Dino Merlin's Kraljevo Show Faces Backlash Over 1995 Video

Footage from Dino Merlin’s concert in Bihac, held on August 21, 1995, is circulating on social media again, just days before his show in Kraljevo, scheduled for September 5. In the clip, the singer tells the crowd from the stage about an autograph from General Atif Dudakovic, and that exact moment has triggered a fresh wave of anger.

The remarks come from an address Merlin gave to the crowd at the end of the war in Bosnia. In the segment being clipped and shared online, he says that for the first time in his career he wanted to receive an autograph himself, rather than give one. Alongside those words is the name of a general whose units have been linked to crimes against Serb civilians in that area.

Alongside the original clip, social media users are also sharing an edited video that intercuts Merlin’s words with wartime archive footage: houses burning, prisoners being mistreated, and a scene showing a body being dragged by a tractor. Those images are not from the same performance, but they appear side by side with the singer’s statements in the edit, further fueling reactions ahead of the concert.

What Merlin said in Bihac

The part of his address that is circulating online is being shared word for word. Speaking from the stage in Bihac, Merlin said:

“I got an autograph from General Dudakovic, I got an autograph from my Krajina, and I’ll carry it as long as I live.”

According to what is being shared online, these words were spoken as part of a longer address in which the singer thanked the crowd and spoke about his relationship with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Where exactly is the Kraljevo concert being held

Sources disagree on the venue. The outlet 24sedam reports that the concert is scheduled for the Old Airport in Kraljevo, while Informer writes that the show will take place at the city’s Sports Center. Unlike the venue, the date is not in dispute: the concert is set for September 5.

Veterans demand cancellation

The backlash from part of the public in Kraljevo is not new, but it has intensified since the video began circulating again. Associations of war veterans and disabled war veterans organized a rally on August 26 called “You Won’t Sing,” once again declaring that Merlin has no place in the city.

Informer quoted the associations as saying:

“We believe this concert should not take place in the city of Kraljevo. Nowhere in Serbia, and especially not in the city of Kraljevo, given that among the sea of those who hate Serbs, he is right at the top. You can’t bring Serbian flags to his concerts, yet he can very well take money out of our Serbia. We consider this a humiliation of all Serb victims, not just those who, as he puts it, moved or resettled in Kraljevo, but of all Serbs from the territory of the former Yugoslavia and across all of Serbia.”

The rally was accompanied by an online petition calling for the concert to be canceled. The association’s demand goes further than a single show: it calls for Merlin not to perform anywhere in Serbia, and especially not in Kraljevo.

How the video resurfaced again

The footage, more than three decades old, is not new to Serbian social media, but it gets pulled back up every time a Merlin performance in Serbia is announced. This time, the trigger was the Kraljevo concert itself, a city where part of the public views the singer as an unacceptable guest because of statements he made in the 1990s.

As of this writing, the concert has not been officially canceled. The organizers have not commented on either the petition or the August 26 rally, and whether the show will go ahead as planned remains an open question.