Zagreb, December 21, 2022
In 2022, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights was dedicated to advocacy, research, and activist efforts to preserve the memory of the Zec family at the local, national and international levels.
Mihajlo and Marija Zec, and their twelve-year-old daughter Aleksandra, were killed in 1991 by members of the reserve unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia, who were not held responsible for that crime.
Decade-long efforts of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights to name a public area after the Zec family bore fruit at the beginning of this year. At the 3rd session of the Committee for Naming Streets, Settlements and Squares of the City of Zagreb, the proposal of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights was adopted and the Zec family name entered the Fund of names from which public areas for the area of the City of Zagreb are named.
We continue to advocate the naming of a public area after the Zec family, which would serve as a reminder and warning that it never happens again that people are killed just because they were of a certain nationality, and that those responsible for it go unpunished.
We wrote about these advocacy efforts, as well as other artistic and activist contributions of civil society, in a case study about the Zec family, which was created as part of the project "Mapping Commemorative Cultures, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned" organized by the Global Initiative for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation.
The case study about the Zec family was published together with other case studies on the commemoration of important dates of civilian casualties from Algeria, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, Indonesia, Lebanon, South Africa, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and Turkey.
The case study is available in English and in Serbian translated by the Humanitarian Law Center from Belgrade, at whose invitation we participated in the creation of this case study.
The case study was presented at a panel discussion on commemorative cultures organized by the Global Initiative for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation from November 29 to 30, 2022. The event included a presentation of a policy paper based on key insights from the above case studies, which can be useful to to all those whose advocacy deals with the culture of memory in accordance with the rule of law and human rights standards.
In the case study about the Zec family, we shared the key facts related to the murder of the Zec family and the judicial epilogue, and then highlighted the long-term efforts of civil society to preserve the memory of the Zec family, presented the contribution of artists in preserving the memory (e.g. the theater play "Aleksandra Zec" by the director Oliver Frljić), described the commemorations that are held every year on the anniversary of the killing at Sljeme, a hill above Zagreb, and pointed to the advocacy for the naming of a public area of the Zec family in the city of Zagreb.
This commemoration, traditionally organized by the Anti-Fascist League of the Republic of Croatia and the Serb National Council, was also joined by 11 activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights this year on the anniversary of the killing, December 7, 2022.
In 2023, we will continue to preserve the memory of the Zec family and build a society where such crimes will not be repeated.