BASTAŠIĆ: INSTITUTIONS OF SRPSKA, BiH AND SERBIA MUST REACT TO MONSTROUS CLAIMS MADE IN CROATIAN PARLIAMENT

BANJA LUKA, OCTOBER 29 /SRNA/ – The head of the Jadovno 1941 Association from Banja Luka Dušan Bastašić said that the shameless remarks about Jasenovac made during the roundtable in the Croatian Parliament insult the victims of this notorious camp, which is the Auschwitz of the Balkans, and the feelings of their descendants, calling on the institutions of Serbia, Republika Srpska, and BiH to react to this revision of history.

Bastašić told SRNA that one must not forget that a large number of people from the territory of today's Republika Srpska were killed in the Jasenovac camp, noting that his own father, as a boy of not yet twelve years old, was a Jasenovac camp inmate, having been taken there along with the men from the area of Grubišno Polje. "My father was imprisoned in the Jasenovac camp for two months. Sick with typhus and near death, he was released. His testimony has been recorded on film and in his book `Bilogora and Grubišno Polje 1941–1991,` in which he recounts the fear of the Ustaše, hunger, horrific events, bitter cold, and the death of his young friend from Kozara," Bastašić said. He asked how Jasenovac could have been a "labour camp," as claimed at the roundtable, and what kind of productive labour could my father have done when he wasn’t even twelve years old?” "It is monstrous to claim that the Kozara children voluntarily went to Jasenovac to learn trades," Bastašić emphasized. Batašić said it was unacceptable that the Croatian Parliament hosted the country’s most extreme right-wing radicals at this event. "One must not forget that it has already become normalized in Croatia's highest legislative body that some MPs to shout the Ustaša salute `For the Homeland – Ready!` and that the Speaker of Parliament Gordan Jandroković was among the half-million spectators at Thompson's concert," Bastašić pointed out. Bastašić said that relevant institutions must react appropriately to this controversial event in the Parliament. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the Council of Ministers must react to this, as a number of Muslim anti-fascists were also killed in Jasenovac, as well as Jewish associations in Serbia and BiH," Bastašić said. The Croatian Anti-Fascist League criticized the roundtable titled "A Scientific Approach to Researching Jasenovac Victims" held in the Croatian Parliament, calling it a gathering of unscrupulous manipulators who falsify the tragedy that occurred more than 80 years ago.