Nationalists attack NGO activists over Croatian Nazi monument
DATELINE: Zagreb
Around 200 nationalists Monday confronted representatives of
non-governmental organisations in the central town of Slunj who wanted to
protest against a monument erected to a Croatian World War Two Nazi commander,
HINA news agency reported.
Activists of the NGOs tried to protest against the monument to Jure
Francetic, commander of the Ustashe, the forces of the Nazi puppet state that
ruled Croatia during the war, but the nationalists prevented them from doing so
by organising a counter-protest.
The NGO activists, who came from the capital Zagreb, wanted the monument to
be removed. President Stipe Mesic last year condemned local authorities for
erecting such a monument.
Special police units had to intervene and protect NGO activists, otherwise
they would have been beaten by angry nationalists, the report said.
Francetic, killed in 1943, was commander of the so-called "Black Legion"
Ustashe battalion, responsible for numerous war crimes against Croatian Jews,
Serbs and Roma during the war.