Serbian Ambassador to Croatia Jelena Milić criticized the attitude of the Croatian public towards the ultra-nationalist singer Mark Perković Thompson, and then demonstratively left the meeting on minority protection systems in Croatia and Serbia
Ambassador of Serbia in Croatia Jelena Milić she demonstratively left the conference on national systems for the protection of the Croatian national minority in Serbia and the Serbian national minority in Croatia which was held in Zagreb.
"What do you think is not Thompson as such, but the state's support for Thompson's concerts. You nicely note that young people do not know what the Ustasha is, but also in Croatia, Nino Raspudić cites research about the fact that young people have no idea why Thompson is a problem. We also have a gathering where one of the most frequent commentators on current topics, not history, Hrvoje Klasić, says that he came to that gathering, but that he has no idea what Thompson is actually singing about in his new song 'If you don't know what happened,'" said Milić, sitting in the front row of the audience.
She said that in that song, among other things, Thompson sings about "how Croatia has not faced its crimes somewhere".
She assessed that the situation is "really very dangerous" and that it is time for "individuals from Croatia who are causing problems in Serbia to be named" and that this is "in no way hate speech spread by the state leadership of the Republic of Serbia", Milić said.
Milić reacted to the statement of Jasna Vojnić, a representative of the Croatian minority in Serbia, the president of the Croatian National Council in Serbia and a member of the Croatian Parliament, that "Serbia's state leadership is spreading hate speech against the Croatian community in that country", reports the Croatian portal Index.
Photo: Printskrin/Index.hrJelena Milić leaves the meeting
Vojnić pointed out that the state leadership of Serbia, sporadically, as it sees fit, "accuses the Croats and Ustasha for everything that suits them at that moment".
At the end of February this year, Milić appeared at a panel held in the center of Zagreb called "Thompson über alles" organized by Privrednik, a Serbian business association.
The interlocutors were civic activist Zoran Pusić, member of parliament Nino Raspudić and historian Hrvoje Klasić. The debate was peaceful until Jelena Milić spoke up from the audience.
"We have been talking all evening about Ustashas and Chetniks, Serbs and Partisans, about 1941 and so on. I am the ambassador of the Republic of Serbia, which has a better record of dealing with the past than Croatia," Milić stated at the time.
"Serbia does not have a verdict for the joint criminal enterprise about which the song 'If you don't know what happened' sings. That is your problem, I feel sorry for you and I would like you to follow the politics of Serbia, which is much more progressive in that direction than you," MILić continued, with the audience protesting.
"I feel sorry for you if you really mean what you just said. In Serbia, dealing with the past is disastrous. You have a mayor who wants to erect a monument to Draža Mihailović. You have equated the Chetnik movement with the Partisan movement," replied Hrvoje Klasić.
"There is an essential difference between the Ustashas and the Chetniks. Wilson, Eisenhower and Churchill had an ambivalent attitude towards the Chetniks, but it was not like that towards the Ustashas. I don't know how you managed not to mention Croat-Bosniak relations, since 'If you don't know what happened' is a subtle version that should focus on what Croatia did against the Bosniaks in BiH in the 1990s," shouted Milić.
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