On 30 June 2006, the Croatian Sabor adopted the declaration on the condemnation of the said crimes. In that way, Croatia joined the countries which have officially condemned communist crimes following a relevant resolution passed by the Council of Europe earlier that year.
The Croatian Culture Society, that gathers mainly intellectuals and academicians who are perceived as having rightist views, also urges the parliament to make plans for concrete actions by judicial institutions to tackle those crimes.
The Council says that the Council of Europe resolution was limited to the verbal condemnation of the crimes and that "the ruling elite in Croatia, that is closely intertwined with many members of the former communist structures" welcomed such a document with relief, reducing the parliamentary declaration to a copy of the European document.
"We hold that communism, fascism and Nazism are only different forms of the same totalitarian order that marked the 20th century. Data on fascist and Nazi atrocities have been collected and systematised and many perpetrators have been brought to justice, while in the case of communism this has failed to happen," the Council said in the statement released on Wednesday.
It recalled that in the area of the former Yugoslav federation there were more than a thousand graves of victims of the crimes committed by Partisans and communists and that only about a score had been investigated.
Perpetrators and their ideological followers cannot hide themselves under the veil of anti-fascism because those who ordered and those who perpetrated those crimes acted in contravention to the idea of anti-fascism, the Council said.
"We urge renaming squares and streets named after communists rulers, including those named after Marshal (Josip Broz) Tito," reads the press release signed by the Culture Council chairman, Hrvoje Hitrec.