President Milanović Attends Commemoration for Anti-Fascist Struggle Day at Memorial in Brezovica
“This is an opportunity, on Anti-Fascist Struggle Day, to ask ourselves what the Partisans mean to us today, what Sutjeska, Neretva and the thousands of young people who died horrific deaths mean to us? What does that mean for relations between Croats and Serbs in our country which cannot be reset for the last hundred years,” the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović said at the Anti-Fascist Struggle Day commemoration on the occasion of the 83rd anniversary of the foundation of the first Partisan detachment and the first anti-fascist unit in Croatia in this part of Europe held at the Memorial in the Memorial Park in Brezovica near Sisak.
President Milanović noted that he didn’t come to Brezovica last year because he went to Sutjeska and pointed out that Croats and Serbs fought together against fascism and, in that context, highlighted the relations between Croats and Serbs throughout history. “Croats and Serbs were not united by an age-old hatred but by cooperation and lost opportunities. We keep hiding behind the idea that it is an age-old hatred that could never be overcome and could never have ended differently, but the truth is quite different,” the President said.
He said that the story of brave people gathering in Brezovica in 1941 boils down to the fact that they were all Croats. “That’s incorrect, because they didn’t see themselves that way. They were freedom fighters and communists, and that is their very important characteristic, a kind of people we cannot understand today. And all these Croatian leaders and great men whose names were mentioned here for a reason, including Tuđman’s, were first of all communists, internationalists, and then Croats, and that matured in them.” They were political commissars, namely Franjo Tuđman and Janko Bobetko and some others among them. Thousands of Dalmatians, as well as Dalmatian Serbs, laid down their lives in the battles of the Sutjeska and Neretva rivers. And several thousand Serbs from Banija tried to preserve something with the brotherhood in arms that the imperial and invading logic of the Belgrade clique did not allow. And at the end of 1991 it was only possible to take up arms and defend Croatia,” President Milanović added and in his speech recalled the relations between Croats and Serbs throughout history and the unity that arose from the awareness of living in the same homeland.
Citing the injustices and horrors that are happening in the world today – from Ukraine, Palestine, Gaza and Iraq before that – he warned that someone who is powerful, who is strong and dominant wants to be even stronger. “In the soul and character of our people, besides having a stance, peacemaking also lives. We are a member of the Alliance, it is our choice and I believe it is a good choice. We are a member of NATO, but we are not a mere follower and we are not a parrot that will repeat a few learned phrases written by someone else. We have our own position, our history, our awareness of ourselves, of who we are, what we are and where we’ve been, with whom we have lived and with whom we should continue to live. We are masters of our destiny, aware on this day that this small number of brave people, who were a special kind of people, deserve our respect – as Croats and as communists, then as dissidents and fighters for Croatian rights”, President Milanović concluded.
Speaking at the Anti-Fascist Struggle Day commemoration in addition to the President of the Republic were the president of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Habulin, the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia and delegate of the Prime Minister Gordan Grlić Radman and the Mayor of Petrinja and delegate of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament Magdalena Komes.
Alongside President Milanović was the Adviser to the President for Human Rights and Civil Society Melita Mulić.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Marko Beljan