Brezovica - Addressing the commemoration, on the occasion of the Anti-Fascist Struggle Day in the Brezovica forest outside Sisak on Monday, Deputy Parliament Speaker Dragica Zgrebec said that hate speech and neo-fascist incidents in Croatia should be replaced by a language of reason.
- Historians are still faced with the difficult and responsible task of promoting common sense and an awareness that anti-fascism is one of the biggest values in Croatia's history... by presenting facts and objectively describing events from World War II and the post-war period, Zgrebec said.
She added that European countries were capable of countering neo-Nazi and neo-fascist incidents and that such incidents were condemned by all relevant segments of those societies.
- In Croatia, too, the glorification of the Ustasha ideology and the NDH (Independent State of Croatia), even if it happens sporadically, must be condemned by politicians, media, civil society organisations and the media. We should build our prosperity on the bright examples from our past, looking to the future, said Zgrebec. She added that the anti-fascist movement in Yugoslavia and Croatia was headed by communists.
- That fact cannot be denied, however, the movement was not a communist but a people's movement because only as such could it have mobilised people to resist the stronger, more organised and better equipped military force. Anti-fascism should be seen as a movement against fascism and Nazism, a movement based on the highest democratic principles and negation of the Nazi and fascist ideologies, she said, adding that anti-fascism was in the foundations of the modern Croatian state, as stated in the country's constitution. (Hina)