Anti-Croat sentiment (Croatophobia) is discrimination or prejudice towards Croats as an ethnic group, and towards Croatia as a country.
Contents
- First historical instances of anti Croat sentiment
- World War II
- Sentiment
- Hate speech
- Other mentions
- References
Anti-Croat sentiment was – and still is – especially present among some Serbs, starting in 19th Century.
First historical instances of anti-Croat sentiment
With the nation-building process in mid-19th century, first Croatian-Serbian tension appeared. Serbian minister Ilija Garašanin's Načertanije (1844) claimed lands that were inhabited by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Hungarians and Croats were part of Serbia. Garašanin's plan also includes methods of spreading Serbian influence in the claimed lands. He proposed ways to influence Croats, who Garašanin regarded as "Serbs of Catholic faith". This plan considered surrounding peoples to be devoid of national consciousness. Vuk Karadžić in the 1850s then denied the existence of Croatians and Croatian language, counting them as "Catholic Serbs". Croatia was at the time a kingdom in Habsburg Monarchy, with Dalmatia and Istria being separate Habsburg Crown lands. Ante Starčević, head of the Croatian Party of Rights, proved that Croats and Croatia do exist. After Austro-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 and Serbia gained its independence from Ottoman Empire, Croatian and Serbian relations deteriorated as both sides had pretensions on Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1902 there was a reprinted article written by Serb Nikola Stojanović that was published in the publication of the Serbian Independent Party from Zagreb titled Do istrage vaše ili naše (Till the Destruction, ours or yours) in which denying of the existence of Croat nation as well as forecasting the result of the "inevitable" Serbian-Croatian conflict occurred.
That combat has to be led till the destruction, either ours or yours. One side must succumb. That side will be Croatians, due to their minority, geographical position, mingling with Serbs and because the process of evolution means Serbhood is equal to progress.
During the 19th century, some Italian radical nationalists tried to promote the idea that a Croatian nation has no sound reason to exist: therefore the Slavic population on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea (Croats and Slovenes) should be Italianized, and the territory included in Italy.
World War II
Ethnic cleansing, the removal of certain ethnic groups with a territory was promoted by the main Chetnik ideologist Stevan Moljević 1941: to achieve the goal of forming Greater Serbia, he advocated the removal of Croat and Muslim populations from the large area between Serbia and Slovenia. A directive of the chief Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović dated 20 December 1941, addressed to newly appointed commanders in Montenegro, Major Đorđije Lašić and Captain Pavle Đurišić, outlined, among other things, the goal of cleansing of all non-Serb elements from the territories South, East and North of Serbia, in order to create a Greater Serbia:
One of them being:
-the creation of contiguous frontiers between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Muslim population from Sandžak and the Muslim and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sentiment
After Serbian President Slobodan Milošević's assumption of power in 1989 various Chetnik groups made a "comeback" and his regime "made a decisive contribution to launching the Chetnik insurrection in 1990–1992 and to funding it thereafter". Chetnik ideology was influenced by the memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. On 28 June 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Serbs in north Dalmatia, Knin, Obrovac, and Benkovac where there were "old Chetnik strongholds" held the first anti-Croatian government demonstrations. On the same day, Chetnik commander from WWII Momčilo Đujić declared Vojislav Šešelj "at once assumes the role of a vojvoda and a vladika [high-ranking religious order] unifier" and ordered him "to expel all Croats, Albanians, and other foreign elements from holy Serbian soil", stating he would return only when Serbia was cleansed of "the last Jew, Albanian, and Croat".
The Hague Tribunal found that about 170,000 Croats were expelled from parts of Croatia, Serbian forces sought to control. Rebel Croatian Serbs' forces together with Serbian military and paramilitary forces committed numerous war crimes and massacres in Republic of Croatia. According to the Croatian Association of Prisoners in Serbian Concentration Camps, a total of 8,000 Croatian civilians and Prisoners of war (a large number after the fall of Vukovar) went through Serb prison camps such as Sremska Mitrovica camp, Stajićevo camp, Niš camp and many others where many were heavily abused and tortured. A total of 300 people never returned from them. A total of 4,570 camp inmates started legal action against former Serbia and Montenegro (now Serbia) for torture and abuse in the camps.
Hate speech
Vojislav Seselj, a radical Serbian nationalist, is a major proponent of a Greater Serbia with no ethnic minorities, but “ethnic unity and harmony among Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Serbs, Muslim Serbs and atheist Serbs. Labling Croats as Catholic Serbs. In late 1991, during the Battle of Vukovar, Šešelj went to Borovo Selo to meet with a Serbian Orthodox Church bishop and publicly described Croats as a genocidal and perverted people. In May and July 1992, Šešelj visited the Vojvodina village of Hrtkovci and publicly started the campaign of persecution of local ethnic Croats.