Serbian player not allowed into Croatia
It would be difficult to imagine something like this happening here in the US, where ethnic hatred rarely rises to the level of deadly violence. In the former Yugoslavia, though, something as seemingly benign as a tattoo can carry enormous significance. Surely, Milan Gurovic had to realize that a tattoo of a Serb nationalist hero would be seen by Croats as an egregious and insensitive insult. It’s gestures like this that illustrate why so many people died in such a brutal and senseless war.
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro — A Serbian basketball player was banned from entering Croatia because of a nationalist tattoo on his arm that authorities said was inflammatory.
Milan Gurovic, who also is on the Serbia-Montenegro national team, was barred from traveling to Zagreb, where his team plays a regional league game Sunday.
The tattoo is “considered as an incitement … of racial, national or religious hatred,” which is banned by Croatian laws, Croatian Interior Ministry spokesman Zlatko Mehun said.
Mehun said police also would act if a Croatian player displays similar symbols. This was the first time Croatia applied such a measure on a foreign athlete.
Yes, on one level it is only a tattoo, and given the prevalence of tattoos in American professional sports, the fuss might seem like much ado about nothing. Keep in mind, though, that while the shooting and the genocide may have stopped, the wounds and the memories in the Balkans are still very fresh and very real. A symbol as seemingly innocent as a tattoo is hardly seen as an empty gesture. Indeed, people have been killed for less.
“Things have left the boundaries of sports and moved into politics,” said Dragan Todorov, an official with the Serbian team Partizan Belgrade. He added that the club plans to complain to basketball governing bodies.
The tattoo is of Draza Mihajlovic, whose troops during World War II were allied with fascists in Croatia and are blamed for slaying hundreds of Croats. Mihajlovic was executed by the Communists. Serb nationalists had declared Mihajlovic their hero, naming their paramilitary units after his guerrilla fighters.
The war between Serbia and Croatia claimed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 lives. Most were young men with their lives in front of them- until a bullet, a mortar round, or an artillery shell with their name on it ended their life. Most everyone who lives in Serbia and Croatia either lost a loved one in the war or knows someone who did. A trip through Zagreb’s massive Mirogoj Cemetery shows thousands of headstones memorializng Croatia’s war dead. Most of the markers show the ages of those buried beneath to be in their twenties and thirties. A significant portion of an entire generation has been sacrificed for hatred and political supremacy. What a waste….
Serbia and Croatia may maintain diplomatic relations, and they may even compete against one another in a number of sports, but this should by no means be taken as an indication that all is well. In fact, things may never be well. This is what happens when you allow the memory of generations of hatred and bloodshed to be passed from generation to generation. This is why a simple tattoo takes on such outsized significance. Until Serbs and Croats learn something as basic as respect for each other and their beliefs, nothing will change. Ever.
