Anti-Serb sentiment

The most extreme elements of this party became the Ustaše in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a Croatian fascist organization that came to power during World War II and instituted racial laws that specifically targeted Serbs, Jews, Roma and dissidents.

[5][6] David Little suggests that the actions of Albanians at the time constituted ethnic cleansing as they attempted to create a homogeneous area free of Christian Serbs.

[13] The Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 probably contributed to the development of Starčević's anti-Serb sentiment: He believed that it increased the chances for the creation of Greater Croatia.

[15] Starčević's ideas formed a basis for the destructive politics of his successor, Josip Frank, a Croatian Jewish lawyer and politician converted to Catholicism[16][17] who led numerous anti-Serbian incidents.

[21] British historian C. A. Macartney stated that because of the "gross intolerance" toward Serbs who lived in Slavonia, they had to seek protection from Count Károly Khuen-Héderváry, the Ban of Croatia-Slavonia, in 1883.

"[14] In 1902 major anti-Serb riots in Croatia were caused by an article written by Serbian nationalist writer Nikola Stojanović (1880–1964) titled Do istrage vaše ili naše (Till the destruction of you or us) which forecasted the result of an "inevitable" Serbian-Croatian conflict, that was reprinted in the Serb Independent Party's Srbobran magazine.

[25] Oskar Potiorek, governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, closed many Serb societies and significantly contributed to the anti-Serb mood before the outbreak of World War I.

[34] Taking advantage of an international wave of revulsion against this act of "Serbian nationalist terrorism," Austria-Hungary gave Serbia an ultimatum which led to World War I.

Although the Serbs of Austria-Hungary were loyal citizens whose majority participated in its forces during the war, anti-Serb sentiment systematically spread and members of the ethnic group were persecuted all over the country.

An imperial order on 25 October 1915, banned the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, except "within the scope of Serb Orthodox Church authorities".

[44] In post-war Osijek, the Šajkača hat was banned by the police but the Austro-Hungarian cap was freely worn, and in the school and judicial system the Orthodox Serbs were termed "Greek-Eastern".

[46] A 1993 report of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe stated that Belgrade's centralist policies for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia led to increased anti-Serbian sentiment in Croatia.

[53] The propaganda of the Axis powers accused the group of persecuting minorities and establishing concentration camps for ethnic Germans in order to justify an attack on Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany portrayed itself as a force which would save the Yugoslav people from the threat of Serb nationalism.

The Axis occupation of Serbia enabled the Ustashe, a Croatian fascist[54] and terrorist organization, to implement its extreme anti-Serbian ideology in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH).

[56][57] The new government adopted racial laws, similar to those which existed in Nazi Germany, and it aimed them at Jews, Roma people and Serbs, who were all defined as being "aliens outside the national community"[58] and persecuted throughout the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II.

[77] During the Italian occupation of Albania in WWII, between 70,000 and 100,000 Serbs were expelled and thousands massacred in annexed Kosovo by Albanian paramilitaries, mainly by the Vulnetari and Balli Kombëtar.

[83] By September 1944, with the Allied victory in the Balkans imminent, Deva and his men attempted to purchase weapons from withdrawing German soldiers in order to organize a "final solution" of the Slavic population of Kosovo.

[95] During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the following in The New York Times on 23 April 1999: "Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you.

Friedman urged the US to destroy "in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge [and] road", annex Albania and Macedonia as "U.S. protectorates", "occupy the Balkans for years," and "[g]ive war a chance.

[99] Some criticism of Anti-Serb sentiment or Serbophobia purportedly corresponds to its interplay with perceived historical revisionism and myths practiced by some Serbian nationalist writers and the government of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s.

[103] In late 1988, months before the Revolutions of 1989, Milošević accused his critics like the Slovenian leader Milan Kučan of "spreading fear of Serbia" as a political tactic.

[106] Croat and Ukrainian sports fans have put up hate messages towards Serbs and Russians during a match of their national teams in the 2018 World Cup qualifier.

[107] The worst ethnic violence in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 conflict erupted in the partitioned town of Mitrovica, leaving hundreds wounded and at least 14 people dead.

International courts in Pristina have prosecuted several people who attacked several Serbian Orthodox churches, handing down jail sentences ranging from 21 months to 16 years.

[112][113] In 2015 Amnesty International reported that Croatian Serbs continued to face discrimination in public sector employment and the restitution of tenancy rights to social housing vacated during the war.

Amnesty International also said that right to use minority languages and scripts continued to be politicized and unimplemented in some towns and that heightened nationalist rhetoric and hate speech contributed to growing ethnic intolerance and insecurity.

[133] On 12 February 2018, when Serbian president Vučić was to meet with Croatian government representatives in Zagreb, hundreds of demonstrators chanted the salute Za dom spremni!

[147][148] In June 2019, Mirna Nikčević, first adviser to the Embassy of Montenegro in Turkey, commented on protests in front of the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Podgorica against the announced controversial religious law: "Honestly, I would burn the temple and all the cattle there".

[149] A few days later, Zoran Vujović, an actor of the Montenegrin National Theatre, has posted a lot of insults against the Serbs on his Facebook profile, saying that they were "nothingness, ignorant, degenerate, poisonous".

(emphasis added)Serbia proper was under strict German occupation, a situation which allowed the Ustasha to pursue its radical anti-Serbian policyClose collaboration between Ustaša and part of catholic clergy followed ... above all anti-Serbian ...Because of its independence from Belgrade (though not from Berlin) and because of its association with anti-Serb and anti-Allied politics, the NDH would later serve as a rallying symbol for those who wanted to declare their antipathy towards Serbia (during the War of Yugoslav secession)Nationalist and Liberal Echoes in Other Republics Every republic and autonomous province was struck by nationalist outbursts in these years, and among all the non-Serbian nationalities, there were strong anti- Serbian feelings.