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

Hate Speech and Violence Against Serbs in 2015
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In Glas Koncila, a weekly issued by the Catholic Church, editor-in-chief
Ivan Miklenić called on June 28 for the abolition
of the Day of Antifascist Fight, while Gojko Borić wrote in the
cultural bi-weekly Vijenac on October 1 that Croatians would not
proffer “a hand of reconciliation” to the Serbs.
Also, Tihomir Dujmović, a right-wing columnist for the Slobodna
Dalmacija daily, writes a chauvinist article entitled “Pupovac’s
Croatia” on August 21. “Ever since the cannons fell silent 25 years
ago, the Croatian state has been having problems with one and
only one of its 22 minorities – the Serbs.”
/1.4. Social Networks
Apart from private profiles, hate speech in 2015 spread on
Facebook mostly on pages of hardline right-wing political parties
(A-HSP, HČSP) and veterans’ formations (Croatian Defence Forces,
IX HOS battalion Rafael Vitez Boban), but also groups like “Urban
right”, “For the Homeland Ready”, “Black Legion” and “I Admit!
I am a Croat”. At the latter’s page, which has more than 145,000
followers, a virtual “greeting card” appeared on April 10, the day
when the NDH was established in 1941. “May this unique statehood
day be happy to all the Croatian women and men in the
homeland and around the world! For the first time after several
centuries under foreign rule, on 10 April 1941. the Independent
State of Croatia was established”.
In the course of 2015 dozens of cases were recorded of publishing
photographs of individuals dressed in parts of the proscribed
Ustasha uniform and/or of persons using the Ustasha salute.
Darko Kovačić, president of the Benkovac A-HSP marked the start
of the year by posting on his profile a dozen photographs where
he poses with the raised right arm. On some photos, also posing
with the same salute, were his six children, some of them still
of school age. The father of Nikola Moro, captain of Croatia’s
under-17 national football team, also greeted his friends using the
Ustasha salute. On his profile he publicly glorifies the NDH leader
and his Ustasha army with a number of Ustasha songs and video
clips by Marko Perković Thompson.
Branko Škrtić, an HDZ member from Karlovac, decided to express
his disagreement with a decision by Interior Minister Ranko
Ostojić to ban a planned line-up of the A-HSP “party troops” on
Zagreb’s central Jelačić square. Škrtić wrote on Facebook that the