SNV Bulletin #6 Govor mržnje i nasilje prema Srbima u 2015

Hate Speech and Violence Against Serbs in 2015
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/1.2. Sports events
At a friendly handball game between Croatia and Serbia, played
in Rijeka on January 10, the home fans chanted “Kill the Serb”,
“Let’s go Ustashe” and “For the Homeland Ready” as the Serb national
anthem was intoned. A qualifying soccer match between
Croatia and Norway for the 2016 European finals, which took
place in Zagreb, will be remembered by the fans chanting “For
the Homeland Ready” and throwing flares from the stands. The
president of the Croatian Football Federation (HNS) Davor Šuker,
known as a person who visited in 1996 the grave of Ustasha
leader Ante Pavelić, later praised the “splendid atmosphere
without a single serious incident”. UEFA’s disciplinary committee
soon decided to punish HNS with a 55,000 Euros fine, stripping
Croatia of two points and ordering it to play the next qualifying
match at home in front of an empty stadium. Following this decision,
Croatian fans reacted in an organised manner on Facebook,
responding to almost every UEFA post with comments “For the
Homeland Ready”. The match against Italy when the swastika
was drawn on the pitch turned out to be a political and cultural
disgrace for the whole of Croatia.
Croatian football came under the global media spotlight once
again in September last year when Ante Čačić, the new coach of
the national football team, announced that he would appoint as
his assistant Josip Joe Šimunić, a former national team member
who had shouted “For the homeland” after a match between
Croatia and Island in 2013 and was severely punished by UEFA,
thus ending his international career in disgrace.
/1.3. Media
/1.3.1. Electronic Media
Negative nationalist practice was registered in the programme
of national (private) Nova TV: On August 18, the anchor of their
news program, Romina Knežić, interrupted an interview with
Milorad Pupovac, the president of the Serb National Council and
a member of the Croatian parliament (SDSS). The immediate
cause for the interview was the amendment of the City of
Vukovar’s Statute to ban the use of Cyrillic script in that region.
Apart from having demonstrated that she was not familiar with
the topic, Knežić cut Pupovac off several times. In the end, when
he asked a rhetoric question, what would have happened if