Balkan spies: Did the hunt for "spies" in Serbia scare Croatian tourists?

Recent expulsion from Of Serbia 13 foreign citizens, of which five are female citizens Croatia, a participant in workshops within the academy of the Erste Foundation in Belgrade, and under the pretext of "protecting the security of the Republic of Serbia and its citizens", opened up the question of political marketing behind such an "action" - whether the authorities in Belgrade want to send a message to foreigners, especially citizens of Croatia, that even as tourists they are not welcome in Serbia?

That it is not a matter of coincidence, but of an obvious intention to make foreigners who come to Serbia, who are not up to the standards of the regime, if nothing else, at least at least hate staying in the country, could be read from the recent similar moves of the security authorities under the control of Aleksandar Vučić.

"Unwanted in Serbia"

In June of last year, actor and writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina Feđa Štukan was detained after he landed at the Belgrade airport to attend the Krokodil literary festival.

Two months later, the singer Severina Vučković, who tried to enter Serbia in her car, was stopped at the border by the Serbian police and taken to the police building for an interview, where the police questioned her about her statements about Srebrenica, about what she thought about the "Storm". Jasenovac was also mentioned in the conversation, and at one point she was even questioned about lithium in Serbia.

A particularly bizarre affair was the one at the end of 2024, when some pro-regime media got involved in the pursuit of "undesirables in Serbia". They declared eight Croatian students, who were in Belgrade for tourism and visiting colleagues, to be disguised members of the Croatian secret service. The tabloids published their names and "exclusive" photos in which they are seen walking in the streets of Belgrade, along the way accusing them of coming to Serbia "to overthrow the government."

Finally, on the way back to Croatia, a Serbian customs officer and a person in civilian clothes got into their bus and handed them a package with a prominent message in Cyrillic:

"Dear 'students', thank you for visiting our country, we hope you enjoyed your stay and that you will come again soon. You are always welcome in Serbia! PS Say hello to colleagues from SOA", it was written on the box, which contained about 50 bottles of brandy with stickers with the Serbian flag.

As in "Balkan Spy"

We asked Serbian citizen Milorad Domanović, who lives in Istria with his wife, a Croatian citizen, whether such incidents caused fear among those who would travel to Serbia from Croatia. They often come to Serbia, and Domanović tells "Vreme" that they first became concerned that they were coming in a car with Croatian license plates at the time of the affair with Croatian student "spies".

Their stay in Serbia during the Christmas holidays was completely normal, but Domanović says - although he does not believe that the attitude towards Croatian citizens who come to Serbia will change in general - that the whole situation with the students was reminiscent of a "Balkan spy".

"Dušan Kovačević has never been more current." That was the first time I was concerned about Croatian license plates, because articles about Croatian students in Serbia started to appear before the New Year, I was worried if someone would do something about the escalation. However, everything went well. "Some of our acquaintances from Croatia were in Serbia, but there were no inconveniences," says Domanović.

He adds that people in Croatia do not pay too much attention to what is happening in Serbia, especially in Istria, which is multicultural and "above those national things".

"The news comes to them, but they don't react to it dramatically." They are focused on tourism, many people from Serbia work in Istria, so people in Istria are quite familiar with the fact that not all Serbs and Serbia are what they can read in media such as Kurir and Informer", says Domanović.

Internal political games

He believes that people in Croatia have not changed their opinion or attitude towards Serbia because of the aforementioned, and he also notes that politicians in Croatia and Serbia cooperate and use the opportunity to score some political points, which was also noticeable during the covid pandemic when the measures were agreed upon.

He reminds that there was always some kind of communication between Belgrade and Zagreb that determined when they should cooperate and when they use those relations for their internal political games.

"The country is one thing, and the people are another, and I don't think that people are afraid of coming to Serbia at any time. In the mainstream media in Croatia, you can read the statements and demands of the student protests in Serbia long before you can see them in the mainstream media in Serbia. "A few days ago, there was a feature on HRT about the student protests in Serbia that was longer than three minutes, which is almost impossible for RTS," says Domanović.

Krk is the closest sea to Belgrade

He emphasized that people who did not emotionally go through the upheavals of the 1990s have a different picture than those who lost someone in the war and who probably react differently.

"There is good and normal communication between normal people." After all, geography says that Krk is the closest sea to Belgrade, closer than Thessaloniki. For ordinary people, in quotation marks, because there are no ordinary people, it is easier than, for example, Severina, whose statements are closely followed, but it is obvious that the circle is tightening and that the authorities in Belgrade are trying in every way to cultivate some kind of constant tension instead of promoting normal communication and to listen to people", says Domanović.

He reminds that a group of young people from Komiža on the island of Vis supported the students.

"It's a very small place, but communication doesn't just go the way the authorities would like, given that we have social networks that are much less controllable than the mainstream media in Serbia." "Politicians do not choose the means to reach their goals, which clearly do not coincide with the goals of the normal and cultural community on both sides," concludes Domanović.

Emotional triggers

Political scientist Mladen Mrdalj believes that the eventual intimidation of Croatian citizens who come to Serbia is only a by-product of the aforementioned affairs, but not their primary goal.

"The goal of those affairs is to make the accusations that their political enemies are an extended arm of the Croatian secret services more believable. "They know that the emotional trigger for Serbs is the words of the Ustasha, the Croatian secret service and the Vatican, and when those 'magical words' are spoken, they cause a reflex defensive reaction in a considerable percentage of the population in Serbia," says Mrdalj.

He adds that everything seems more believable if, in addition, there are cases where specific persons were escorted out of Serbia under charges or were not allowed to enter Serbia, "because why would our country persecute some innocent people".

"This is how the government achieves that its internal political story seems more believable, and for that our foreign political image pays the price, because, not without reason, we present ourselves as a kind of police state where even young people, students, are not welcome, and without any evidence, which is the most important thing," says Mrdalj.

Parallel with Croatia

He believes that such cases can cause discomfort among Croatian citizens traveling to Serbia, because no one knows who could be the next victim of such a policy.

"In a way, it's an interesting parallel with the discomfort that Serbs feel when they go to Croatia, especially Serbs from Croatia, because they never know if some secret indictment will emerge or if they will have to spend 15 days in jail because of some post on Facebook or to pay a fine. "Unfortunately, this is the practice of the Croatian state in recent times, to keep people from Serbia in fear and to use this method to influence the culture of Serbs from Krajina in Serbia," says Mrdalj.

He assessed that the aforementioned moves of the Serbian authorities towards foreign citizens only reinforce its bad image, instead of breaking it.

"It didn't go unnoticed that young people from Croatia like to come to Belgrade, to have fun, that they like that exotic fruit, and that started to crown some stereotypes in Croatian politics about Serbs." "The government simply sacrifices foreign policy and the image of our country for the sake of its internal policy," concludes Mrdalj.

Full-blown schizophrenia

Vesna Petrović from the Belgrade Center for Human Rights assessed that the authorities in Serbia made a big mistake by expelling foreign citizens, because the ambassadors of those countries will still report to the governments of their countries.

"The message of those expulsions is terrible and it is an indicator of how the Government and the authorities treat the civil sector in general," says Petrović.

He adds that in Serbia, in the context of current events, those affairs will soon be forgotten.

"What they did is complete schizophrenia." They create incident situations like those with Severin or the students, and at the same time they say that it is incredibly important to maintain peace and take care of good neighborly relations with everyone," says Petrović.

She assessed that only during the time of Boris Tadić and Ivo Josipović, there were some political developments.

"On the cultural level, there are no strained relations, because writers, musicians and others involved in culture understand each other well. The authorities, which are mainly based on nationalist ideas, strain relations, with the fact that Croatia is part of the European Union, so their politicians, who are also not golden, are more decent than ours in power," concluded Petrović.