The Serb National Council on Sunday commemorated 1,285 people from all over the Banija region killed by the Ustasha regime on 25 and 26 July 1941 in Banski Grabovac near Petrinja.

The crime followed the first armed operation by the Banija Partisans in the night of 23 and 24 July.

“Present-day Europe and Croatia were founded on the values of antifascism and the victory of the antifascist coalition in World War Two. Yet we are witness to a total dismantling of those values in practically all of Europe,” the president of the Alliance of Antifascist Fighters and Antifascists, Franjo Habulin, said at the commemoration.

An openly false image of the past is being systematically depicted, while the character of the Nazi-styled 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia as well as of the antifascist struggle are being falsified, he said.

“That discourse has entered the public to such an extent, receiving the support of even some of the highest state officials, that it can be stopped only through systematic and quality education,” Habulin added.

Sisak-Moslavina County deputy head Mirjana Olujić thanked the antifascists for coming together in Banski Grabovac every year, nurturing the values of antifascism and the National Liberation Struggle.

“The domestic fascists were the Ustasha who opened (concentration) camps for the domestic population. They killed and terrorised the domestic population, and no revision of history can wash them of the crimes committed and the fact that they were Fascism’s war allies,” said Boris Milošević, MP of the Independent Democratic Serb Party.

There is no Croatian antifascism or Croatian Partisans without the Serbs in Croatia, he added.

Monuments and museums keep memories and the whole Banija is one big monument to antifascism, said Melita Mulić, presidential advisor on human rights and civil society.

“We owe lasting gratitude to all Partisan fighters, just as to all Homeland War defenders who, despite having been advanced in years, included the one-time Partisan fighters who contributed to the final realisation of the historical ideal of many generations of the Croatian people for an independent state,” she added.