A 65-YEAR-OLD man who repeatedly shoved a Croatian anti-fascist monument in an effort to topple it paid an immediate penalty for his act of vandalism when the statue fell on his leg and broke it, according to local police. In an incident condemned by authorities in the coastal town of Split as “savage vandalism,” police said the man dislodged a bust of Rade Koncar, a celebrated leader of the resistance to Croatia’s pro-Nazi Ustasha regime during WWII. But the statue toppled and broke his leg, according to the regional paper Slobodna Dalmacija, in what some Croatian Twitter users said was the statue’s revenge. “Rade Koncar breaks the legs of fascists 76 years after they shot him,” centrist politician Kreco Beljak wrote on Twitter. The hospital in Split said the man would undergo surgery after the Wednesday incident. Koncar was celebrated as a Yugoslav hero for his fight against Croatia’s fascist government. In 1942 he was captured by Italian forces and executed at the age of 31 with several of his communist comrades. When asked by a judge if he would seek clemency, he allegedly replied: “I will not ask for mercy nor would I have it for you!” Several thousand anti-fascist monuments have been vandalized or destroyed since Croatia’s independence in 1991. (SD-Agencies) |