After Kutina and Jasenovac, controversial memorial plaques will be unveiled in Zagreb and Velika Gorica.
In anticipation of the government’s commission that will propose appropriate legal framework which should regulate symbols of totalitarian systems which existed through the history of Croatia, namely the Ustasha regime during the Second World War and the communist regime from 1945 to 1990, volunteers of HOS (part of Croatian forces during the 1990s Homeland War) are continuing with their activities which were the reason why Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced that the commission would be formed, reports Večernji List on January 17, 2017.
In the next few days, memorial plaques which include the emblem of the HOS, which itself contains the “For Homeland Ready” (Za Dom Spremni) slogan, which was also used during the times of the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi-puppet state during the Second World War, will be unveiled in Velika Gorica and Zagreb. Similar plaques have already been unveiled in Jasenovac and Kutina. The first plaque in Jasenovac provoked the strongest reactions, since Jasenovac was the site of the largest concentration camp in Croatia, where several tens of thousands of Serbs, antifascist Croats and others were killed during the Second World War.
Similar plaques will soon be unveiled in Dalmatia, near Split, and in other parts of Croatia as well. “For now, we are honouring our members who were killed during the defence of Vukovar, and eventually we might unveil many such plaques. The intention is to put at least one such plaque in all major towns”, said Damir Markuš, one of the initiators of the whole idea, which he does not consider controversial.
He pointed out that their association, with its official signage and “For Homeland Ready” slogan, is recognized as such by statutes of the state administration and the Law on Rights of War Veterans, and that the Union of HOS Volunteers’ Associations was admitted to membership of the World Veterans Federation in 2006.
“Despite all the unreasonable attacks on HOS volunteers, we just want to show that the best sons have given their lives for their country”, said Markuš. “We look forward to the government’s commission since we want to finally resolve all differences and hope that the commission will include people like historian Josip Jurčević, who is well-informed about our arguments. They say that we are ‘modern Ustasha’, but that is nonsense. We do not want to be connected with the Second World War, but just with the Homeland War”, said Markuš.
