The Croatian parliament continues the disgraceful policy of dividing the Croatian people “and the SDP, too, supported that policy by having cancelled the patronage of commemorations for the post-WWII victims.”
“The HDZ is saying that anti-fascism was built into the Constitution as a value when the independent Croatian state was established in 1990, while the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was explicitly refused. However, in practice, the HDZ has never honoured the country’s fundamental legal document, thus bringing into question the very constitutional and legal order and allowing the issue of history to become a cancer of the country’s political life,” said Bunjac.
He went on to say that “under the HDZ’s patronage, the anti-fascist struggle was tacitly marginalised and demonised, monuments were torn down, victims were humiliated, and scientific and media revisionism was encouraged.”
“It is important to find the courage and say clearly that anti-fascism and communism are not one and the same thing. Communism is an evil but the Red Army’s anti-fascist struggle is seen by the whole world as positive and there are no doubts about it either in the United States or Germany, Italy or anywhere else,” he said.
Bunjac believes that there can be no social catharsis and end to ideological conflicts in Croatia until the HDZ’s prime minister and president appear at the commemoration of Anti-Fascist Struggle Day, April 22, and Victory Day, May 9.
In an ironic comment on President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s private visit to Jasenovac, Social Democrat Predrag Matić called on hunters from the nearby community of Novska to halt their activities this week when commemorations are being held at the site of the World War II concentration camp, given a possible visit by “our president who this week is contemplating about the anti-fascist past of her grandparents while the rest of the time she contemplates about the old Croatian salute from 1941,” an allusion to one of Grabar-Kitarović’s statements about the World War II Ustasha salute “For the homeland, ready”.
