On 18 November Remembrance Day for all Victims of the Homeland War President Milanović will be in Škabrnja, and the day before in Vukovar
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović announced that this year on 18 November, Remembrance Day for all Victims of the Homeland War and Remembrance Day for the Victims of Vukovar and Škabrnja, he will be in Škabrnja, while the day before on 17 November he will pay tribute to the victims of the Homeland War in Vukovar.
“I will go to Vukovar on 17 November for the unveiling of the monument to Kata Šoljić and that day I will lay wreaths in Vukovar. On 18 November I will finally go to Škabrnja where I haven’t been since 2007”, President Milanović told reporters in Požega. His visit to Škabrnja was no easy choice because Vukovar takes priority, but “I think it’s time for me to be in Škabrnja on that day”.
The President rejected totally unfounded media speculations of two processions in Vukovar. “Last year the procession wasn’t split”, he said, turning to the media: “If I may ask you, don’t create problems where there are none. There are no indications of possible conflicts, someone obviously wants one. This time, it seems it’s not Plenković or I”.
President Milanović referred to yesterday’s press release of the Mothers Srebrenica accusing him of being “a fascist who pretends to be a democrat”. “This is actually a reply to me from Bakir Izetbegović bragging before the cameras that he is behind the Mothers of Srebrenica’s press release, the mothers of the people killed in Srebrenica, women of a certain age, with all due respect to them. He brags that they write their press releases. The last press release on Twitter is a moral disaster. And from this moment they are just another political organization, not someone for whom I should show a great deal of respect and caution when I speak. They wrote that I’m a fascist who pretends to be a democrat. This is unintelligent, therefore the one who wrote that, that copywriter from the SDA or Meshihat said something good, therefore I’m a fascist who has been suppressing this for the past 20 years and I behave as a democrat”, President Milanović commented.
He reminded that he visited Srebrenica and always fought for the rights of all minorities in Croatia: “I fought for the rights of all minorities in Croatia, including the Bosniaks even though their rights are at a high level, incomparably greater than the rights of the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina who aren’t a minority but a constituent people. And then they write that I pretend to be a democrat, but that I’m a fascist. I will repeat – six hundred soldiers from the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past 20 years filed through institutions such as this one and received an education, the majority are Croats, but there are Bosniaks as well, maybe even the sons of those killed in Srebrenica. Did they come to a hostile country? Did their colonels attend a Croatian War College, ironically the Dr. Franjo Tuđman Croatian Defence Academy to receive an NCO education, the Command and Staff School, six hundred of them, isn’t that enough? Do Croatian Canadair planes extinguish fires for free in BiH as well, even farther from the border where Bosniaks live? Is that a hostile country? That country is a member of the European Union and NATO and it alone will decide how to reply to these insolent and unintelligent insults that we listen to every day”, President Milanović stated.