subsequently protested against increased attacks on various minority communities in the Subotica area, including Slovaks and Rusyns, which he blamed on the rise of right-wing forces in the 2004 Vojvodina provincial election. Later in the year, he co-authored a report on the status of ethnic Croats in Serbia for the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia; the report stated that "Croats in Vojvodina are not sufficiently involved in decision-making processes, and they are poorly represented in public and state administration, notably in the police, the army, the judiciary, customs administration and state-run companies." In 2007, he won the Zvane Črnja Award for his book Minimum in maximis – zapisi s ruba o nerubnome. He criticized the entry of the Socialist Party of Serbia into Vojvodina's coalition government following the 2008 provincial election, saying that, absent a "radical renunciation" of the party's activities in the 1990s, its presence would be a "poke in the eye to people who suffered under the Milošević regime." In January 2009, Žigmanov became the inaugural director of the Institute for the Culture of Croats in Vojvodina. He was also appointed as the head of a committee to monitor anti-Croat incidents in Vojvodina in July 2011; he indicated that the committee's mandate would include monitoring hate speech directed against the Catholic Church. He later sponsored a comprehensive research project on crimes committed against Vojvodinian Croats in the Yugoslav Wars. In November 2016, he argued that Croat under-representation in state institutions had reached levels not seen since 1990. In January 2014, he was one of three Croat leaders in Vojvodina to meet with Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić for discussions on the status of Croats in the province. Žigmanov frequently criticized the government of Croatia for paying insufficient attention to the concerns of Croats in Serbia. He welcomed Croatia's accession to the European Union (EU) in 2013, although he criticized the Croatian government's decision not to invite any representatives of the Vojvodinian Croat community to the ceremony. Following the ICTY's decision to temporarily release Vojislav Šešelj on health grounds in 2014, Žigmanov said that "Croats in Vojvodina have justified and understandable reasons to be worried" about the Radical Party leader's sudden re-emergence in Serbia. Žigmanov specifically accused Šešelj of having triggered the persecution of Croats in the Srem District in the Yugoslav Wars. On another occasion, he said that twenty-five Croats were killed during this period in the