Milorad Pupovac. Photo: Beta.
Milorad Pupovac told BIRN that a recent incident in which he was pelted with food at a Zagreb market was not an isolated occurrence but part of a growing campaign against the Serb minority.Anja Vladisavljevic BIRN Zagreb
A growing campaign against Croatia’s ethnic Serb minority is jeopardising efforts to secure their rights and overcome the legacy of the 1991-95 war, a prominent Croatian Serb leader has told BIRN, days after he was pelted with scraps of food at the main open-air market in the capital, Zagreb.
Milorad Pupovac said the September 28 incident was not an isolated occurrence but part of a campaign being waged against minorities, particularly Serbs, by right-wing forces in the European Union state.
Pupovac, a member of the national parliament, said efforts to resolve issues of restitution, return and language rights were being undermined by a growing climate of hostility towards those Serbs who remained or returned after the collapse of a Serb rebel uprising against Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia in 1991.
“This is the situation Serbs find themselves in at the moment,” Pupovac, 62, said in an interview.
“This second trend, unfortunately, is stronger, more influential, and seriously limits the successes of the first trend, the attempts to change and improve things in cooperation with the government.”
Around 180,000 Serbs live in Croatia, accounting for some 4.3 per cent of the country’s total population, or a third of the prewar level. Up to 200,000 fled in 1995 with the collapse of a self-proclaimed rebel Serb statelet supported with men, money and arms from Serbia, ending a war in which 20,000 people died.
Many Serb homes remain empty and those who stayed or returned say they feel discriminated against and marginalised.
Political protest?
The Croatian parliament. Photo: EPA/ANTONIO BAT.
Pupovac’s assailant, 36-year-old Sasa Mucnjak, was arrested and admitted throwing food at the MP, saying it was not politically or ethnically motivated but an “impulsive” reaction to an incident he alleged occurred between his wife and Pupovac years earlier. A second Croatian Serb MP, Boris Milosevic, was also struck by the flying food.
It came weeks after the angry reaction of some Croatian politicians to Pupovac’s decision to attend Serbia’s August 4 commemoration of the Serb exodus from Croatia in 1995 during a Croatian military operation known as ‘Storm’ that effectively ended the war.
The ceremony caused consternation in Croatia when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said: “Hitler wanted a world free of Jews and Croatia wanted a country free of Serbs.”
Croatia’s conservative prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, condemned the attack on Pupovac, but some on social media sought to justify it.
Slaven Letica, a conservative commentator, author and sometime-politician, compared him to an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then US President George W. Bush during a 2008 press conference.
“Throwing food at parliament representative Dr Milorad Pupovac is a political protest and symbolic expression of criticism, not hate speech or political violence,” Letica wrote on Facebook.
Rising hate speech
"Serbs out of Croatia" graffiti in Zagreb. Photo: Serbian National Council.
Pupovac, however, placed the incident in the context of a number of recent rows over Serb rights.
In June, conservative campaigners, under the banner ‘The People Decide’, collected more than 400,000 signatures in favour of a referendum on restricting minority voting rights in the Croatian parliament. Authorities are considering the demand.
In August, a traditional Serbian folk singing festival in the Croatian town of Petrinja, co-organised by Pupovac’s Serbian National Council, SNC, was cancelled after protests by Croatian war veterans. Petrinja was occupied and ethnically cleansed by rebel Serbs during the 1991-95 war.
And this month, the conservative mayor of the eastern town of Vukovar, which was besieged by Serb forces during the war, wants to hold a protest to highlight what he says is the judiciary’s failure to pursue Serb war criminals. Serbs account for around a third of the town’s population, but Croatian nationalists have repeatedly challenged their constitutional right to the use of Cyrillic script.
“On top of problems of unemployment, of insufficient connectivity and integration, the problem in Vukovar and the whole of that region is that a certain number of people want to endanger the legacy of peaceful reintegration,” Pupovac told BIRN.
In 2015, national minority leaders in Croatia gathered in the coastal city of Pula and issued a declaration against ‘intolerance and ethnocentrism’ in the country.
But the following year, according to an annual report by Pupovac’s SNC, hate speech directed towards Serbs in Croatia rose 57 per cent, and climbed again in 2017. The SNC blamed the 2016 spike on a campaign of “chauvinism” by the then leader of Plenkovic’s Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Tomislav Karamarko.
Since the 2015 declaration, Pupovac said, “we didn’t notice improvements in this regard. Things have declined over the past year.”
http://www.balkaninsight.com
www.fotavgeia.blogspot.com
Milorad Pupovac told BIRN that a recent incident in which he was pelted with food at a Zagreb market was not an isolated occurrence but part of a growing campaign against the Serb minority.Anja Vladisavljevic BIRN Zagreb
A growing campaign against Croatia’s ethnic Serb minority is jeopardising efforts to secure their rights and overcome the legacy of the 1991-95 war, a prominent Croatian Serb leader has told BIRN, days after he was pelted with scraps of food at the main open-air market in the capital, Zagreb.
Milorad Pupovac said the September 28 incident was not an isolated occurrence but part of a campaign being waged against minorities, particularly Serbs, by right-wing forces in the European Union state.
Pupovac, a member of the national parliament, said efforts to resolve issues of restitution, return and language rights were being undermined by a growing climate of hostility towards those Serbs who remained or returned after the collapse of a Serb rebel uprising against Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia in 1991.
“This is the situation Serbs find themselves in at the moment,” Pupovac, 62, said in an interview.
“This second trend, unfortunately, is stronger, more influential, and seriously limits the successes of the first trend, the attempts to change and improve things in cooperation with the government.”
Around 180,000 Serbs live in Croatia, accounting for some 4.3 per cent of the country’s total population, or a third of the prewar level. Up to 200,000 fled in 1995 with the collapse of a self-proclaimed rebel Serb statelet supported with men, money and arms from Serbia, ending a war in which 20,000 people died.
Many Serb homes remain empty and those who stayed or returned say they feel discriminated against and marginalised.
Political protest?
The Croatian parliament. Photo: EPA/ANTONIO BAT.
Pupovac’s assailant, 36-year-old Sasa Mucnjak, was arrested and admitted throwing food at the MP, saying it was not politically or ethnically motivated but an “impulsive” reaction to an incident he alleged occurred between his wife and Pupovac years earlier. A second Croatian Serb MP, Boris Milosevic, was also struck by the flying food.
It came weeks after the angry reaction of some Croatian politicians to Pupovac’s decision to attend Serbia’s August 4 commemoration of the Serb exodus from Croatia in 1995 during a Croatian military operation known as ‘Storm’ that effectively ended the war.
The ceremony caused consternation in Croatia when Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said: “Hitler wanted a world free of Jews and Croatia wanted a country free of Serbs.”
Croatia’s conservative prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, condemned the attack on Pupovac, but some on social media sought to justify it.
Slaven Letica, a conservative commentator, author and sometime-politician, compared him to an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at then US President George W. Bush during a 2008 press conference.
“Throwing food at parliament representative Dr Milorad Pupovac is a political protest and symbolic expression of criticism, not hate speech or political violence,” Letica wrote on Facebook.
Rising hate speech
"Serbs out of Croatia" graffiti in Zagreb. Photo: Serbian National Council.
Pupovac, however, placed the incident in the context of a number of recent rows over Serb rights.
In June, conservative campaigners, under the banner ‘The People Decide’, collected more than 400,000 signatures in favour of a referendum on restricting minority voting rights in the Croatian parliament. Authorities are considering the demand.
In August, a traditional Serbian folk singing festival in the Croatian town of Petrinja, co-organised by Pupovac’s Serbian National Council, SNC, was cancelled after protests by Croatian war veterans. Petrinja was occupied and ethnically cleansed by rebel Serbs during the 1991-95 war.
And this month, the conservative mayor of the eastern town of Vukovar, which was besieged by Serb forces during the war, wants to hold a protest to highlight what he says is the judiciary’s failure to pursue Serb war criminals. Serbs account for around a third of the town’s population, but Croatian nationalists have repeatedly challenged their constitutional right to the use of Cyrillic script.
“On top of problems of unemployment, of insufficient connectivity and integration, the problem in Vukovar and the whole of that region is that a certain number of people want to endanger the legacy of peaceful reintegration,” Pupovac told BIRN.
In 2015, national minority leaders in Croatia gathered in the coastal city of Pula and issued a declaration against ‘intolerance and ethnocentrism’ in the country.
But the following year, according to an annual report by Pupovac’s SNC, hate speech directed towards Serbs in Croatia rose 57 per cent, and climbed again in 2017. The SNC blamed the 2016 spike on a campaign of “chauvinism” by the then leader of Plenkovic’s Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, Tomislav Karamarko.
Since the 2015 declaration, Pupovac said, “we didn’t notice improvements in this regard. Things have declined over the past year.”
http://www.balkaninsight.com
www.fotavgeia.blogspot.com
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