Croatian Serb Leader Slates Carnival Burning his Effigy

Effigy of Milorad Pupovac torched in Kastel Sucurac on Saturday. Photo: Djurdjica Herceg Cavka / Dalmatinski portal

Veteran Croatian Serb leader and parliamentarian Milorad Pupovac has denounced the traditional carnival held in the Croatian coastal town of Kastel Sucurac on Sunday – at which a giant effigy of him was burned – as a nationalistic and chauvinistic event.

Each year, the carnival in the Dalmatian town selects new figures to feature as effigies in the carnival, choosing one in particular who represents everything that made Sucurac inhabitants “upset and angry”.

According to the local media outlet Kastela.org, Pupovac was selected as “the main culprit” this year.

Pupovac told BIRN he had nothing against carnivals in principle.

“Carnivals are, usually, in all cultures that nurture this tradition, directed at those who have power, and once a year, through wit, criticism or in a caricature, a judgment is in some way pronounced on them,” Pupovac said, adding that he had been attending carnivals since his childhood.

“But in this case, like last year, when it was directed against members of the LGBT community, it is directed against the weaker, against those that are different and is based on prejudice,” he said.

“It would have been almost as if in similar carnivals, like Mardi Gras in America [were] burning blacks, or burning Jews in the Central European countries,” Pupovac said.

The traditional Sucurac carnival also visited another carnival held in the neighbouring town of Donji Kastel, to which they brought another giant model of Pupovac and smaller model of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

They then showed the Prime Minister “dancing to Pupovacs tune”. This alluded to the fact that Pupovac’s Independent Democratic Serbian Party, NDSS, is a junior coalition partner to the ruling centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ.

On the same occasion, the carnival group simulated the recent attack on three Red Star Belgrade water polo players in Split.

Actors who played the role of Red Star Belgrade, along with an actor who played the attacker, came on a truck and one of “water polo players” then jumped into the sea, much amusing the audience.

As BIRN reported, three players from the real Red Star Belgrade Water Polo Club were attacked in the southern coastal city of Split on February 10. Two of the players fled while the third escaped by jumping into the sea.

“I’m a Montenegrin, I’m not a Serb!” shouted the player who fled into the sea, Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper reported. A group of locals then helped the player out of the water. Police said they offered medical assistance to the young man who jumped into the sea, but he turned it down.

This is not the first time that the Kastela carnival has included activities offend various minority communities.

In February last year, a replica of Croatia’s first picture book about same-sex families “My Rainbow Family” was ceremonially burned at the carnival in Kastela.

LGBT rights groups have since filed a complaint against the carnival organisers, while Croatia’s Science and Education Minister, Blazenka Divjak, condemned the book’s burning.

At the end of February 2017, organisers of the carnival in Kastela also torched an effigy of Pupovac.

It was one of 393 events that the Serbian National Council, SNV, registered in 2017 as displays of ethnic intolerance, revisionism and hate speech against Serbs in Croatia.

The SNV said in a report published on Monday that cases of ethnically-motivated violence, threats and hate speech against Serbs in Croatia rose in 2017.

A rise in hate speech in Croatia, targeting Serbs, LGBT people and Roma, was also highlighted in a report published in May 2018 by the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.

“We in the SNV and the Independent Democratic Serbian Party are monitoring with concern how violent language, hate speech are chauvinism are spreading in Croatia and becoming a part of folklore behaviour,” Pupovac.