CROATIAN PARLIAMENT COMMEMORATES BLEIBURG TRAGEDY

ZAGREB, May 15 (Hina) - At today's Croatian Parliament ceremonial session in commemoration of 50th anniversary of the Bleiburg tragedy and victims from the Croatian 'Calvary', Parliament Speaker Nedjeljko Mihanovic rendered a speech. Mihanovic reiterated that the allies in World War II had handed Croatian military troops and hundreds of thousands of Croatian civilian refugees including elderly persons, women and children over to (Tito's) partisans without any international guarantees on May 15, 1945. Silence had covered the Bleiburg tragedy and the Golgotha of the Croatian people for decades, Mihanovic added. "Drawing attention exclusively to facts, one should recollect all those Croatian bloody days and that Croatian 'Dies Irae', which had gulped in its outburst of wrath several hundred thousand Croatian prisoners and unhappy people," Mihanovic said. He added that it was necessary to clarify and reinterpret thoroughly and rigidly on facts all intentionally distorted political and ideological interpretations and misrepresented truth. Urging the presentation of the entire war and postwar tragedy in an accurate and correct manner Mihanovic said that "the Bleiburg tragedy is waiting for its objective interpreter and historian." Reminding the session of the events when the first and second armies led by then (Communist) partisan commanders Koco Popovic and Peko Dapcevic, played a fatal role in killing Croatian arrested people in Bleiburg, Mihanovic said the act of allies' extradition of Croatian war prisoners reflected their bias toward Serb murderers of Croatian captives. "Thus, despite all noble political declarations and treaties on the human rights and international conventions on war prisoners the tragic decision on the unconditional extradition was carried out without moral responsibility," he said. "When we speak about Bleiburg we take that locale as a symbol of political murder and mass killing of the Croatian people," he said adding that Bleiburg and the victims from that tragedy presented a chapter in Croatian "national Golgotha". The tragedy was part of the cruel reality the Croatian people was facing, where all destructive instincts had been aroused for violence over Croatian people after WW II, Mihanovic said and emphasized that terror was unleashed over helpless convoys of Croatian captives. "Unfortunately, Bleiburg and the consequences of that event had become a symbol of the long postwar period when mass arrests had took place and many people become the victims of political terror," Mihanovic said and stressed that the symbol of Bleiburg could be mirrored in the situation created by a totalitarian system that gulped generations of honest intellectuals, farmers and workers. "By marking the Bleiburg tragedy we do not want to remember exclusively those victims," he said adding that the Croats showed equally profound reverence and sympathy for all victims of terror, Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and all other citizens, who were killed in the senseless nationalistic and racist atrocities. The basic idea for marking these anniversaries: the 50th anniversary of the anti-Fascist victory in Europe and in the world and the 50th anniversary of the Bleiburg tragedy, was to overcome all kinds of divisions, Mihanovic said adding that they were trying to carry out the fundamental concept of the Croatian President Franjo Tudjman for the national reconciliation. At the beginning of the solemn session Mihanovic addressed deputies of the both Houses of the Croatian Parliament. He especially welcomed Croatian President's envoy, Hrvoje Sarinic, Croatian Premier Nikica Valentic, and members of the Government, present representatives of Diplomatic Corps accredited in Croatia, led by its dean Apostolic Nuncio Giulio Einaudi as well as the United Nations delegates and other guests. (hina) mm mms 151612 MET may 95