ZAGREB, July 29, 2018 - The President of the Serb People's Council (SNV) Milorad Pupovac called on several hundred ethnic Serbs who gathered for a commemoration in the village of Srb to observe a minute of silence and pay their respects to the Serbs killed in 1941 in Nebljusi, Suvaj and Donji Lapac and Croats killed in the village of Boričevac and Brotnja.
The uprising day was marked in the village of Srb on Saturday and the commemoration was organised by the Serb People's Council (SNV), the Association of Anti-fascist Fighters and Antifascists and Gračac Municipality.
"After weeks of exposure to Ustasha repression, the population of Lika decided to rise up on 27 July 1941. The uprising was coordinated on both sides of the upper Una river, on the territory of southeastern Lika and southwestern Bosnia," the SNV said in a press release, adding that until the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, that day was observed as the start of the antifascist uprising in Croatia.
"Although no longer a public holiday, that day is observed in honour of the antifascist struggle as a response to systematic repression during the NDH," the SNV said, referring to the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia.
Among those that addressed the commemoration was SNV president Pupovac, and former Croatian President Stjepan Mesić.
Pupovac said that anti-fascism was a value created in the historic moment when populist, nationalist, Nazi and fascist forces had started penetrating pluralism and equality and persecuting people for their beliefs, religion or ethnicity. He added that he wanted anti-fascism to be the constituent element of the Republic of Croatia.
"This, like every other year, top officials have been invited to the commemoration in Serb but they are persistently ignoring the invitations," Pupovac said.
As in recent years, the non-parliamentary A-HSP party will stage a counter-rally, its president Dražen Keleminec told Hina.
