ZAGREB, April 19, 2018 – Serbian Ambassador to Croatia Mira Nikolić on Wednesday evening refused to accept Croatia’s protest note over the incident caused by far-right leader convicted of war crimes Vojislav Šešelj who stomped on the Croatian flag and shouted insults at Croatia’s parliamentary delegation, the Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Ministry said in a press release.
The ambassador declined to accept the note, in which Croatia protested in the strongest terms, so the note was later forwarded to the Serbian Embassy, the press release said.
Šešelj and another member of his party, Filip Stojanović, desecrated the Croatian flag outside the Serbian parliament, and then shouted insults at the Croatian delegation as they were passing by. The incident prompted Croatia’s parliamentary delegation to cut its official visit to Serbia short.
The Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Ministry is confident that Šešelj had dared to cause this incident “clearly encouraged by the lack of sanctions for his previous incidents involving the burning of the Croatian flag as well as the lack of reactions from top Serbian officials to his threats of repeating war crimes.”
“Croatia demands and expects the Serbian authorities to show zero tolerance for such unacceptable incidents and urgently take appropriate measures,” read the press release which also states that Croatia is committed to the strengthening of good neighbourly cooperation, following the principles of mutual respect in accordance with European values.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals on April 11 sentenced Šešelj in absentia to ten years in prison for inciting crimes with nationalist speeches in the Vojvodina region of Serbia during the war in 1992. After the verdict was handed down, Šešelj said he was proud of the crimes he was accused of and that he planned to repeat them.
