"While the police in Bochum are looking for those who desecrated a Jewish cemetery and the police in Paris are looking for attackers on a Jewish soup kitchen, and while the Estonian prime minister announces that a monument commemorating Estonians who fought in Nazi SS units will be removed, monuments of the past are springing up in this country without permission," Skare-Ozbolt said at a press conference.
"It is hard not to see a connection between Bochum, Estonia and Sveti Rok," the village where the monument to Mile Budak was raised last weekend, because Budak signed racial laws, she added.
Skare-Ozbolt said that the role of Mile Budak should be left to scholars to examine, noting that there were seven or eight history institutes in the country and that none of them was dealing with this case.
She also commented on a petition recently signed by 120 intellectuals seeking a renewal of political trials that had taken place during Communist rule and other totalitarian regimes, including a renewal of the proceedings against Budak.
Skare-Ozbolt said that the signatories should have sent the Chief Public Prosecutor evidence showing Budak's innocence rather than a petition. She added that renewals of war crimes trials were possible because there was no statute of limitations for such crimes.
She announced that her party would propose a bill at the first session of Parliament this autumn about establishing a national monument heritage centre, which would also define who can raise a monument, to whom and under what conditions.
Skare-Ozbolt condemned a proposal by the Croatian People's Party (HNS) to change the name of Mile Budak Street in Knin, saying that action only caused reaction and that it was unacceptable.
The head of the DC main committee, Slobodan Lang, said that "the DC does not accept a revision of the antifascist victory" and warned that "in addition to Budak the Ustasha and Budak the writer everybody is talking about, there is also a third Budak, the victim, who was sentenced to death and executed in one day and whose family also suffered."