"Silence means complicity in genocide," said the participants of the March for Palestine held in Zagreb on Sunday, calling on the Croatian government to "stop remaining silent" about Israeli aggression and human rights violations in Palestine.
Participants moved along the route from European Square to the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs on Zrinjevac, where they banged pots in front of the building and protested the policies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Minister Gordan Grlić Radman, saying that the "March for Palestine" was not organized only out of solidarity, but also out of awareness of the co-responsibility of the Croatian Government for its silence and political support.
"The march was organized to draw the attention of the Croatian public to the inaction and complicity of our state in relation to brutal human rights violations and genocide in Palestine," Aneta Vladimirov from the Initiative for the Academy of Solidarity and Epistemic Justice, one of the organizers of the protest, told Hina.
The organizers stressed that the protest rally was "a collective expression of anger and sadness over the genocide in Gaza that has been going on for more than 19 months." They also noted that the silence of the Croatian authorities is not neutral, but an active choice, which, they say, betrays the values on which Croatia itself was founded.
Participants in the March for Palestine sent a message against the killing of children, women, men, journalists, doctors, volunteers, as well as opposition to the bombing of hospitals, universities, schools, blocking of food, water and medicine, forced displacement, apartheid and opposition to supporting the policy of genocide.
They also condemned Israel for its latest attacks on Iran, which they described as "dehumanizing."
"All the circumstances of the new Israeli military campaign against Iran belong to a long shameful series in which human life has been dehumanized, from the Palestinians onward. This shows that the entire structure of Western liberalism does not know how to deal with the consequences of dehumanization and supports it," Vladimirov said.
She said that the organizers of the March for Palestine are currently the only ones calling for humanity, peace, and clear condemnation, regardless of the international political construct, because, as she pointed out, this is a horror that is drastically changing the future of the entire planet.
"March for Palestine: End Support for Genocide" was organized by the Initiative for the Academy of Solidarity and Epistemic Justice, Strike for Gaza, Students for Palestine, For BREAD, Initiative for a Free Palestine, Anti-War Feminists and the Center for Peace Studies.
