Croatia Unveils Tudjman Monument to Applause and Criticism

The 19th anniversary of the death of Croatia's first President, Franjo Tudjman, was marked on Monday by the unveiling of a more than four-metre-high monument in Zagreb, near the National University Library and the Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall.

The ceremony was attended by President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, parliament speaker Gordan Jandrokovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, but without the monument's initiator, Zagreb mayor Milan Bandic, who was in a hospital with a pulmonary embolism.

Plenkovic, Jandrokovic and Grabar Kitarovic praised the initiative to erect the monument in the capital and expressed their wishes for Bandic's quick recovery.

"The first Croatian president is written in our history as a great man... and it is our duty to honour the memory of him," said Grabar Kitarovic during her speech.

Some members of the public, organisations and political parties who did not approve of the monument staged a protest.

The gathering was organised and supported by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, YIHR, the New Left political party, the Citizens' Committee for Human Rights, the Anti-Fascist League of the Republic of Croatia, the Pozitiva Association, the Women's Network of Croatia, Workers Front political party, Social Workers' Party and various figures from public and cultural life, as well as a war veterans' organisation, Vidra - Veterans and Social Action, which fights against hate speech and public divisions.

"Franjo Tudjman was responsible, as well as for some of the most serious violations of human rights, for a corrupt model of privatisation," said Nikola Puharic from YIHR, who was holding up a banner that read: "Not our heroes."

"He was a part of a joint criminal enterprise, meaning he was bearing a...