ZAGREB, 30 March 2022 - Croatia's Ambassador to Serbia, Hidajet Bišćević, was severely criticised on Wednesday by MPs Miro Bulj (Bridge) and Marijan Pavliček (Croatian Sovereignists).

"Ambassador Bišćević's behaviour is scandalous, more than scandalous," Bulj said in Parliament, accusing the ambassador of "harassing Croatian political representatives, obviously on the foreign minister's and the prime minister's orders."

Pavliček accused Bišćević of "working on the further fragmentation of the Croatian community" in Serbia and attacking its leaders, notably Tomislav Žigmanov, the head of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV).

"He is harassing a man who stood up against the regime of Aleksandar Vučić," Bulj said, criticising the Croatian government for leaving the Croats in Vojvodina on their own and without a single representative in the Serbian National Assembly.

Bulj said that Bišćević was "demonising" Žigmanov because "he is not sucking up to Vučić", and because he joined a coalition of parties from Vojvodina for Sunday's general election.

"It seems he would have been more acceptable had he sided with Vučić's party and the Chetnik movement," Bulj said.

Both Bulj and Pavliček noted that unlike the Croats in Serbia, the Serb minority in Croatia has three guaranteed seats in the national parliament, about 40 guaranteed mayoral positions and about 10 deputy county prefect positions.

"There are about 58,000 Croats in Serbia today. Their number in the last 30 years has been halved in a country where there was no war and where the Croats did not rise up in an armed rebellion", Pavliček said, adding that "the Croats are second-class citizens in Serbia today."

Pavliček said that three weeks ago all the heads of Croatian-language primary schools in Vojvodina had been summoned by the police for interviews over "discrimination against children," because all children attending Croatian-language classes had received free textbooks, unlike children attending classes in Serbian.

"Croatian diplomacy did not react to this," Pavliček said, blaming it for the poor status of the Croats in Vojvodina.

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ZAGREB, 27 April, 2021 - Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said on Tuesday that Croatian Ambassador Hidajet Biščević enjoyed the support from the Croatian government, in his comment to the ethnic Croat leader's accusations against the diplomat.

Addressing a news conference in Petrinja, Minister Grlić Radman said that the experienced Croatian diplomat Biščević enjoyed the support of the government in Zagreb.

He says that exclusively Croatian institutions are in charge of assessing the performance of Croatian diplomats.

The minister said that the status of the Croatian community in Serbia is one of Biščević's priorities.

"Media speculations and such statements in media about Croatia's diplomats are not the best way of communication. Croatia's diplomacy does not deserve that and furthermore this could also be an indirect attempt from outside to impact the political relations in Croatia," said the minister who will travel to Subotica on Wednesday.

He also said that it was also inappropriate to disseminate reports against Biščević after the recent incident in which the Croatian flag was removed from the residence of the Croatian ambassador in Belgrade.

Following media reports about the criticism targeted against Biščević, President Zoran Milanović said that he would recall the ambassador for consultations to establish the truth.

Minister Grlić Radman also rejected Milanović's claims that it was him who appointed Grlić Radman to an ambassadorial post.

Grlić Radman said that he had been employed for diplomatic tasks for the first time in 1991 by the first Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and since then he has been an official in the foreign ministry.

For more about politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 27 April, 2021 - Croatia's President Zoran Milanović said on Tuesday that he would recall Croatian Ambassador to Belgrade, Hidajet Biščević, after the ethnic Croat leader Tomislav Žigmanov criticised the diplomat for working against the Croats in Serbia.

In the meantime media outlets have reported that Ambassador Biščević did not react to the developments in which ethnic Croats received death threats, and that he also failed to even telephone those members who received threats to express sympathy with them.

Žigmanov, who is the leader of the Democratic party of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV), recently claimed that the Croatian ambassador had made a "tepid reaction" to attempts by Serbian authorities in Subotica to introduce the Bunjevci vernacular as an official language in that northern city and that the ambassador communicated with people whom Žigmanov described as persons "who are actively working on the destabilisation and dissolution of the (ethnic Croat) community."

All that prompted President Milanović to say today that he did not know whose policy Biščević "is pursuing there."

I cannot know whether all those headlines are true and I will summon him back to Zagreb for consultations, Milanović said in his address to the press at the Gašinci military range in eastern Croatia.

The Večernji List daily has reported that on 30 March, Žigmanov sent a letter to Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman to inform him that Biščević was working against the interests of the ethnic Croat community in Serbia.

For more about politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.