ZAGREB, May 19 (Hina) - The association of Croatian Anti-Fascist veterans (Second World War partisans) on Friday expressed concern and surprise over the speech a Sabor Deputy President, Baltazar Jalsovec, had held at the May 14
commemorative assembly in the field of Bleiburg (Austria). The association's (SABH) leader Ivan Fumic told a news conference in Zagreb today that anti-Fascist fighters from World War II would ask the Croatian National Parliament to express its stand on Jalsovec's speech. "To emphasise that the germ of a new Croatia stems from Bleiburg and that there Croats were killed who were seeking democracy and freedom with rosaries in their hands and that they were killed by an army which the Croatian people had never recognised, is not only irresponsible but also untrue and highly tendentious," Fumic said. SABH is also surprised with the Government officials' attendan
ZAGREB, May 19 (Hina) - The association of Croatian Anti-Fascist
veterans (Second World War partisans) on Friday expressed concern
and surprise over the speech a Sabor Deputy President, Baltazar
Jalsovec, had held at the May 14 commemorative assembly in the field
of Bleiburg (Austria).
The association's (SABH) leader Ivan Fumic told a news conference
in Zagreb today that anti-Fascist fighters from World War II would
ask the Croatian National Parliament to express its stand on
Jalsovec's speech.
"To emphasise that the germ of a new Croatia stems from Bleiburg and
that there Croats were killed who were seeking democracy and
freedom with rosaries in their hands and that they were killed by an
army which the Croatian people had never recognised, is not only
irresponsible but also untrue and highly tendentious," Fumic
said.
SABH is also surprised with the Government officials' attendance at
May 14 gathering which for those war veterans did not have a meaning
of commemoration but it was "a rally of hard-line Ustashi
extremists."
Fumic forwarded a question to Jalsovec whether "the captured part
of Ustashi who committed crimes in Jasenovac and other sites, are
the germ of a new Croatia." Fumic claimed that Tito had ordered the
release of several tens of thousands civilians.
He accentuated that the Croatian Constitution reads that Croatia is
based on the anti-Fascist struggle and not on the Independent State
of Croatia (NDH).
This WW II veteran assessed that the incident in Veljun (where a
monument to the Ustashi regime's victims was damaged) was the
consequence of the rehabilitation of the NDH.
This association asked authorities to lunch an investigation and
punish perpetrators who damaged the Veljun monument, as well as to
make an inquiry into the incident that happened between in the night
12 and 13 May when cypresses were uprooted that had been planted in
memory to Croatian policemen killed in the beginning of the
Homeland War in 1991 near Borovo Selo.
On Thursday evening Drazen Budisa, the President of the HSLS party
whose member is Jalsovec, commented on Jalsovec's speech. He told
the Croatian television that Jalsovec had not made the best of
statement, but Budisa asserted that he had not said that the
Croatian State was created in Bleiburg.
Budisa added that his party had the absolutely clear stand on the
state continuity with the Croatia established in the anti-Fascist
struggle in WW II but the Croatian Social Liberal Party had also the
clear stand that this fact did not imply the fact on political and
moral continuity with Communism and Yugoslavianism which along
with anti-Fascism were the dominant determinants in the Partisan
Movement.
The state and legal continuity is different matter from the
political and moral continuity, Budisa concluded adding that the
HSLS's coalition partner - the Social Democratic Party (SDP) - had
given an apology ten years ago for what had been committed in the
former state and system.
(hina) jn ms