Croatia Ex-President Shown Downplaying WWII Crimes

ZAGREB, 24. JAN. 2017 – Croatian far-right media published videos shot in 1992 of former President Stjepan Mesic downplaying the crimes committed at the World War II fascist concentration camp at Jasenovac. The video in which Stjepan Mesic speaks about Jasenovac: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/videos-reveal-croatian-ex-president-shocking-wwii-statements-01-24-2017
Far-right news site Maxportal and local TV show Bujica on Monday evening made public two videos from 1992 in which former Croatian President Stjepan Mesic controversially questions the death toll at the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II. In the first video, Mesic claimed that Jasenovac, which was run by the Croatian WWII fascist Ustasa movement, was just “a labour camp” – a theory advocated by Croatia’s far right and revisionist historians. He said that people died from diseases like typhus and dysentery at the camp but were not executed “because who would work [in the camp’s labour facilities] the following day?” “People were killed, but [only] before coming to Jasenovac. When someone came to Jasenovac, he was already practically saved, as a worker,” added Mesic, who was Croatia’s president between 2000 and 2010. Mesic’s secretary told BIRN that the former Croatian president “won’t comment on the issue at the moment”. According to research by the Jasenovac Memorial Site, 83,145 people – 47,627 Serbs, 16,173 Roma, 13,116 Jews and the others anti-fascists – have been identified on a name-by-name basis as having died at the concentration camp during the war, a figure which is not yet final. 20,101 of them were children. In the video, Mesic said that 25,000 people died at Jasenovac. “Sometimes 15 days or a month passed without anyone being killed or dying,” he said. The video in which Mesic talks about Ustasa minister Andrija Artukovic:
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/videos-reveal-croatian-ex-president-shocking-wwii-statements-01-24-2017
The issue of Jasenovac remains highly controversial in Croatia, where hardline right-wingers have made continued attempts to downplay its brutality in attempts to rehabilitate the Ustasa. Mesic also said that Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito knew that the death toll at Jasenovac was inflated and insisted that the camp – which closed in 1945 – actually continued to work under the Yugoslav Communist regime “until 1947” to detain captured Croats who were enemies of the new regime. “On the camp site, there are Croats buried deep [underground],” he said.