Serbian ultra-nationalist MP Aleksandar Seselj drew protests from the Croatian delegation at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) over questions about what he said was the expulsion of Serbs to Croatian Foreign Minister Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

Seselj, son of Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader Vojislav Seselj and a member of the Serbian parliament delegation at the PACE, asked Buric when “Croatia would return the Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK) to the people who fled before the knives of the Ustashi”, alluding to the military operations at the end of the war in Croatia in the 1990s.  

The RSK was a self-proclaimed state, set up by Serbs in a part of Croatia with support from the Serbian authorities under the late President Slobodan Milosevic.  

Seselj went on to say that “Croatia occupied the RSK, killed more than 1,000 and expelled around 500,000 Serbs”, adding that “the founder of the Croatian Democratic Union which Buric belongs to was criminal and neo-fascist Franjo Tudjman who is responsible for the greatest ethnic cleansing in Europe following World War 2”.  

Croatia’s PACE delegation said in its protest note that it would not “accept insults and untruths spoken at the plenary session in Strasbourg”. “We condemn all hate speech, especially that based on insults and untruths,” the note said. Delegation chief Sanja Putica asked to meet with PACE President Liliane Maury Pasquier and appealed for an end to “this level of communication, and voicing of untruth and insults in the Parliamentary Assembly”. Pasquier said Aleksandar Seselj’s statements were unacceptable, the Croatian delegation statement added.    

The Serbian Parliament issued a statement saying that members of the Serbian PACE delegation asked Buric about the rights of the Serb national minority in Croatia and the use of the Serbian language and Cyrillic alphabet, the missing in the conflict of the 1990s, return of property and ownership rights. The delegation also requested her assessment of cooperation with Serbia on the position of the Croat national minority.