Croatian Serb Leader Condemns Hate Graffiti on Election Posters

Milorad Pupovac, the leader of the Independent Democratic Serb Party, SDSS, one of the parties representing Croatia's Serb minority, said on Friday that the defacement of some of the party's European Parliament election campaign billboards should not deter Croatian Serbs from turning out to vote.

Several of the SDSS's billboards with the slogan "Do you know what it is like to be a Serb in Croatia?" have been vandalised in Croatian towns this week.

Pupovac urged voters from the country's Serb minority not to be afraid and to respond by going to the polls and "winning the space of freedom that the vandals wanted to restrict".

In some Croatian towns, the SDSS's billboards were ripped by vandals, but in the city of Split, they were defaced with anti-Serb graffiti and symbols of the WWII fascist Ustasa movement.

Dejan Jovic, one of the candidates on the SDSS's list for the European elections, said on Wednesday that the vandals sprayed the words 'Za dom spremni' ('Ready for the Home(land)'), the slogan of the Ustasa, who killed 83,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists at the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia between 1941 and 1945.

Ustashe grafitti on our (Independent Democratic Serb Party) EP electoral posters, with threatening messages to ethnic Serbs and symbols of fascist NDH. Today in Split, Croatia. pic.twitter.com/LQbTVuWMmt

— Dejan Jovic (@DejanFpzg) 1. svibnja 2019.

The graffiti on the billboard in Split also said "Start up the tractors", a reference to the mass flight of around 250,000 Serbs after the Croatian Army operation that ended the war in 1995. Some of the fleeing Serbs left Croatia with their families and possessions on tractors.

"Some people want to put us on tractors...