Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic sparked online debate on Saturday as it emerged that she posed for a photograph during her recent Canada trip with a flag carrying a symbol of her country’s wartime Nazi regime.
Her office shrugged off the incident, saying that there was “nothing questionable” about it.
The photograph, posted on Facebook by a Croatian man living in Canada, shows Grabar-Kitarovic posing with him and others in front of a flag bearing the coat of arms used by Croatia’s World War II-era Ustasha regime, which persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists.
The checkerboard-patterned shield in the middle of Croatia’s current national flag has 25 red-and-white squares, starting with a red one in the top-left corner.
A different version with a white square in that corner has been used at other points in Croatia’s history — notably by the Ustasha. It was replaced by the current shield after World War II when Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia.
Both versions were briefly in use in 1990 ahead of Croatia’s declaration of independence, but under a December 1990 law the national flag bears the red-first version of the shield.
The president’s office batted off the row, telling N1 TV: “We see nothing questionable in it,” adding that such a flag was displayed in front of the Croatian parliament in 1990.
The president’s view on the wartime regime is “clear and she voiced it on several occasions,” it said.
The row sparked mixed responses online.
“This issue involving our president is more than shameful,” Visnja Skreblin, a woman from Zagreb, said on online portal Index.
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