"The previous government incorporated this day, August 23, into our legislation and we pay due respect to that. But we don't want this day, which was incorporated into Croatian legislation because people in the last century suffered, to be turned into a show. Many have been doing it in Croatia these days, some are doing it right now, trying to divide people in this country for no reason," Milanovic said at the start of a government session.
He said the government had paid its respects to the victims of Jasenovac, where genocide and mass crime were committed in World War Two, as well as of Tezno, where people were killed without a trial in 1945, only because they had fought on the side of the Axis powers.
"That was a crime. We respect that and will probably go there in future as well."
Milanovic recalled that on August 23, 1939, the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union aka the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed and that the countries which stayed behind the Iron Curtain after WW2 incorporated it into their legislation as a day of remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
"Germany didn't do that nor did any other country which had liberal democracy after the war, with the exception of Sweden," he said, adding that Croatia's history and societal development after the war had been considerably different from what was happening in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary although, he said, "the suffering after the war was perhaps even greater here."
"Our frustrations and hardships are considerably different. Our relationship to that tragedy can't and shouldn't be changed with any universal laws," Milanovic said.