“We gathered because of the Day of Uprising, which was necessary to protect the people, to save bare lives,” said Boris Milosevic (SNV). He added that today, those who try to disrupt this gathering and diminish its significance are louder.

He emphasised that the struggle of the insurgents was just and that the Serbian and Croatian people were together in this fight.

“Thanks to the struggle of the insurgents, Croatia was on the right side of history at the end of World War II. ZAVNOH and anti-fascism are embedded in the Constitution thanks to the insurgents and their fight,” Milosevic said, adding that the uprising should not be idealized and that one should not deny that there were innocent victims.

“The insurgents committed crimes, and we regret them,” Milosevic stated, adding that “crimes cannot deny the righteousness and legitimacy of the need for the uprising.”

Calling for an uprising precisely then, in July 1941, meant having immense trust in one’s own people, believing in the righteousness of the struggle and its victorious outcome, said Franjo Habulin, president of SABA.

“Today we mark the beginning of the mass uprising of the people of Croatia, Croats, Serbs, and members of other minorities, who took up arms in 1941 against a much stronger occupier, but also against those who, on the wings of that occupation, usurped power in Zagreb and established a quasi-state, essentially an apparatus for realizing the criminal Ustaša plans for an ethnically pure Croatia,” Habulin said.

Habulin: Frankovic’s speech represents a manifestation of racist ideology

He claimed that the (Croatian) state, “from its early days, has at least been lenient” towards the efforts of followers of the Ustasha, or neo-Nazi ideology, to drag the victors of World War II through the mud and turn them from victors into losers. “We cannot accept that,” he said.

Regarding the recent speech by Dubrovnik mayor Mato Frankovic in Cista Velika, which ended with the Ustaša salute “ZDS,” he said it “represents a manifestation of racist ideology.” He considered it an aggression on the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia and added that he had not heard any serious condemnation, much less sanctions.

“The State Attorney’s Office is silent, it has turned its head, there is no one to protect the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia,” he said, questioning whether we live in Croatia proclaimed by the Constitution.