ZAGREB, 22 June, 2021 - President Zoran Milanović attended a concert by the Croatian Navy Orchestra held in commemoration of Antifascist Struggle Day in Split on Monday evening, where he said that without harmony among the Croatian people there cannot be any progress.

"Without that harmony among the Croatian people, there cannot be any progress. We are few and only with joint effort, regardless of how worn out that may sound but it is worth repeating, can we go on further and can we progress," Milanović underscored.

This gathering here today, peaceful, civilised, civic, leftist, as well as traditionally Dalmatian, is an indicator that this is a normal and peaceful society that needs only a little to agree on some matters, he said.

He announced that he would attend the Antifascist Struggle Day commemoration in Brezovica on Tuesday, where the first antifascist uprising took place. 

Milanović said that he had come to Split "because of his grandfather and his brother and his grandmother and her brothers who did not go to war as antifascists, because they did not know what that meant."

He named those killed in the First Split Detachment comprising young communists from Split, saying that from today's comfortable perspective, that is difficult to comprehend.

"We do not have people like that today. They were the spark that lit the uprising, the people's uprising... I know that this day, these days, this holiday bothers some people in Croatia. I know that there was injustice, murder, unreason, because every revolution is rough, raw, unjust and quite often, if it doesn't eat them, it harms its children but that was the price they had to pay," he confirmed.

He recalled that the First Split Detachment comprised young communists from Split. "To be fair, they weren't fighters for democracy, they were revolutionaries, fierce, sometimes unjust," said Milanović.

He added that fifty years later some other people, Croatian fighters for freedom in the Homeland War, were prepared to courageously enter into battle, risking their lives.

Recently-elected Split Mayor Ivica Puljak attended the commemoration. It is our permanent obligation to create a society of equal opportunities in which freedom and mutual respect is accessible to everyone, he said.

"We always have to remember the fact that Croatia was founded on the values of antifascism and the Homeland War. In the hope that the contemporary challenges bring us even closer and strengthen our efforts to build a tolerant country open to everyone and to promote good on behalf of our future and the future of our children, I congratulate everyone on Antifascist Struggle Day," said Puljak.

The commemoration in Split was organised by the City of Split and Split-Dalmatia County as well as the county and city associations of antifascist fighters and antifascists, and the Association of Homeland War Veterans and Antifascists.

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ZAGREB, June 22, 2020 - President Zoran Milanovic said in his congratulatory note on Monday on the occasion of the national Antifascist Struggle Day that present-day Croatia would not have existed without the WWII anti-fascist resistance movement in the country.

Croatia marks Antifascist Struggle Day on June 22 in memory of 22 June 1941 when the first antifascist unit was formed in the Brezovica forest near Sisak in the then occupied Europe.

The Croatian president writes in his message posted on his Facebook account that "Antifascist Struggle Day revives memories of "the unique uprising in 1941, the uprising of our people, who were ready to say 'no', before all others in the then Europe occupied and destroyed by Fascists and Nazis."

He underscored that the participants in the first unit, set up in Brezovica Forest, enabled their followers in the months and years to come, to grow into the Croatian people's antifascist army.

"It was an army that fought for freedom, an army that ended the war on the right side, that is on the victorious side, which was important for the survival of the Croatian state," Milanovic writes.

"The good defeated the evil then, we chose a difficult path, but, let me repeat, we chose the right side as we did many times before and after that," the president said in his message.

This is our Croatian history about which our children should know. We can discuss that, but we cannot negate or deny that he added.

Present-day Croatia is a democracy and the country of the Croatian nation that respects all its citizens regardless of which minority they belong to, this is a state defended during the Homeland War, he added.