Tadic Condemns Serbian Minister's 'Nazi-Like' Article

President of the Democratic Party, DS | Photo by Wikimedia Commons

In a statement, Tadic said the deputy minister's article, "Time for the first Serbian cultural uprising," published in “Standard” magazine on August 13, attacked artists' right to freedom of thought and political choice.

Tadic deemed the article scandalous, and demanded the replacement of Kolarevic, who in the Nineties worked as a journalist for Serbia's public broadcaster, RTS.

"Drawing up lists of... executors of the ‘devastating anti-Serb politics’ with the surnames and first names of distinguished culture workers is a scandalous and uncivilized act," Serbia's former president said.

"This has already been seen before in history, under the Nazis," Tadic added.

Kolarevic's article attacked a number of well-known artists by name, including the singers Zdravko Colic and Momcilo Bajagic, actor Predrag Ejdus, theatre critic Jovan Cirilov, writer Svetislav Basara and many more.

Kolarevic elaborated on the historic continuity of hatred for Serbs, seeing the First World War as the starting date of a conspiracy against the Serbian nation.

The anti-Serb politics of Austria-Hungary were, according to Kolarevic, passed on to the Yugoslav Communists under Josip Broz Tito, and their ideas still prevailed in Serbian society, especially in the world of culture.

Kolarevic suggested that those artists who had supported Boris Tadic, or the leader of Liberal Democratic Party, Cedomir Jovanovic, in recent elections, were modern bearers of anti-Serb politics in Serbian culture.

Tadic concluded that Kolarevic's call for "an uprising" against anti-patriotic artists revealed the new government’s real agenda, which was very different, he said, from its pro-European rhetoric.