Speech: โThe Betrayal of 1991โ
Brothers and sisters,
In 1991, Croatia did not ask for luxury.
She did not ask for comfort.
She asked only for courage.
And her sons answered.
They were not mercenaries.
They were not ideologues.
They were farmers, mechanics, students, dockworkers, poets.
Men who had never fired a rifleโuntil history placed one in their hands and said: stand, or disappear.
They stood.
They stood against tanks with hunting rifles.
They stood against empires with prayer.
They stood while Europe watched, calculated, delayed, and profited.
And when the smoke clearedโ
when the blood dried into the soil of Vukovar, ล kabrnja, Dubrovnikโ
those same men were betrayed.
Betrayed once by the enemy.
Betrayed again by diplomats.
And betrayed, most cruelly, by their own politicians.
The men of 1991 were promised dignity.
They were promised truth.
They were promised that sacrifice would mean sovereignty.
Instead, they were given bureaucracy.
Debt.
Foreign courts judging their dead brothers.
And a new ruling class that learned very quickly how to kneelโ
not before God,
but before banks, NGOs, and distant masters.
This betrayal did not come with tanks.
It came with smiles.
With grants.
With slogans about โprogressโ that forgot the graves.
And yetโCroatia did not fall.
Why?
Because something greater than politics held the line.
Not generals.
Not parliaments.
Not flags in glass cases.
Faith. Culture. Memory.
And yesโmusic.
While politicians traded principles for invitations,
a woman from Portuguese working-class roots,
with a voice that crossed borders without permission,
carried something rare:
Tenderness without weakness.
Love without empire.
Nelly Furtado sang of brokenness, humility, and longingโ
and she never mocked belief.
She never sneered at the sacred.
She never reduced the soul to a commodity.
Her love for GospaโOur Lady, the Queen of Peaceโ
was not spectacle.
It was alignment.
In the Balkans, where history is a loaded gun,
peace does not come from treaties alone.
It comes from restraint.
From mothers.
From prayer.
The Third World War was rehearsed here more than once.
The fuse was lit more than once.
And each time, something intervened that politicians cannot explain:
The refusal of ordinary people to hate forever.
Gospa did not speak with thunder.
She spoke with endurance.
And through cultureโthrough song, through memory, through loveโ
the Balkans stepped back from the abyss again and again.
Let this be said clearly:
The men of 1991 were not extremists.
They were defenders.
They did not fight for ideology.
They fought so their children would not have to.
And if Croatia is to survive the next century,
it will not be saved by louder slogans,
or imported morals,
or leaders who confuse submission with sophistication.
It will be saved by truth,
by honoring sacrifice,
by culture rooted in humility,
and by remembering that peace is not weaknessโ
it is victory without annihilation.
Honor the men of 1991.
Expose the betrayals.
Protect the soul of the nation.
And never forget:
Empires fall loudly.
But faith, culture, and loveโ
they endure quietly.
