PULA, Sept 21 (Hina) - The ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the reintegration of Istria, Rijeka, Zadar and Adriatic islands, occupied by Italy in early 1940s, into Croatia, was held in Pula on Sunday.
PULA, Sept 21 (Hina) - The ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of
the reintegration of Istria, Rijeka, Zadar and Adriatic islands,
occupied by Italy in early 1940s, into Croatia, was held in Pula on
Sunday. #L#
The ceremony marking the historic events from September 1943 was
organised in Pula's landmark Arena, under the auspices of the
Croatian President Stjepan Mesic.
Addressing the gathered, Premier Ivica Racan said the Croatians
should cherish great values and achievements from the anti-fascist
struggle, as the foundations for new freedoms and democracy.
Racan said the recent Croatian history had seen some vacillation
about and negation of anti-fascism as the civilisation value of the
Croatian people, and he strongly supported everything that "is not
in line with such vacillation."
Premier also voiced satisfaction with the fact that those who had
until recently advocated the Ustasha movement were distancing
themselves from it now.
Speaking about two types of the denial of anti-fascism in Croatia,
he said that there were attempts to limit anti-fascism within a
narrow political and ideological framework and there were cases of
its abuse. The other type refers, as he said, to the negation of and
attacks against anti-fascism, with the intention to eliminate it
from the recent Croatian history and strip the Croatian people of
that civilisation achievement.
This has not passed and will never pass in the democratic Croatia,
Racan said.
He concluded that "in line with anti-fascist values, everything
should be done so as to ensure that Croatia is stable in political
and macroeconomic terms".
The president of the Croatian Anti-fascist Fighters' Association,
Ivan Fumic called on the association's members to elect at the
coming elections those who approved anti-fascism and who respected
its values.
Those "who have taken our pensions and property form us and
destroyed our monuments" do not deserve to be elected, Fumic said.
Istria County Prefect Ivan Jakovcic said that nobody had the right
to forget 17,000 victims of the fascist terror in Istria, and added
that without those victims there would be no modern Croatia.
Other veterans from the anti-fascist war, representatives of war
veterans from the recent Homeland Defence War and local officials
addressed that rally as well.
(hina) ms