OREANDA-NEWS. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented today a protest note to the Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia in Belgrade, Gordan Markotic, in which it sharply protests over the annulment of the verdict against Alojzije Stepinac, considering this action to be the rehabilitation of fascism and the Ustasha-run Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

In this note, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminds that the United Nations and the European Union explicitly prohibit the restoration of fascism and fascist ideologies.

"The Republic of Serbia is outraged by the rehabilitation of the Nazi Ustasha NDH. Stepinac's words spoken on Easter Day in 1941 saying that "the NDH was created by the mercy of God, wise and devoted work of the Poglavnik (Leader Pavelic) and the Ustasha movement, along with the will of our allies (Hitler and Mussolini)", as well as his statement that "the NDH is the most noteworthy event in the life of the Croatian people" speak volumes about Stepinac and those who are rehabilitating him.

In their public appearances and statements, and by their decision to annul the verdict against Archbishop Stepinac, which the Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, Efraim Zuroff, called "shameful", the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the Croatian state authorities directly support those forces in Croatia that are against the reconciliation and regional stability and that represent the views of the world opposite to the basic achievements of the civilisation and the foundations upon which the UN and the EU were built.

The rehabilitation of the vicar of the NDH's genocidal regime, whose "priests" and "nuns" were commanders of concentration camps of Jasenovac and Jastrebarsko, and who cynically defended at his trial following WWII the forcible conversion of over 200 thousand Croatian Serbs to Catholicism with the words that "it is not about conversion but about religious transition", creates a climate and a mood resulting in attacks on the Serbs and graffiti like those in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Rajevo Selo near Gunja ("This is NDH", " a bullet to the head, that's the best for Serbs" and the like).