Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Just a guest here in my homeland

Ruža Tomašić, a member of the rightwing Croatian Party of Rights - Ante Starčević (Hrvatska Stranka Prava - Ante Starčević) and member of the Croatian parliament said that, "Croatia is for Croats", and that "everyone else is but a guest".

In response to such an inflammatory statement, Milorad Pupovac, deputy leader of the Independent Democratic Serbian Party (Samostalna Demokratska Srpska Stranka) and likewise a member of the Croatian parliament, yesterday brought a yellow band with the word "guest" in Serbo-Croat.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Er, this is a parliament in an EU country?

Balkan Ⓐnarchist said...

It will be soon. But I think the far-right in the country will do anything it can to stay in the public eye.

As I mentioned in a recent post, one vocal opponent of linguistic pluralism in his hometown has indirectly threatened violence, and in so doing, laid the blame for such future actions "exclusively" on his beloved country's government (which I guess he didn't vote for!).

Even more recently, there was a group of 8 young Serb Orthodox pupils, who were visiting the Krka monastery near Kistanje. I've blogged about Kistanje before, and I've visited the monastery in question, which is fine building in stunning surroundings. These eight were verbally and physically assaulted by Croat youths, some of them were wielding baseball bats and metal bars! Six of the eight got injured, and one of them more severely. Horrible story.

Kirk Johnson said...

That was a good protest. That kind of rhetoric about who is and isn't a "true" citizen is poisonous.