Wednesday 23 April 2014

Fascist Echoes: when are the Abbott Government's foreign relations blunders going to finally cease?



Tony Abbott čestitao svim Hrvatima 10. travanj!

U ime australskog premijera Tony Abotta koji se danas nalazi u Japanu prenosim vam njegove čestitke i dobre želje povodom slavlja 10. Travnja, vama, i svim Hrvatima Australije a i onima u Hrvatskoj. - rekao je Mr Craig Kelly Federal Member for Hughes

Tony Abbott congratulated all Croats April 10!

On behalf of the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott who is now in the Japan I am imparting to you his greetings and good wishes on the occasion of the celebration of April 10, you, and all Croatians in Australia and those in Croatia. - said Mr Craig Kelly's Federal Member for Hughes [Google translation of the publication Boka Cro Press]

The Guardian 22 April 2014:

The Australian ambassador to Croatia has been summoned after a Coalition MP was reported as passing on the best wishes of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, to a group celebrating a fascist period in the country's history.
Hughes MP, Craig Kelly, said he was "mortified" at reports he attended the Croatian Club in Sydney last week for an event marking the anniversary of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941.
The NDH wanted to rid the country of Jews, Roma and Serbs and was established after the invasion of Yugoslavia overseen by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini….

Facebook page of the Australian Croatian Club O'Connor (Social Club)

April 16
Australski premijer Tony Abbot Hrvatima čestitao 10. travnja - Bravo Tony. Great to see only a month after Milanovic described Australian Croatian's as "living in isolation" and Pusic described us as "extremists" the Australian Croatian community still has a friend in the highest office in this great land.

Federal Liberal MP for Hughes Craig Kelly delivering his speech at a lectern draped with the fascist Ustasha flag:


BACKGROUND

A brief history of the event being celebrated, taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica online:

In April 1941 Germans and Italians set up the Independent State of Croatia, which also embraced Bosnia and Herzegovina and those parts of Dalmatia that had not been ceded to Italy. Though in fact this state was under occupation by the German and Italian armies, Pavelić’s Ustaša was put into power—a takeover facilitated by the refusal of Maček to take part in a puppet government and by the passivity of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac. Initially there was enthusiasm for the independent state, but once in power the Ustaša ruthlessly persecuted Serbs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and antifascist Croats. The Ustaša planned to eliminate Croatia’s Serb minority partly by conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, partly by expulsion, and partly by extermination. As many as 350,000 to 450,000 victims were killed in Ustaša massacres and in the notorious concentration camp at Jasenovac.

Taken from Arutz Sheva 7 Israeli news online 8 February 2007:

 a video broadcast 9 December 2006 on Croatian TV, which shows Mesic in 1992 telling Australian-Croatians:
You see, in the Second World War, the Croats won twice and we have no reason to apologize to anyone. What they ask of the Croats the whole time, "Go kneel in Jasenovac. Kneel here..." We don't have to kneel in front of anyone for anything! We won twice and all the others only once. We won on 10 April [1941] when the Axis Powers recognized Croatia as a state ... and we won because we sat after the war, again with the winners, at the winning table. -- BBC Monitoring; December 10, 2006

The Sydney Morning Herald 8 September 2005:

But on April 10 this year, Mr Clarke attended and was snapped at a similar event - which the author and historian Mark Aarons wrote amounted to a "glorification of April 10, 1941, the day Hitler installed Ante Pavelic and the Ustashi into power as Nazi puppets".
The function was held at the Croatian Club in Punchbowl - the same place where a meeting of the Liberal Party's newest branch erupted into an all-out brawl last year, prompting the arrival of eight police officers, three patrol cars and even a sniffer dog. Mr Clarke - who says politicians from both sides of politics are seen at such ethnic functions every year - has been forced to defend himself amid further allegations of his political involvement with far right-wing groups. Last night, the Liberal MP John Ryan confirmed he was one of several MPs at the Punchbowl function....
The Herald published a photograph on Monday that showed Mr Clarke in 1978 alongside Ljenko Urbancic, later exposed as a Nazi propagandist. Since then a number of individuals, including the former Liberal candidate for Auburn, Irfan Yusef, have publicly accused Mr Clarke of using religious wedge politics to recruit new members to the party....

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