ZAGREB, May 13, 2018 – Serbian Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin on Saturday evening commented on the commemoration in Bleiburg, saying that “Croatia has once again chosen which side it is on”, the media in Belgrade reported.
In response to the Croatian state leadership’s participation in the commemoration in Bleiburg, Vulin said in a press release that “this was the image of Europe that Croatia wants.”
“Between the Jasenovac victims and the Bleiburg executioners, they have chosen to pay their respects to the executioners. Bleiburg is the picture of Europe that Croatia wants,” the media in Belgrade cited Vulin as saying.
The media in Belgrade also carried the statement by top Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff who said he tried to persuade Austria’s conservative government to ban the rally, but without success. “It is absolutely outrageous that Austrian authorities allow an event like this to happen,” Zuroff told the Associated Press by phone from Jerusalem. “In Austria, you are not allowed to brandish Nazi symbols, but they allow Ustasha symbols.”
Croatian Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković on Saturday said that the national legislature would continue providing patronage for the annual mid-May central commemoration of victims killed in the Austrian Bleiburg field in the wake of the Second World War, and underscored that those developments in the aftermath of the WW2 were a difficult chapter of the complex Croatian history.
He called on the Croatians to continue building a democratic pluralistic future of their country with the same responsibility with which they founded the independent Republic of Croatia.
