As far-right ideology gains acceptance in Croatia, rising verbal and physical assaults on the Serbian minority go unpunished.
Almost a month ago, 50 masked men disrupted a performance of a children’s play scheduled for the annual Day of Serbian Culture in Split, which was also to include a concert by a choir of pensioners.
A few days later, there were protests over the arrest of several of the men, which escalated into anti-Serbian outbursts. Some demonstrators waved the flag of the World War II fascist Croatian state, which sent tens of thousands of Serbs to concentration camps.
Those arrested in this affair were released a few days later. Still, the anti-Serbian incidents multiplied: In Zagreb, more masked men interrupted the opening of an exhibition about the art historian Dejan Medakovic, a Zagreb Serb, which the umbrella organization of that national minority – the Serbian National Council (SNV) – had organized. Attacks on Serbian events were also recorded in Rijeka, while an exhibition organized by the SNV was canceled in Vukovar.
From Name-Calling to Death Threats
“It is not good, and it is not easy, because we have a situation that we have not been in for a long time,” SNV president Boris Milosevic told the Zagreb weekly Express.
“Culture, the organization of events, locations, dates, content are being challenged, and in a way that we are simply not used to,” he said. Until recently, Milosevic added, a Serbian political party was in government, and Serbian cultural activities had ignited no controversy.
“Now [the far right] is trying to label everything as a provocation or inappropriate,” Milosevic said. “I hope that everything will calm down – for the sake of the people on the ground.”
Rising incidents of name-calling against the Serbian national minority over the wars of the 1990s, cancellation of cultural events, funding cuts for Serbian organizations, and mass displays of fascist symbols have in recent weeks escalated into physical violence and vocal anti-Serbian demonstrations.
A prominent member of the Serbian community also said he had received death threats.
“Until now, I have only reported to the police a case of extremely ugly and dangerous threats once, a few years ago,” said Milorad Pupovac, the president of the Independent Democratic Serbian Party (SDSS) and a member of parliament. He was speaking on a show on N1 television, CNN’s local media partner. “We don’t usually do that, but this time we changed our mind, because the level of hate speech, calls for violence, and direct threats to life has increased, which is certainly worrying.”
Pupovac continued: “You can no longer say anything publicly – you can’t even talk about football, let alone politics, without someone on social media getting involved and starting to spread hate speech and threats. This is a worrying phenomenon, not only for all of us in politics, but also for the media itself.”
Nationalist attacks on the Serbian minority in Croatia are not a recent phenomenon. Serbs made up roughly a seventh of Croatia’s population throughout the 20th century. They, along with other minorities, experienced severe repression and mass loss of life during World War II at the hands of the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime. Anti-Serb sentiment, however, also foregrounds the 1991 uprising of Croatian Serbs, instigated by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade and not finally crushed until 1995. The crimes of the Ustasha regime during the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) have not faded from the public arena, though, despite the extreme right’s efforts to deny and minimize them. In October, for example, members of a panel of revisionist historians invited to the Croatian parliament claimed that Jasenovac, the Ustasha death camp on the Sava River near Zagreb, was a “work camp” and not a place where, according to official estimates, about 80,000 people were killed.
Croatia’s Serbian minority has declined drastically since the beginning of the Yugoslav wars in 1991. The 1990s saw the largest decline with a loss of more than 60%, from 581,663 to 201,631, with the great majority resettling in Serbia. After a decade of stability, a second, lesser decline set in during a period of overall population loss due to emigration. The most recent census in 2021 recorded just 123,892 ethnic Serbs, comprising 3.2% of Croatia’s 3.87 million population.
The complexity of Croatian-Serbian relations over the past hundred years – from the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918 to the collapse of the second Yugoslavia in 1991 – still fuels fierce confrontations that have escalated into violence.
“We almost permanently feel that we are still at war. Certain groups not only preserve the legacy of the war, but do so outside the law and the constitution, which is unacceptable,” Pupovac told N1.
Some of this is due to “an unfortunate combination” of popular cultural figures who exploit nationalist slogans for profit, he said, with politicians “that want to redefine Croatia, because the current constitutional order does not suit them.”
“They imagine a Croatia in which the black uniform will be fundamental, the sword with the cross the basic insignia, and ‘Za dom spremni!’ a greeting that is unjustly excluded from Croatian history.” (This phrase, translated as “For the homeland – ready!” was mandatory under the Ustasha regime, also known for its black uniforms and the above-mentioned insignia.)
Representatives of the Serbian minority did not respond to requests to comment on the ongoing verbal and physical assaults. Politicians from the ruling parties and the government spokesperson also failed to respond when asked to comment.
Alen Tahiri, director of the governmental Office for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities, did not mention the latest incidents in his response, but said, “The policy of protecting the rights of national minorities is implemented in cooperation with representatives of national minorities and their advocates.”
He noted that in 2024, the police filed 50 misdemeanor and criminal charges for violations of the rights of the Serbian minority.
Ombudswoman Tena Simatovic Einwalter in a written reply stated that “in 2024, there were public denunciations that the aforementioned Serbian cultural centers could be hostile intelligence centers, repeated demands to abolish or suspend financing of the weekly Novosti, and the cancellation of a photo exhibition depicting a traditional cultural event of Serbian cultural and artistic societies.” Novosti is the most prominent Serbian national minority newspaper.
Election Gives Nationalists a Boost
A hardening of attitudes toward the Serbian minority took place after the parliamentary elections in April 2024, when the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic – which has ruled alone or in coalition for most of Croatia’s post-Yugoslav history – closed a coalition pact with the far-right Homeland Movement (DP). The coalition secured a slim parliamentary majority – which today is only one vote – and DP received three ministerial positions and the position of deputy prime minister without portfolio.
DP joined the coalition on condition that the Serbian SDSS would not be part of the government and that funding for its weekly Novosti would be cut, which followed in May 2025. Serbian representatives – unlike those of the Italian, Roma, Czech, Bosniak, and Hungarian national minorities – were thus excluded from the ruling majority for the first time since 2007.
In this situation, the Serbian minority showed signs of losing faith in the Croatian constitution, said independent political analyst Davor Gjenero, who calls the 2024 elections “a turning point.”
Afterward, he said, “The attacks of the political right on the SDSS and SNV, on minority rights, began, [aiming to] push them into isolation. After years of maintaining political stability, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic began to make concessions [to the far right] in order to secure political supremacy in the parliament.”
Controversial singer Marko “Thompson” Perkovic’s huge concert in July at a Zagreb horse track ratcheted up the anti-Serb atmosphere even more. Along with banned symbols from the Ustasha era, the concert featured crosses and an image of the Virgin Mary drawn in the sky by drones.
“Marko Perkovic, known by his stage name Thompson, drew nearly half a million fans to the show,” according to France 24, “despite having been banned from performing in several countries because of his sympathies for Croatia’s World War II fascist Ustasha regime.”
Thompson and fans did a call-and-response chant of “For the Homeland – Ready” at the event. Former Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said politicians and the media were culpable for whipping up popular enthusiasm for the concert.
“There’s palpable excitement while in the center of Zagreb, fans are already singing songs from the time of the criminal state. The media are not reporting on this,” she wrote on X, according to Balkan Insight.
The concert had a high level of political patronage. Plenkovic was present at a rehearsal with his young children, while Parliamentary Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic and ministers from the current government attended the concert.
After the concert, when “Za dom spremni” was heard both in parliament and on the streets, the prime minister explained that it was allowed in one of Thompson’s controversial songs, “Cavoglave,” a commemoration of the paramilitary force HOS, but that it was otherwise banned.
“After Thompson’s concert, the strengthening Ustasha nostalgia on the public scene is noticeable,” Gjenero said. Noting the religious symbols displayed at the concert, he speculated on the hidden influence of older Catholic prelates with a deeply conservative social and political agenda.
Ombudswoman Einwalter also warned, “The lack of public condemnation sends a message that association with the Ustasha is acceptable in today’s Croatia.”
“Years of ignoring the problem, [and] the lack of political will to solve it” have led to a situation where young people especially have not been educated to understand that the current constitutional system clearly separates the modern Croatian state and the Ustasha regime, Einwalter said.
Serbian Rocker Banned
Events in the wake of the Thompson concert were a clear precursor to the wave of discrimination against the Serbian minority in recent weeks.
In early August, “Za dom spremni” and shouts of “Forward, Ustasha!” boomed during a football match in Split. A song name-checking the concentration camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska was sung in public and played on loudspeakers on the streets of Sinj. In Solin and Split, performances by iconic Serbian rock singer Momcilo Bajagic Bajaga were canceled, while in Benkovac, a town with a Serb majority, right-wing veterans prevented a cultural festival from taking place.
Cvijeta Senta, an analyst at the Zagreb-based human rights campaign group, the Center for Peace Studies, told Transitions that far-right narratives and symbols began to proliferate several years ago, and even more so in the past few months. She noted “the normalization of the [fascist] salute and the rise of revisionist and hateful messages on social media.”
“Discrimination and a hostile atmosphere are more often manifested through hate speech, denial of historical facts, symbolic provocations, and contestation of cultural content associated with minorities,” Senta said.
Representatives of the European Commission and the Council of Europe have not commented on the anti-Serbian incidents. The Commission’s public relations office merely expressed confidence that Croatia would uphold its national and international obligations to protect the rights of national minorities, while the Council of Europe said its latest report on Croatia’s minorities would be released in the first quarter of 2026.
Gatherings of the Serbian minority are safer for now thanks to a heavy police presence, but in Gjenero’s estimation, the prevailing political climate remains very unfriendly.
“We can conclude that changes in the position of the Serbian national minority in Croatia are not happening just by chance. This mess will continue,” the analyst said.
Dubravko Grakalic is a freelance journalist with 40 years of experience in print and internet outlets. He has published in leading newspapers of the former Yugoslavia and Croatia, including Polet, Start, Globus, Nacional, Nedjeljna Dalmacija, and Vjesnik, and at various times held the positions of editor-in-chief, political editor, commentator, and columnist. He is the co-author of two books on Croatian politics.
