Calls to boycott Serb businesses criticized

Calls to boycott Serb businesses criticized

The Association of Zagreb Defenders of Vukovar, and the Association of Antifascist Veterans and Antifascists of Croatia told a news conference Croatia had accepted the obligation to respect all human and minority rights when it entered the EU.

Officials of the two organizations, Franjo Habulin and Damir Jašarević said the invitation was an attempt to promote fascism in Croatia and that the government should react, as it was its duty to protect all Croatian citizens, regardless of confession and ethnicity.

The publication of the list of businesses in Vukovar owned by people of different ethnicities and confession and the invitation to boycott them is reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany in 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Jewish shops and homes and began the Holocaust, they stated.

The invitation to boycott Serb businesses was posted on Facebook several days ago, citing that the boycott should continue "until the Cyrillic script was excluded from official use."

Milorad Pupovac, president of the Serb National Council (SNV) and member of the Croatian parliament, condemned the call in the harshest terms on Wednesday, and urged the authorized institution to react.

Pupovac told an impromptu press conference in Zagreb that if no reaction takes place, he will inform the authorized foreign institutions, Croatian news agency HINA reported.

The call for boycott issued over social networks refers to Serb goods and 35 shops owned by Serbs who are doing their jobs properly and trying to make their living, Pupovac underlined.

This is characteristic of Nazi, Fascist and Ustasha (Croatian WW2 fascists) regimes in 1930 and should not occur in the European democracies, he said.

Such incidents can seriously poison the relations between Croatia and Serbia, Pupovac said.