JERUSALEM-ZAGREB
(AFP-EJP)---A leading Nazi-hunter organisation Sunday slammed
the planned broadcast on Croatian television of a concert
by a local singer known for sympathising with Croatia’s
World War II pro-Nazi regime.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre voiced its "opposition
to the screening tonight in prime time by the Croatian state
television (Channel 2) of the recent concert by rock singer
Marko Perkovic ’Thompson’ at which numerous members
of the audience displayed Ustasha uniforms, symbols and banners," a
statement said.
In a statement issued in Jerusalem by its Israel director
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center said such a move would "encourage
Croatian extremist nationalists by giving official sanction
to an event which constituted a brazen display of the symbols
of Croatian racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia."
The singer is known for glorifying the 1940s Ustasha regime
allied with Nazi Germany at his concerts where, dressed in
black, he gives a Hitler-style salute and shouts Ustasha
slogans.
“The widespread display of Ustasha and ultranationlist
symbols at Thompson concerts is no mistake or coincidence.
A singer who sings nostalgically about Ustasha leader Ante
Pavelic and favorably about Croatia’s worst World War
II concentration camps Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, is openly
urging his fans to identify with the genocidal Ustasha regime
which sought to liquidate Croatia’s Serbs, Jews, and
Gypsies as well as their Croatian political opponents,''the
centre said.
"By broadcasting Thompson’s concert on state
television in prime time the government is in essence expressing
its approval for his hateful message," the Wiesenthal
centre’s statement concluded.
Perkovic’s concert, attended by some 60,000 people,
was held in mid-June in Zagreb.
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According to local media reports, during the Zagreb concert
Perkovic
refrained from pro-Ustasha references and Hitler-style salutes.
The event was immediately criticised by the Wiesenthal centre,
Croatian Jews and anti-fascists.
The government later criticised the "attempts to use
insignia and salutes from the times of the World War II Ustasha
regime."
Croatian nationalists and right-wing politicians see Perkovic
as an icon.
The Ustasha killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews,
anti-fascist
Croatians, Roma and others in Croatia’s concentration
camps.
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