President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic visited the Jasenovac memorial site on Friday morning, eschewing official protocol to pay respects to victims of the World War II-era concentration camp who had perished there.
She was accompanied by Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, the long-time head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) human rights group, who had confirmed earlier this week that he would be Grabar-Kitarovic’s representative at the official state-sponsored remembrance ceremony on Sunday.
Her visit was unannounced, with no media or other state officials present, just like her visit to the memorial in 2015, only months after she had taken office in February 2015.
“Every visit to the Jasenovac memorial site always invokes feelings of deep regret for crimes committed here, and of compassion for all the innocent victims. No political goal or order can ever justify crimes committed in its name. Croatia, as a democratic country, which was created on the basis of all the positive values of the Croatian people’s historic fight for freedom, which also includes anti-fascism, unambiguously condemns crimes committed in this camp, and it respectfully and permanently keeps alive the memory of all of its victims, in its determination to uphold human rights for all its citizens as a guarantee for peace and progress,” Grabar-Kitarovic wrote in the remembrance book at Jasenovac, her Office said on Friday.
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The annual Jasenovac remembrance ceremony has become a politically charged affair in recent years, with groups representing antifascists and the Jewish and Serb ethnic minorities eschewing the annual state-sponsored event to mark the anniversary of the 1945 escape of some 54 prisoners from the camp run by the Croatian World War II fascist regime.
The largest antifascist group SABA and the man group representing ethnic Serbs, the Serb National Council (SNV), announced earlier this week they would instead hold a memorial ceremony on Saturday, April 21, while the Jewish community held its own remembrance event earlier this month.
All three said they would not attend the official event scheduled for Sunday, April 23, in protest against what they say is the government’s tacit approval of the use of World War II-era fascist slogans and rhetoric by some Croatian right wing groups. On Wednesday, the Roma ethnic minority MP Veljko Kajtazi said that the largest Roma association would attend both ceremonies, and announced their own additional event in August.
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