The SABA RH antifascist alliance in Croatia will organise an international conference on fascism and anti-fascism in the present-day Europe in Zagreb on 20 and 21 February.

Presenting the goals of the conference, the association’s leader Franjo Habulin said at a news conference in Zagreb that the event would be part of the efforts to counter the strengthening of extreme right wing politics and more and more aggressive attacks on the values of the anti-fascist struggle, which, he said, were the biggest values of the present-day Europe.

Habulin said that the victory against the fascist regimes in 1945, after they had caused the Second World War, did not mean that fascism had disappeared from the historical scene.

He also pointed out that there were “more refined appearances” of fascism in a great number of European countries.

Habulin: Historical revisionism stemming from Council of Europe Resolution 1481

He criticised Resolution 1481 adopted by the Council of Europe in 2006 which underlined the need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian communist regimes as a document that equates fascism and communism. He added that that historical revisionism also originated from that document.

In the resolution 1481/2006 of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), issued on 25 January 2006 during its winter session, the Council of Europe “strongly condemns crimes of totalitarian communist regimes”. The Parliamentary Assembly refers to its Resolution 1096 (1996) on measures to dismantle the heritage of the former communist totalitarian systems. The paper condemned “the massive human rights violations committed by totalitarian communist regimes”. It also “calls on all communist or post-communist parties in its member states which have not yet done so to reassess the history of communism and their own past, clearly distance themselves from the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes and condemn them without any ambiguity.”

Habulin told the news conference that the rise of neo-fascism was accompanied by the process of degrading and vilifying anti-fascist fighters from the Second World War and their contemporary followers.

The organisers of the Zagreb conference have invited representatives of anti-fascist associations from 25 European countries, including 15 EU member-states.

Some of the guests will be Vilmos Hanti, the head of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters – Association of Anti-Fascists also known by its French initials FIR, as well as Dan-Viggo Bergtun, the president of the World Veterans Federation.