The crimes of the Ustasha regime continue to be downplayed in Croatia and not enough is being done about historical revisionism, Social Democratic Party leader Pedja Grbin and MP Sandra Bencic (We Can!) said at the Jasenovac Memorial Site on Sunday.

They were speaking ahead of a commemoration for the 78th anniversary of the breakout of the last inmates of the Ustasha-run concentration camp.

“What happened here from 1941 to 1945 was horrific. Humanity was negated and it was shown how little it takes for us humans to become animals which kill, torture and imprison others just because they are different, of another ethnicity, faith, political view,” Grbin said.

Everything can happen again if we don’t cultivate remembrance and pretend that it’s unimportant, he added.

“That’s the least we owe not only to the victims of… Jasenovac and those who stood up in 1945 to save their lives and escape from here. That’s our obligation and duty,” Grbin said.

The SDP will launch an initiative to rename streets, squares and other places in municipalities and towns which were named after persons and events from the Ustasha regime, he announced.

In Croatia, there is still a need to downplay Ustasha crimes and last week we failed to rectify that by deciding how, as a society, we will treat Ustasha insignia and the Ustasha salute, he said.

Our stand is that it should be dealt with through the criminal code because raising fines through the law on minor offences is not enough, it means nothing if the competent authorities fail to instigate proceedings, as has been the case in recent years, Grbin said.

“The government is absolutely not doing enough. That’s why it’s two-faced that Croatia is chairing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance because we failed to do at home everything that we should do at the helm of that organisation and what we should convince others do to. And that’s because of the government and the one at its helm,” he added.

Benčić: It’s important that today we are all together

“It’s important that we are all here together today, that regardless of the decades that pass, we are not forgetting the sacrifice of those people and what kind of regime it was that killed tens of thousands of people just because they were of a different ethnicity, skin colour or politically unsuitable,” said Bencic.

“It’s important we remember that because during this week’s debate in parliament, we saw that there are still political groups in Croatia which find the Ustasha regime acceptable, which think that it should not be condemned, which think that fascist, Nazi and Ustasha symbols and salutes should not be punished.”

There are people like that also in the scientific community because we have attempts to revise the truth and our history, she said.

“That’s why we stood up very loudly and strongly to defend antifascist values as well as basic civilisational values when we pushed for stricter punishment for fascist salutes, Nazi and Ustasha insignia when this week we asked that not only the law on minor offences but the criminal code, too, should clearly stipulate that it is not allowed nor acceptable, and never will be in this society, to tolerate any glorification of fascism, Nazism or Ustashism.”

It is important to tell young generations what happened at Jasenovac, what the Ustasha regime was, and that the Croatian state has nothing to do with that regime nor was it created on it, but on the achievements of antifascism, which defeated that regime, Bencic said.