The League of Vojvodina Social Democrats (LSV) party said on Sunday that it was disgraceful that the convention of the Serb Radical Party in Hrtkovci on Saturday had not been banned and asked Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to explain to the general public why the competent authorities failed to prohibit that gathering of the Radicals in the town where

“The actions of Vojislav Seselj since the very start have been characterised by hatred and spreading of fear. That policy caused calamities in Vojvodina, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the LSV said in a press release.

The party also pointed out the disastrous consequences of the Seselj policy can be felt today, too. “Our country is marked by the acts of that convicted war criminal.”

Last year, the Appeals Chamber of the MICT, the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), sentenced Seselj to ten years’ imprisonment for crimes against humanity over the May 1992 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 wrote on her Twitter account that it is devastating that 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.

Croatia’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned the organisation of the SRS election convention in Hrtkovci, from which hundreds of the Croats were expelled in the 1990s, branding the event as impermissible.

The Zagreb-based association of the Croats expelled from Vojvodina also deplored the SRS meeting in Hrtkovci, underscoring that the event shows that Serbian authorities tolerate the continued policy of inciting ethnic hatred.

The SRS convention in Hrtkovci coincided with the anniversary of 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.