Ultra-right nationalist Croatian Party of Rights holding hate conference Friday

Right-wing circles in Croatia are planning to launch an international nationalist conference this Friday in Zagreb. The conference will feature a gathering in support of Croatian generals condemned by the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. The ultra-right nationalist Croatian Party of Rights has announced that ultra-right and related parties from Austria, Bulgaria, Flanders (Belgium), France, Germany and Hungary have been invited.

Those attending will include the “Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement” from Hungary, which has announced Hungarian territorial claims on parts of Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. After the conference, a march will follow to support the Croatian generals condemned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the wartime conflicts in the former Yugoslavia (1991-1995).

Croatian President Ivo Josipović has criticized the planned event, saying that the participants are promoting programs involving hatred. A local non-governmental organization, Civic Initiative, has called the program a fascist event and called for a counter-demonstration to take place on Saturday in Zagreb.

Today members of the Croatian Party of Rights laid a wreath at the grave of the parents of their fascist predecessor, Ante Pavelić, on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia. That state was declared by the Ustaša (Croatian Revolutionary Movement) in 1941. It was led by Pavelić, whose puppet government deprived a million people of their lives by committing genocide against Jewish people, Romani people, and Serbian people. Many of them were tortured in the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp.