Croatia's Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs on Saturday deplored the organisation of an election convention of the Serb Radical Party (SRS) led by convicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj in the town of Hrtkovci, from which hundreds of the Croats were expelled in the 1990s, branding the event as impermissible.

Today’s SRS convention in Hrtkovci coincided with the developments 27 years ago when on 6 May 1992 leaders and supporters of that party held a rally in that Vojvodina town at which Seselj read out the names of “undesirable” local Croats. In the following days, about 700 residents left the village due to pressure and threats.

The Croatian ministry considers the organisation of the SRS assembly in the town which has become the byword for the suffering of the Croats in Serbia as an act of unacceptable mockery of victims and thousands of deported Croats and all members of the ethnic Croat minority in Vojvodina.

The ministry expects the Serbian authorities to clearly deplore such assemblies that promote the policy and views which have been unequivocally condemned by the Hague tribunal and the civilised world.

It also expects Belgrade to demonstrate genuine care for the rights of ethnic minorities and to show readiness to come to terms with the past.

Local Croat leaders warn that an estimated 35,000-40,000 Vojvodina Croats had to leave their homes during the 1990s campaign of intimidation and almost none of them have returned.

Last year, the SRS leader Seselj was sentenced by the Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in The Hague to 10 years in jail for expulsions and deportations of the Croats from Vojvodina and Serbia.

The Appeals Chamber of the MICT, the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), delivered that ruling after Seselj was found guilty of crimes against humanity over the inflammatory speech in Hrtkovci which it found resulted in the deportation, persecution, displacement and other inhumane acts against Vojvodina Croats. When that final ruling was handed down, Seselj did not have to go to jail because the time he spent in detention in The Hague was credited to the sentence.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has written on her Twitter account that it is devastating that the Serbian authorities allow persecutors of the Vojvodina Croats to gather again in 2019 in the town of Hrtkovci after they conducted expulsions of local Croats in early May in 1992.

There were no official reactions from Serbian authorities to demands that today’s SRS gathering be banned.