Last modified: 2003-08-16 by dov gutterman
Keywords: croatia | protocol | mourning | black flag |
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Last Monday the Defence Minister of Croatia, Gojko Susak,
died after a long sickness. This is a huge political event here,
with much consequences in political and social life, but the
discussion of that does not belong here. The state/military
funeral was arranged for him (he was also a reserve general
major) and the day of the funeral was proclaimed as a day of
mourning in the whole country. In the Army, the mourning was in
effect from the reception of the information till the day of the
funeral.
This was an opportunity for a vex-info-gathering (it seems that
the sad events are much more so then the happy ones), especially
regarding the flag protocol here, and even more especially
regarding the errors in the protocol.
I will write here all of the fact I had in mind, and leave some
comments to the next message, looking forward to your comments
(hoping that the way I did it would be interesting).
First, when the sad news reached the barracks, all the flags were
lowered to the half-staff, including the flag at the main rally
point, the flag of the unit in front of the command building and
the flag of Red Cross on the ambulance building (these are the
flags that are hoisted constantly in the barracks, the latter two
even by night under the light of a reflector beam).
After a while, as I learned latter, after the protocol adopted
officially by the government, the black flag was hoisted too, by
the state flag on the rally point, on the other pole (there are
two flag poles there) also half-masted (sic!).
As I told above, this was taken as a practice, and on all
government buildings, administration and state owned buildings
and b