Speaking to the press in Rijeka, Kajin said the film forged the truth by mentioning only the karst pits and by avoiding to show the whole truth about that period, including the true nature of Italian rule in said northern Adriatic areas from 1918 to 1943, the concentration camps, the arson of villages and the numerous victims of the fascists.
"The Heart in the Pit" by director Alberto Negrin was shown 10 days ago at a congress of Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini's National Alliance Party and yesterday on Italian national television RAI on the occasion of a new national holiday -- Italian Refugees Remembrance Day.
Kajin said the film's assertion that the aforementioned northern Adriatic areas had been given to the ex-Yugoslavia because of ethnic cleansing and political retaliation was a forgery. He added Italy lost those areas because it had lost the war and because of its previous policy towards the local population.
Kajin went on to say that the film incorrectly stated that 350,000 Italians had been displaced from those areas, adding the figure might have been 230,000 at the most.
He said the Italian exodus began only after the 1947 Paris peace treaties and the 1954 London memorandum.
Kajin concluded by saying that most of the people thrown into the karst pits, known as foibe, had been "Black Shirts, Italian customs and revenue guards and German soldiers," and that the Istria Antifascist Alliance had long apologised for the innocent victims.