Severina: I will never come to Serbia again as long as Aleksandar Vucic is in power

Popular Croatian singer Severina Vučković has said that she was questioned by Serbian police officers, who detained her for several hours at the border last night, about the genocide in Srebrenica, the Croatian military-police action „Oluja“ and lithium mining in Serbia.

Severina also told the Croatian portal 24 sata that she “will never come” to Serbia as long as President Aleksandar Vucic is in power, whom she described as “the biggest Ustasha for the Serbs”, who “has driven hundreds of thousands of Serbs out of the country, who fled his politics and economy, and the rest are now trying to poison them with lithium”.

She said that last night at around 19.45 she arrived with her manager at the Bajakovo border crossing on the Serbian side of the border and that she was supposed to sing at a private celebration in Belgrade for 18th birthday.

“The border policeman asked us to pull over while he was checking our documents, and we stayed in the car for several hours. Then I went to the police building to look for a toilet and was told that they were waiting for inspectors from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior who had travelled from Belgrade. I realised it was getting serious,” said Severina.

She said that the inspectors arrived at around 22.15 and that they first searched their vehicle for 45 minutes, explaining that they were looking for weapons.

“Me and weapons – definitely. They asked me where I was going and whether I had a work permit to perform, and then they took me to the police station for an interview. Of course, they found nothing objectionable in the car. During the interrogation, they started asking me what I thought about Srebrenica, the „Oluja“, why I supported the demonstrations against the mining of lithium and wrote that this is the Serbia I love,” the Croatian singer said.

She said that she asked the inspector who questioned her about Srebrenica why German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had not been arrested when he recently visited Serbia, as Germany had voted in favour of the resolution on Srebrenica at the United Nations.

She added that the inspectors had also mentioned the Ustasha death camp in World War II, “Jasenovac”, and that when asked if they knew how the war started in 1991, they had replied that it was started by the first Croatian President, Franjo Tuđman.

“The police officer, who is about 30 years old, kept trying to explain to me that he was just doing his job because I am a public figure and I have social influence. During the interrogation he kept leaving because someone was calling him on the phone, supposedly giving him further instructions, so he kept coming back with more and more questions. Questions that are usually answered by historians,” she said.

Severina stated that she “loves Serbia, where 100,000 Serbs are protesting to protect the environment in order to save their country”, adding that “whoever is at the helm of Serbia at the moment is not going to distract from the problems that Serbs are facing in Serbia,” by harassing her.

“I tried to explain to them that I love the Serbs, who are honest and good people, but that their government is terrible and that I never said the Serbs are genocidal, but that the Vucic media made it up, just as they have been lying for years about everyone who opposes the regime. And at the end I sang them Balasevic’s song: ‘Long ago the devil sat on your doorstep, Serbian land’,” Severina said.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed today that Severina was detained by border police on the basis of lists of “verbal offences”.

“Severina was neither detained nor arrested, nor was she refused entry into Serbia, but was detained for control purposes,” Dačić said.

He announced that he would demand “the abolition of lists when it comes to verbal offences”./Beta/