Croatian War Veterans’ Affairs Minister Tomo Medved on Thursday condemned the controversial statements by Serbian Information and Telecommunications Minister Boris Bratina about Croatia and assessed that “Serbia has long refused to face its role in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 1990s.”
“Serbia is trying to equate responsibility, which is in no way possible. Croatia was the victim of brutal Serbian war of aggression carried out by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) under Milosevic’s leadership and based on the ideas of Greater Serbian policy. It can still be heard today from the (Serbian) Minister of Information, who, like Goebbels, uses false theses to shape the perception of Serbia across the world,” Medved told reporters in Zagreb when asked to comment on the Serbian minister’s statement.
Serbia’s Information and Telecommunications Minister Boris Bratina told the pro-regime Informer TV that Croatia must somehow be punished for its “terrifying involvement in the First World War, especially the Second World War, and from the beginning of the 1990s…actually, throughout the period of socialism,” and put forward the thesis that Croatia, like Ukraine, must pay with territory for its alleged historical crimes.
“Like the Ukrainians, they too must pay for it with territory. There is no other punishment,” Bratina said.
“These narratives of theirs simply will not pass,” the Hina news agency quoted Medved as saying.
He condemned “every form of attempt to distort historical facts and every rhetorical approach that refers to the territory of the Republic of Croatia.”
“We safeguard our territory and are building Croatia as a strong, safe and prosperous country,” the Croatian minister said.
He noted that Serbia is avoiding confrontation with its own past, which has been a “constant feature of Serbian policy for many years.”
Source: N1
