Croation popstar Severina has vowed never to return to Serbia while “dictator” Aleksandar Vučić is in power after being detained at the country’s border over the weekend.
On her way to a gig in Serbia on Sunday the singer, whose full name is Severina Vučković, said she spent several hours waiting in her car at the Serbian border before being questioned by inspectors from the Ministry of the Interior.
She said on Instagram that while detained she was grilled on various political matters, including her opinion on the 1995 Srebrenica genocide committed by Serbs during that decade’s internecine Yugoslav wars; on the Jasenovac concentration camp established by independent Croatia in occupied Yugoslavia during WWII; and on her support for Serbian protesters opposing planned lithium mining in Serbia.
“I will never go to Serbia again as long as the dictator is in power,” Severina said on Monday.
“I asked the law enforcement authorities why they did not arrest German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently when he came to visit them, since Germany voted in the United Nations for the resolution on Srebrenica,” the singer added, referring to a contested vote on a Srebrenica remembrance day held in May.
According to a Serbian tabloid, the stop was a “regular procedure of the Serbian police for everything that the state authorities consider questionable.” Severina reportedly gained entry following talks with the authorities, but instead chose to return to Croatia.
While President Vučić of Croatia denounced the singer’s detention, calling it “very stupid and unnecessary,” he added that he thinks “the worst of her.” Interior Minister Ivica Dačić noted that the border guards hadn’t denied the singer entry into Serbia, and asked facetiously whether they “should introduce a music police.”
This isn’t the first high-profile individual from the region to face issues at the border. In January Bosnian singer Selma Bajrami was also detained and subsequently banned from entering Serbia after displaying a double-headed eagle during a performance — for Albanians, the bird symbolizes their ethnicity and their flag.
Neither Serbia’s interior ministry nor Croatia’s foreign ministry could be reached for comment.
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