Prime Minister Milanovic: antifascism is a fight between the good and justice and the evil and injustice

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Saturday that people who do not understand the role of Josip Broz Tito 70 years ago and the role of Franjo Tudjman decades later do not understand the gravity of the situations in which the two leaders had found themselves.

"Those people should be understood. They were our leaders, they were the way they were, whether you like or not. We didn't have anyone better than them and we have to live with that. That's Croatian history," Milanovic told a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the victory over fascism at Zagreb's Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall.

The ceremony, held under the patronage of the Croatian Parliament, Government and the Federation of Antifascist Fighters and Antifascists (SABA), was attended, among others, by Parliament Speaker Josip Leko, Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic, Enterprise Minister Gordan Maras, Environment Minister Mihael Zmajlovic, Culture Minister Berislav Sipus, former President Stjepan Mesic, members of Parliament, the secretary for international affairs of the strongest opposition Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, Miro Kovac, senior military officers, surviving veterans of the National Liberation Struggle, members of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences (HAZU), representatives of religious communities, and foreign diplomats accredited in Croatia.

"The National Liberation Army in Croatia comprised 300,000 people, Croats and Serbs, comparatively the largest number of people in the former Yugoslavia and incomparably more than any other European nation. All those nations fell under Hitler and Mussolini, and only here was the war fought out of conviction, out of a sense of justice, for freedom," the PM said.

He said that many who had joined in the antifascist struggle did so out of a sense of justice and did not know what the Communist Party was or who led it. "It was a fight between the good and justice on the one side and the evil and injustice on the other. This is the only way to explain such a massive movement that only pursued human values."

Milanovic said that present-day Croatia had emerged from a war in which its people were threatened with occupation and that the people who had given their lives and good health for the country deserved the deepest respect.

He also noted that in mentioning crimes committed after 1945 a clear distinction should be made "between mourning and nostalgia for a failed state that stole the Croatian name and mourning for the people killed, which shouldn't have happened."

Warning that the forces of xenophobia, hostility and intolerance were on the rise again in Europe, Milanovic concluded his speech with the words "No pasaran!"

 
(Text and photo: Hina)

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