The Novosti weekly was burnt a few days ago during a protest of an extreme right-wing party.
Serbia sent a protest note to Croatia on Monday due to the incident which happened at the recent rally organised by the Indigenous Croatian Party of Rights (A-HSP) when a copy of the Novosti was burnt. Novosti is a weekly published by the Serb National Council (SNV) in Croatia, reports Index.hr on September 4, 2017.
A note was handed over to the charge d’affaires of the Croatian Embassy in Belgrade, according to a statement issued by the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Croatian Embassy confirmed the receipt of the protest note.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia considers that such an incident, committed by a neo-Fascist political group in Croatia, in the presence of members of the Interior Ministry of Croatia, is an example of the spreading of nationalistic hatred and intimidation of members of the Serb national minority in the Republic of Croatia, an attempt to revise history, as well as to glorify the Ustasha movement and its characteristics,” said the statement published on the official website of the Serbian Ministry.
Twenty supporters of the Ingenious Croatian Party of Rights (A-HSP) protested on Saturday in front of the headquarters of the Serb National Council in Zagreb, under the slogan “We stopped you in 1991, we will stop you again”. Dražen Keleminec, the leader of the party whose candidates have never been elected to Parliament, burnt a copy of the Novosti weekly, saying they Novosti called for fires to be intentionally started in Croatia during the tourist season.
At the same time, Keleminec also urged Prime Minister Andrej Plenković not to ban the controversial “For Homeland Ready” slogan.
Speaking on Saturday, Prime Minister Plenković said that Keleminec and his group were irrelevant.
The Serbian Ministry underlined in its statement that it expected the perpetrators of the criminal offence to be indicted and punish according to law.
“The Ministry expects that competent Croatian institutions, in the spirit of preservation and further development of bilateral relations, will in the future prevent such events which have a clear goal, which is to insult the Serb national community representatives in Croatia and the Serb people in their entirety,” said the Ministry in the protest note sent to the media.
The Ingenious Croatian Party of Rights is well-known for many similar provocations committed in the recent years.
Translated from Index.hr.
