Ivan Kujundzic, a Croatian sculptor and one of the founders of the ruling, conservative HDZ party, called on Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic to immediately respond to the insults aimed at Croatia and HDZ from Macedonian Government official Gorjan Tozija.
Tozija, who has worked in Croatia and left a trail of scandal in his wake, wrote series of online rants aimed at the country over the past weeks, accusing Plenkovic and HDZ of being criminals and fascists. In a recent non-apology, Tozija insisted that he has the right to call out countries he doesn’t like, but Kujundzic points to his positions as head of the Macedonian Film Agency, and demands that Croatia clarifies if Tozija speaks as the head of a prestigious public institution.
Bearing in mind our long and friendly history with Macedonia, and our good political ties, their state and their Culture Ministry should explain the situation, whether this is a political earthquake or a trial balloon. We still hold friendly feelings and love among us, but this needs to be explained in the coming days, Kujundzic said.
Macedonia was already forced to apologize for the scandalous issuing of a stamp that portrayed Croatia in greatly expanded borders, apparently taken from a web site dedicated to the promotion of an equally “Greater Albania”. After several Croatian news outlets wrote about this issue, which was declared an inadvertent mistake by the Macedonian Post Office, Tozija began to lash out against them, especially against journalist Ivan Brodic.
We are witnessing the onslaught of falsely anti-fascist, wildly ANTIFA oriented insults and poltiical comments from a country which we have helped greatly in the past. As an artist and as a person who cares about the reputation of my country of Crotia, I need to respond to these deeply anti-Croatian insults. A state official of the Macedonian Government, who heads the Macedonian Film Agency, is calling us fascists and criminals. Tozija even confirmed that he wrote these comments and claims that he has the right to criticize other countries in this way. This notorious person claims that the Croatian Government is criminal. This is utterly unacceptable and we need to issue a protest to the Macedonian Ambassador in Croatia, and our Embassy in Macedonia needs to ask for an explanation, Kujundzic writes to Prime Minister Plenkovic.
Comments are closed for this post.