Anti-Croat sentiment
Anti-Croat sentiment or Croatophobia (Croatian: Hrvatofobija) is discrimination or prejudice against Croats as an ethnic group, also consisting of negative feelings towards Croatia as a country.
Serbian minister Ilija Garašanin's Načertanije (1844)[1]: 3 claimed lands that were inhabited by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Hungarians and Croats were part of Serbia.
That side will be Croatians, due to their minority, geographical position, mingling with Serbs and because the process of evolution means Serbdom is equal to progress.
Nikola Pašić believed that Yugoslavia should be as centralized as possible, creating a Greater Serbian national concept of concentrated power in the hands of Belgrade in place of distinct regional governments and identities.
In response to the shooting at the National Assembly, King Alexander abolished the parliamentary system and proclaimed a royal dictatorship.
[18][19] This period was therefore characterised as "centralising, oppressive and dedicated to the forcible Italianisation of the minorities"[20] consequently leading to a strong emigration and assimilations of Slovenes and Croats from the Julian March.
[22] An example of this was the 1942 massacre in Podhum, when Italian forces murdered up to 118 Croat civilians and deported the remaining population to concentration camps.
On the one hand, the Nazis described the Croats officially as being "more Germanic than Slav", a notion propagated by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić who imposed the view that the "Croatians were the descendants of the ancient Goths" who "had the Panslav idea forced upon them as something artificial".
[31] As in other parts of Yugoslavia, Nazi German forces committed several war crimes against Croat civilians in reprisal for the actions of the Yugoslav Partisans.
At least 7,000 Croat civilians from the territory of the Independent State of Croatia were killed by Nazi German forces, in acts of terror or in concentration camps.
[32] Regarding the realization of his Greater Serbian program Homogeneous Serbia, Stevan Moljević wrote in his letter to Dragiša Vasić in February 1942:[33] (...) 2) Regarding our internal affairs, the demarcation with the Croats, we hold that we should as soon as an opportunity occurs, gather all the strength and create a completed act: occupy territories marked on the map, clean it before anyone pulls itself together.
We would assume that the occupation would only be carried out if the main hubs were strong in Osijek, Vinkovci, Slavonski Brod, Sunja, Karlovac, Knin, Šibenik, Mostar and Metković, and then from within starts with an [ethnic] cleansing of all non-Serb elements.
The organization for the interior cleansing should be prepared immediately, and it could be because there are many refugees in Serbia from all "Serb lands" (...).The tactics employed against the Croats were at least to an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Ustashas, but Croats and Muslims living in areas intended to be part of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with Draža Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941.
According to the Croatian historian, Vladimir Žerjavić, Chetnik forces killed between 18,000–32,000 Croats during World War II, mostly civilians.
"[40][better source needed] Regarding the campaign, Chetnik commander Milan Šantić said in Trebinje in July 1942, "The Serb lands must be cleansed from Catholics and Muslims.
[47] On 28 June 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, exiled Croatian Serb Chetnik commander Momčilo Đujić bestowed the Serbian politician Vojislav Šešelj with the title of voivode, encouraging him to "expel all Croats, Albanians, and other foreign elements from holy Serbian soil", stating he would return to the Balkans only when Serbia was cleansed of "the last Jew, Albanian, and Croat".
[49] 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.
[50] In May and July 1992, Šešelj visited the Vojvodinian village of Hrtkovci and publicly started the campaign of persecution of local ethnic Croats.
[51][52] During the Yugoslav Wars, members of the Serbian Radical Party conducted a campaign of intimidation and persecution against the Croats of Serbia through hate speech.
[65] The Serbian Humanitarian Law Centre, based in Belgrade, has documented at least 17 instances of killings or disappearances of Croats from Vojvodina from 1991-1995.
[68] The total number of expelled Croats and other non-Serbs during the Croatian War of Independence ranges from 170,000 (ICTY),[69] 250,000 (Human Rights Watch)[70] or 500,000 (UNHCR).
[71] Croatian Serbs forces together with Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian nationalist paramilitaries committed numerous war crimes against Croat civilians.
[83][84][85][86][87] Concentration camps (such as Omarska, Manjača and Trnopolje) were established by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the authorities of Republika Srpska (RS), where thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croat civilians were detained, tortured, and killed.
[92] Some of the war crimes perpetrated by Serb forces included: the Doboj, Bosanski Šamac, Prijedor ethnic cleansings and the Brčko bridge massacre.
[93] Terrorism in Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Dayton Agreement mostly consisted of murders and bombings of specific people, primarily Croats.
[98] In contemporary Serbia, both politicians and media outlets have used the slur "Ustaše" to negatively refer to Croatians and Croatia as being a fascist nation.
Tomislav Žigmanov, a prominent member of the Croatian community in Serbia, stated that “...resentment and stereotypes against the Croats are widespread in Serbia...” which is a consequence of “...strong and prevailing anti-Croat contents in statements of a relatively high number of Serbian senior officials.”[101] In 2019, after a Serbian armed forces delegation was barred from entering Croatia without prior state notice to visit Jasenovac concentration camp Memorial Site in their official uniforms, Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian defense minister, commented on the barred visit by saying that modern Croatia is a "follower of Ante Pavelić's fascist ideology.
Bosnia's current Croat President Željko Komšić, who is effectively backed by Bosniak voters, has lambasted the idea, calling it "an electoral law based on apartheid".
[111] In October 2023 in his response to Israel’s Ambassador to Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Tirana, Galit Peleg, Komšić broadly implied that all Croats in Mostar are fascists.
[119][120] After numerous high representatives of the two countries strongly condemned the speech for its revisionist and irredentist connotations, Tajani stated his words were intended as "a message of peace"[121] and were misinterpreted.
