Will Croats protest against Ceca’s proposed Australian tour?!

Well known Serb folk singer and widow of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, the commander of a paramilitary group known as Arkan’s Tigers has once again stepped into the spotlight as she plans to tour Australia.

The potential organiser of Ceca’s Australian tour, Adnan Mundžić of Sydney (known as a concert organiser under the name ‘Pop-Rock Maraton’) lodged Ceca’s visa application with the Visa appeals tribunal after Ceca was denied entry into the country five years ago.

The appeals tribunal for administrative matters received all of the necessary documentation from Mundžić, while
Svetlana Ražnatović Ceca spoke at the hearing via telephone hookup from Belgrade.
Ceca said that she was a musical artist and that she was never involved in any political party and that she did not take part in the war in any form whatsoever.

“In my opinion the war was a big mistake: many innocents lost their lives, were injured and were hurt mentally as a cause of the war”, according to Ceca who did not mention her husband’s role in any war crimes.

Let’s also recall that the international court for war crimes on the territory of Yugoslavia indicted Arkan and his paramilitaries for rape and mass executions of civilians but he was assassinated in 2000 before he could stand trial.
Svetlana Ražnatović who has sold over 10 million copies of her albums was arrested in 2003 and was jailed for four months in relation to the assassination of the Serb Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, she was later freed without any charges being laid.

Other than her alleged involvement in Đinđić’s murder, Ceca was also alleged to have illegally sold a footballer of FK Obilić during the time when her husband owned the club.

Belgrade’s Blic magazine wrote on the 7th of April this year that the investigation against Ceca in regards to the Obilić player saga will not be completed for another three months as the financial investigations are quite extensive.

“The financial investigators have found much paperwork in regards to the player transfer. These are documents which
have been obtained from international clubs which bought the players. They still need three months to sift through all of the documents”, according to Belgrade’s Blic magazine.

The prosecution alleges that the folk singer, as the technical owner of FK Obilic from 1998 to February 2003 sold 15 footballers including Dragan Šarac, Milan Obradović, Vladica Đurović, Zoran Ranković, Milorad Korać and Nikola Lazetić, to international clubs and illegally gained 22.5 million Deutche Marks and 480,000 US dollars.

Ceca’s sister Lidija Veličković is alleged to have doctored the club’s books to show that the players were release as free transfers, even though they were sold for a fee.

A part of the money was alleged to have been taken as a return for her investment in the club while another part was spent on her own needs.

Regardless of these facts the Tribunal found that there is not enough evidence to suggest that her performing in Australia would cause major friction between ethnic groups from the former Yugoslavia.

If the Ministerial office decides not to lodge a formal complaint Ceca’s visa application will be treated as any other normal business visa, but if the Minister does decide to make a complaint the matter will be heard in Federal court.

The Australian-Serb newspaper ‘Vesti’ last week stated that the Croatian community of Sydney have nothing against Ceca’s tour in Australia using a citation from Jozo Brkić, former Manager of the Croatian Club Punchbowl. The claims made by the ‘Vesti’ were refuted by Brkić in a short conversation with the CroExpress.

“I wish to refute all of the various stories, rumours and articles appearing in the media that the Croatian Club Sydney and myself stated that we support Ceca’s proposed Australian tour”, according to Brkić who further explained the background of the story.

“I was asked whether the Croatian community, together with the ‘Bosnian-Muslim’ community is preparing any sort of large protest in regards to Ceca’s proposed to.

I said that the Croatian community was not organising any large protest because as an informed person in the community I felt that there was no protest being organised nor that the concert would be viewed in the rivalry of a sporting event as music has little to do with sport. I didn’t give any support to Ceca’s tour in Australia, not me and certainly not the Croatian Club Sydney”, stated Brkić.

Brkić was also quoted in the ‘Vesti’ as saying that ‘some Croats will attend Ceca’s concerts’, unfortunately has much truth in it.

The CroExpress printed a large commentary on the growth in popularity of the so called, ‘turbo-folk’ phenomenon amongst Croats in Croatia, and more recently in Australia.

The articles explained in detailed how this modern plague has come into the homes of many Croats as the youth can be swayed easily into listening to the ‘deathly shine’ of this musical genre produced in Serbia, during the homeland war, the Serb aggression on Croatia and Bosnia.

We attempted to, and still do warn parents in not succumbing to the line – the war is over and we should enjoy ourselves with this good music.

Many young people find nothing negative in this music as they fail to fully understand it’s lyrics and meaning – mindlessly bopping away to Turko-Eastern hyper-beats.

Unfortunately, turbo-folk is used as a hypnotic tool – while the Serbs were en masse burning Croatian homes and property during the war, their ‘princesses’, silicon-pumped and leather clad singers were praising their criminal efforts from the safety of Belgrade, Zrenjanin, Niš or Pančevo.

Please contact us at info@croexpress.net with your thoughts on this scandal as it looks as though the whole affair could come and go without even a whimper from the Croatian community.

Regardless of whether Ceca did indeed actively participate in the war through allegiance to a political party or not, her marriage to Arkan later is just an example that she condoned his part in the war and the way he conducted himself. So what is worse, condoning a crime or participating in it? Is there much of a difference considering innocent lives were lost, people raped, killed, tortured…

Ceca’s marriage to Arkan makes her de-facto culpable for all of his deeds. Her possible Australian tour could indeed be a spark to ignite a seemingly stable person who fled war-torn Croatia for the shores of peace-loving Australia, only to have the memories come flooding back after seeing posters of a coming concert featuring a war criminals wife.
It’s not a far stretch to say that someone still mentally suffering from the hurt of war would be fuming right now.

First of all though, pay attention to what your children, friends and relatives are listening to – and kindly explain to them the sin of listening to hypnotic turbo folk and kindly ask them to turn it off. Or better yet, take the CD and throw it in
the rubbish.