ZAGREB, May 6, 2018 – Serbian police on Saturday blocked access to the village of Hrtkovci, Belgrade media said, a day before a rally announced by ultra-nationalist anti-Croat politician Vojislav Šešelj and counter-rallies by two opposition parties which are against his policy of intimidation of local Croats.
Despite repeated bans, Šešelj, a convicted war criminal, again said his Radicals would gather in Hrtkovci on Sunday.
Hrtkovci has become a byword for the expulsion of Croats from Serbia’s Vojvodina province after a 6 May 1992 Radicals rally at which Šešelj read out a list of undesirable local Croats. In the following days, about 700 residents left the village due to pressure and threats.
Even if Šešelj’s rally were not to take place, Croat parties in Serbia said he had already achieved his goal to intimidate the Croat minority in Serbia. “Today it is more than clear that, despite the ban on public assembly and statements from officials that police will not allow a rally in Hrtkovci, the goal has been achieved to scare citizens of Croatian ethnicity and make them feel unsafe and uncertain again,” the Croatian Civic Alliance said in a press release.
