ZAGREB, May 22, 2018 – A senior official of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and member of the Serbian National Assembly Vjerica Radeta on Tuesday called the head of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DHV) Tomislav Žigmanov an Ustasha. She was referring to the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime that ruled Croatia during the Second World War.
“I see that Tomislav Žigmanov has told the Blic newspaper that the Croats in Hrtkovci are worried because SRS leader Vojislav Šešelj has bought a house in Hrtkovci. My opinion polls show that the Serbs throughout Serbia are worried because the Ustasha Žigmanov sits in the National Assembly and Blic reports about it,” Radeta wrote on Twitter.
There has been no reaction in the Serbian public to her tweet, which was carried by Blic.
Hrtkovci is a village in northwest Serbia which had a predominantly Croat population before the 1991-1995 war in Croatia. The village has become a byword for the expulsion of ethnic Croats from Serbia’s Vojvodina province after the SRS held a rally there on 6 May 1992 when Šešelj read out a list of undesirable local Croats. In the following days, about 700 residents left the village under pressure and threats.
In April this year, a UN war crimes tribunal sentenced Šešelj to10 years in prison for his role in the war. He, however, does not have to go to prison because the time he spent in UN custody was credited towards his sentence.
Radeta’s tweet was prompted by Žigmanov’s comment that the purchase of a house in Hrtkovci by Šešelj has caused disquiet among the remaining Croats in the village and the Srem region. “His return to the place of suffering of Croats is not only frightful but it largely trivialises the war crimes, which causes disquiet among the local Croats,” Žigmanov told Blic.
Blic reported last Saturday that Šešelj had purchased a house in the centre of Hrtkovci, some 300 metres away from the Catholic church. Serbian opposition MPs and analysts described Šešelj’s move as an act of provocation the aim of which was, among other things, improve the rating of Serbian far-right politicians and groups.
