Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, the president of the Jasenovac Memorial Area Council, Slavko Goldstein, and former inmate Pave Molnar called in their addresses for peace, tolerance, co-existence and for cherishing the memory of the Jasenovac victims, to which they said the uncovering of the truth about the events at the camp would significantly contribute.
Sanader condemned any attempt to distort the horrible truth about the events at the Ustasha-run camp for political purposes and conveyed his government's readiness to give a full contribution to establishing the truth about human suffering in what he said was one of the worst places of suffering in WWII.
He also commented on attempts to exaggerate the number of victims "with conflict-mongering and chauvinist implications" at the recent commemoration at Donja Gradina, in the Bosnian Serb entity, strongly dismissing claims that the truth about the Jasenovac camp was being systematically covered up in Croatia.
"We consider such claims that are directed against the Croatian state, political manipulation," Sanader said.
He emphasised that anti-fascism, as one of the most important European values, represented the foundation of Croatia's statehood and that it was built into the Croatian Constitution.
Slavko Goldstein said the Croatian government had the appropriate attitude to the Jasenovac Memorial Area and ensured its independent work and assisted it in researching the truth about the camp. He said that efforts would continue to establish the approximate number of the camp's victims, which he said was now estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000. Most of the victims were Serbs, Jews, Croats and Roma, he said.
Numerous delegations from Croatia, Bosnia's Croat-Muslim entity, Slovenia and Serbia and Montenegro laid wreaths at the "Stone Flower" monument at Jasenovac and attended religious ceremonies for the camp's victims.