British parliamentarian has expressed regret over the British decision after WWII to repatriate 12,000 Slovenian domobranci (Home Guard), who then became the victims of summary killings by the Partisans.
Jonh Austin, the chair of the British-Slovenian All-Party Parliamentary Group, which was on a return visit to Slovenia on Tuesday, expressed his personal regret over the decision of the British authorities to return the Domobranci to Slovenia in the aftermath of the war.
In response, Mojca Kucler Dolinar of the coalition New Slovenia (NSi), who heads the parliamentary friendship group with the United Kingdom, thanked Austin, a Labour Party MP, for his efforts to see the British Parliament extend its regret for the decision.
So far, 60 out of 646 British MPs have signed Austin's initiative aimed at making the parliament acknowledge with regret that after WWII "Slovenian soldiers were disarmed against their will" and repatriated.
According to the initiative, published on the website of the British Parliament, the decision of the British authorities to leave these soldiers at the mercy of their political opponents resulted in the loss of 12,000 lives.
Meanwhile, Austin told reporters in Ljubljana that Slovenia is Great Britain's ally in NATO and a fellow member of the EU, which is why the countries are bound to candour about historical events.
Kucler Dolinar assessed that such a gesture by the British Parliament would present a substantial contribution to not only clarifying complex historical events but also to the process of democratisation in Slovenia.
She also labelled the killings of the Domobranci the biggest genocide in Europe after WWII.
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