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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8457)	5/14/1999 8:32:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

I know you do. I try to separate your intentional simplification in the name of hope in your rhetoric..:) Croatian government blamed for neo-Nazi violence 09:11 a.m. May 11, 1999 Eastern By Davor Huic ZAGREB, May 11 (Reuters) - Croatia's nationalist government on Tuesday came under strong criticism from human rights groups and opposition figures for its alleged ambiguity towards Croatia's fascist past and tolerance of neo-Nazi ideology. ''The Croatian government's stand towards anti-fascism is deeply ambiguous,'' said Stipe Mesic, an opposition leader and former close aide of President Franjo Tudjman, but better known as the last president of old federal Yugoslavia. ''On one hand, they pay lip service to anti-fascism, but on the other they (observe) a model of rule that could soon take on fascist characteristics,'' Mesic told a news conference. Mesic was beaten with a club, and several other persons were punched and stoned when a group of neo-Nazi thugs tried to break up a peaceful celebration of victory over fascism in Europe in Zagreb on Sunday organised by opposition groups. The gathering took place on the former Victims of Fascism Square, which Tudjman's HDZ nationalists renamed the Square of Great Croats soon after coming to power in 1990 -- one of the early displays of ambiguity Mesic spoke about. He said police did nothing to prevent a small but loud group of neo-Nazis, clad in black shirts, singing fascist songs and raising hands in Nazi-style salute, from shouting abuse, whistling, hurling stones and even tear gas at the gathering. ''It was clear that the so called 'protest' was very well organised,'' Mesic said, accusing senior officials of Tudjman's ruling HDZ party of orchestrating it. ''This was just a rehearsal for the big thing. If the democratic public does not raise its voice against this, we will be counting dead bodies next time around,'' Mesic said. While Croatian state media accorded little importance to the event, portraying it as a clash of right and left-wing extremists, the incident attracted international attention. ''Such outbursts are the product of tolerance exhibited by the Croatian government toward right-wing extremists who glorify the country's Ustasha past and dream of fascist future,'' said Efraim Zuroff, director of Simon Wiesenthal centre in Jeruzalem. He referred to the World War Two Croatian Ustasha regime, allied to Nazi Germany, that was responsible for the systematic murder of tens of thousands of minority Serbs, Jews, gypsies as well as anti-fascist Croats in 1941-45. ''In the past we have urged the government to take legal measures to ban the use of Ustasha symbols, songs, and salutes but such suggestions have been ignored. Sunday's violence is one of the results of this policy,'' Zuroff said in a statement faxed to Reuters. One of the organisers of Sunday's gathering, Zoran Pusic, said years of condoning public outbursts of ethnic hatred by the regime and the media it controls had encouraged those who support violence as a way of settling political differences. He called on the Roman Catholic Church to rein in priests who take part in glorifying Croatia's Nazi past. A well-known Dominican priest was present at the gathering, captured by cameras among rightists shouting in anger. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited