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I have never come across a child, a grandchild, a brother, sister or spouse of a WWII Nazi war criminal who defended the actions of that war criminal who contributed to the horror the world knows as the Holocaust, or mocked their victims or the victims’ right to justice. To defend or justify such actions means absolute disregard and belittling of the victims, and is inhumane, to say the least. And to make a mockery of a mention of totalitarian regimes’ crimes is gut-wrenchingly appalling.

A process of serious and overdue reckoning with communist crimes in former Yugoslavia, which have been swept under the carpet for too long in the name of ‘antifascism’, has last week, 23 August, included commemorations at various mass graves in Croatia, filled with innocent Croats murdered by Josip Broz Tito’s communist totalitarian regime. Similar commemorations have been held in Croatia since 2011, remembering victims of both WWII Ustashe regime (allied at the time with Nazi Germany) and Partisans (Josip Broz Tito’s communists, leaning at the time to Russia’s Stalin and during the war gained support from the Allied forces).

On the occasion of commemorating victims of all totalitarian regimes Tomislav Karamarko, leader of the largest parliamentary opposition party – Croatian Democratic Union /HDZ – said to journalists:

“That which is a tragedy, an absurdity in Croatia, is that we look at totalitarianisms with different diopters. Not we from HDZ, of course, but a part of the governing nomenclature of the left political structure, who call themselves socialists. That’s no left political option but nostalgia for Yugoslavia and the evidence of that is seen in their determined and hard protection of the person and the actions of the big criminal Josip Broz Tito. Even today, they would like to name streets and town squares after him and place busts of him in their offices.”

In this, Karamarko concluded, the Croatian victims are not recognised. “Today, we speak with sorrow and grief about the fact that in Croatia we cannot talk normally and freely about communist crimes. There are more than 900 mass graves (pits) in Croatia, in Slovenia there are 600 and in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are over 200 pits filled with Croatian bones and skeletons. We cannot speak about that because he who has the command responsibility for those crimes (Josip Broz Tito) still has his name on hundreds of streets and Croatian town squares,” said Karamarko.

Speaking as member of a panel commemorating the victims of totalitarian regimes in Dubrovnik during the week Karamarko announced that if HDZ wins government at the next elections in Croatia they would implement a partial lustration (removing individuals who held high positions in communist Yugoslavia from high public office in Croatia). He also said that he would remove Tito from town squares and streets and that they would revise the school textbooks to reflect Tito’s person and his actions and speak more openly about the post-WWII crimes committed by Tito’s Partisans.

What a great day for Croatia that would be! Croatia simply cannot move forward into true democracy until human rights to justice for all victims is achieved – no matter which side of politics perpetrated crimes against innocent people.

But wouldn’t you know it: out comes Tito’s granddaughter Sasa Broz! She reacts with derision and irony, mocking Karamarko and his announcements as to how he will deal with the crimes of communism, headed by her grandfather Josip Broz Tito.

Obviously, in this, mocking the multitudes of victims her grandfather sent to death.

She wrote on her Facebook timeline (ad this was picked up by the Croatian media): “Bravo for Karamarko, he is my new idol! It’s really not an easy job finding an adequate ‘medicine’ for our sick society. I knew my Prince would ride in one day, with warm deer glance, in a protective demeanour toward the Croatian nation. May you (Karamarko) live for a 1000 years!… Once the Croats are free from my grandfather’s damned soul I will vote in favour of all streets and town squares that held my grandfather’s name be renamed into the serene and noble Tomislav Karamarko Square – AMEN!…”

The depravity in this reaction by Tito’s granddaughter Sasa Broz is a reflection of what humiliation victims of communist crimes have to endure.

Tito consolidated his power in 1945, after WWII ended, by purging his government of non-communists and by holding fraudulent elections that legitimated the discarding of the Serb-led Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed under a new constitution in November 1945. Josip Broz Tito led the command of the murder of more than half a million Croats. Tito was no different to Stalin or Hitler – murder of innocent masses because of their anti-communist political orientation came easy.

He not only led the command for mass murders on Croatian soil after WWII, he sent his communist secret police army (UDBA) across the world to hunt down Croats who lived abroad, were anti-communists and wanted a free Croatia one day. Currently, two Croats (Josip Perkovic and Zdravko Mustac), operatives of “Tito’s communist exterminations”/Yugoslav Secret Police/UDBA, are before German courts in relation to murder of a Croat national that occurred in early 1980’s. Multitudes of assassinations of Croats by UDBA across the world remain undealt with and many like the Croatian Six in Australia were framed by UDBA (reportedly in collaboration with members of local authorities) for crimes of terrorism they never engaged in… In commenting on the Yugoslav UDBA infiltrating the Australian Federal Police and ASIO in the case of Croatian Six and the current events in the Middle East, Australian journalist Hamish McDonald has aptly concluded his recent article: “…What a heritage to take into the new war on terror. Their political masters have long just hoped it would fade into oblivion, but ASIO and the AFP could look at their files to see to what extent, consciously or not, they were manipulated by the UDBa into a great injustice”.

And Tito had fooled so very many. And Tito had charmed his way into the high society of the world, held a hero for breaking away from Stalin in 1948 and, yet, at all times he was a criminal with evidently insatiable thirst for the blood of all who stood in his way of totalitarian communist rule. The victims of his communist purges cannot rest or stand still until he is placed where he belongs – into the halls of shame and darkness. Perhaps his granddaughter Sasa knows this and has decided to employ mockery and irony as tools of attack against those, such as Tomislav Karamarko, who appear set on escalating justice for victims of communist crimes under her grandfather’s commands and tutelage. How utterly twisted and wicked. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zbg); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)