MP Dalija Orešković (NZ) called on the Catholic Church on Thursday to recognise the wrong path on which, she said, the Croatian people, and a section of the clergy, are walking. During free parliamentary speeches, she stated that the Church should not be present where the slogan "Ready for the Fatherland" is shouted — not only because it is contrary to the Croatian Constitution, but because that slogan hates another human being.
Orešković warned that a part of the Church has openly sided with the Ustaše slogan, and that individual priests hold masses for Ante Pavelić. She emphasised that identity, for believers and non-believers alike, is shaped by the values of respecting every human being, their human dignity, justice and solidarity, and called on the Church in Croatia to remain faithful to those values. She also asked why the "Iustitia et pax" Commission of the Croatian Bishops' Conference is silent in the face of increasingly frequent, numerous and ominous invocations of Ustaše and Nazi war criminals.
Ivica Kukavica (Homeland Movement) retorted that she very easily condemns what she knows nothing about. He asked why Orešković avoids speaking about the period from 1945 to 1990 in her speeches. He assessed her intervention in Parliament as unprecedented and called it an attack on the Catholic Church and on a priest who prays for the soul of the deceased. He also warned that the number of priests and nuns killed in the war and its aftermath, relative to the population in the area of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, is unprecedented in Europe. "All your history and all your information comes from four years of Croatian history. Where does your right come from to call Croatian defenders Ustaše today," Kukavica said. He believes that today there is systematic work, generalisation and a desire to portray Croatia as a genocidal state and a case study in which fascism and Nazism are strengthening, which, he claimed, is not correct.
Anka Mrak Taritaš (Centre, NPS and GLAS Club) said that in the last ten years, since HDZ has been in power, "extremism, hatred, intolerance and historical revisionism have seeped in". She considers that all of this "exploded in the face" last week, when Torcida in Split celebrated Hitler and the Holocaust. She called out HDZ for bringing to power a party that openly promotes Ustaše ideology and whose president approves a list for the elimination of journalists who wrote about Torcida's rampages. Stipo Mlinarić (DP) asked her if she was referring to the Homeland Movement in that context. "If you do, then say it by name and surname. If the four defenders sitting in parliamentary benches, and who are members of DP, are Ustaše to you, then you have a serious problem with the independent and democratic Republic of Croatia which was created by Croatian defenders," Mlinarić said.
Marija Vrhovski (HDZ) problematised the conditions in which children train in Zagreb during the debate. She welcomed the large infrastructure projects in sport in Zagreb, but warned that many small amateur clubs are fighting for every free slot in the hall, and children are training in inappropriate conditions. She also warned that in Zagreb, sports medical examinations for children are carried out at only two locations, and waiting lists were as long as 90 days during September.
