(ANSA) - ZAGREB - A parade of about fifty Croatian neo-Nazis
walked yesterday down the streets of Zagreb, as in previous
years, but this time the American stars-and-stripes waved next
to the symbols of the Croatian pro-Nazi Ustasha movement. The
leader of the neo-Nazi party, Drazen Keleminec, explained that
the American flag wanted to express support for the new
president Donald Trump. At the end of the rally, Keleminec was
taken to the police station for shouting several times the motto
''For the homeland - ready!'', which was used in the Second
World War by the Croatian Ustasha regime, an ally of Hitler and
Mussolini.
The Ustasha were found guilty of thousands of atrocious crimes,
especially at the Jasenovac death camp, where between 1941 and
1945 about 100 thousand people were killed or died, the majority
of Serb and Jewish ethnicity.
This morning, the US Embassy in Zagreb has harshly condemned the
neo-Nazi rally, firmly rejecting ''any attempt to connect this
hated ideology with the United States of America''. The
government in Zagreb, criticized in recent months for its
ambiguous positions towards far-right nationalism, has
''condemned all forms of extremism'' arguing that the gathering
was intended to ''spread fear and intolerance and to act against
government targets''.(ANSA).
© Copyright ANSA - All rights reserved