They gathered at the place near the local parish church where a plaque in his memory had been erected on 21 August by a group of Croatian emigrants and removed last Friday by decision of the Croatian government.
Around noon on Monday, people put stones around the place where the monument had stood and said that the stones would be built into a new memorial plaque which would be erected in memory of Budak.
Before the stones were collected, senior official of the nonparliamentary Croatian Pure Party of Rights (HCSP) Ivan Gabelica addressed the gathering, saying that they had come here to mark the 115th anniversary of the birth of "a great patriot and writer and martyr for Croatia's freedom".
"Mile Budak fought for Croatia. Croatia was his only idea," Gabelica said.
He went on to say that Budak had been assassinated by Serbs. "Budak was killed and not put on trial," Gabelica said, adding that "it is not strange that Budak's role was questioned by Yugoslavs, but it is strange that it should be done by the Croatian government".
Budak, born on 30 August 1889 in Sveti Rok, was executed by Yugoslav authorities on 7 June 1945, a day after a court martial in Zagreb found him guilty as a senior official in the government of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
Gabelica described the Partisan resistance movement as "crime and treason rather than a patriotic Croatian movement. The Partisan movement was the struggle for Bolshevism and Yugoslavia".
Gabelica also accused Josip Broz Tito of having committed the worst crimes against Croats in history and added that, nevertheless, the most beautiful squares and streets in Croatia were named after him.
A wreath was noticed to have been placed by the HCSP party at the site where the Budak monument used to stand. Other people who came there also laid wreaths and lit candles.
According to some unofficial reports, the HCSP asked the local Catholic church to say a requiem mass for Budak, but priests turned down this proposal.
One of the initiators who had set up the memorial plaque, Josip Vidakovic, a Croatian emigrant living in Canada, said the government's removal of the plaque was a cowardly act.
"On that day (last Friday), I was in Gospic. If I had been here, I would have allowed the plaque to be removed only over my dead body," said Vidakovic, who was born in Sveti Rok.
He added that he was sad to see that the government had removed the plaque and claimed that other residents were also embittered at the act.
"Mile Budak was neither a butcher nor a war criminal. He left the NDH government in 1943 because he disagreed with the racial laws. But now people in Croatia do not want to hear that. I was born in 1938. I was neither a Partisan nor an Ustasha. I only want to ensure that the truth about Mile Budak is known," Vidakovic said.
The rally in Sveti Rok was peaceful.
The government issued a statement last Friday to announce that the monuments honouring prominent Ustasha officials, Mile Budak in Sveti Rok and Jure Francetic in Slunj, had been removed. It said that the monuments were removed in accordance with Article 107 of the Croatian Constitution and that they damaged Croatia's reputation and interests.
The government instructed the interior and environment ministries to carry out the decision. The justice and culture ministries were instructed to draft a bill on monuments and submit it to the government for consideration. The justice ministry was also told to draft and submit within eight days amendments to the Criminal Code banning the promotion and glorification of totalitarian ideologies, including fascism and communism.