Lawmakers on Wednesday condemned Sunday's attack against seasonal workers in Supetar on the island of Brac and warned of the occurrence of similar incidents of violence and hate against ethnic minorities.

MP Milorad Pupovac (SDSS) spoke about hate and violence, adding that although during his whole education in Croatia, nobody had ever taught him or other students to hate anyone, however, visits to the WWII Ustasha-led Jasenovac concentration camp were not introduced in education as something that should be done.

On the other hand, Pupovac criticised the situation in which, he said, students who visit Vukovar, were misinformed there that parliamentarian Vojislav Stanimirovic is a war criminal.

If he is then so am I. I’m a war criminal that fights against hate and against war for the past 30 year and I will continue to fight for a group of criminals like that, said Pupovac, underscoring that no criminal proceedings had ever been launched against Stanimirovic.

Pupovac believes that it isn’t surprising then that young people turn to violence and that that is not their fault but of those siting in the office of the president who do not hear cries like “kill the Serb,” or those who sing “For the Homeland Ready” by a certain singer.

MP Hrvoje Zekanovic (HRAST) retorted to Pupovac claiming that on the day Vukovar and its hospital fell into the hands of the Serb rebels supported by the Yugoslav People’s Army in 1991, Stanimirovic said in that city that “the last bastion of the Ustasha has fallen in Vukovar.”

Zekanovic accused Pupovac of downplaying the Homeland War and that he has never referred to it as that, the “Homeland War.”

Zekanovic: Everyone is talking about one incident because it involved 2 ethnic Serbs and three Croatians

Zekanovic too condemned the incident on Brac but mentioned the 1,624 violent attacks against that occurred last year. “The entire country is talking about one incident because it involved two (ethnic) Serbs and three Croatians, everyone is talking about that yet we are ignoring the other 1,624 cases,” he said.

No one talks about the other violence but we will be talking about one broken nose for years. Enough of Milorad Pupovac and his constant talk of bad politics here in parliament. Croatia is not a country of hatred, Zekanovic added.

HDZ Whip: Verbal violence in parliament is transposed in the street

HDZ whip Branko Bacic most severely condemned the hooligan behaviour in Croatian streets directed against a certain number of ethnic Serbs and demanded that state institutions appropriately punish their perpetrators.

“We have to ask ourselves, are we in the parliament with our talk here, which is often verbal violence, contributing to that verbal violence being transposed into Croatian streets which then becomes physical violence in which certain members of our society suffer, particularly ethnic Serbs,” Bacic said appealing to MPs to defuse the tension.

Deploring the violence MP Ranko Ostojic of SDP said that the firefighter Tomo who intervened to defend the victims of the assault, “is becoming a symbol of a vast majority in Croatia, those quiet people who are prepared to protect others from violence.”

Ostojic warned that the state has to start taking action against thugs.

The SDP parliamentarian believes that the condemnation made by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic or other ministers was lame and added that they should look to how Supetar’s mayor Ivana Markovic of the SDP handled that situation.