VUKOVAR, Croatia, Feb 2 (Reuters) – More than 20,000 Croats
rallied on Saturday in Vukovar, a town destroyed in the 1991-95
war with rebel Serbs, to protest against the government’s plan
to introduce signs in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.
The Social Democrat-led government, which will take the
country into the European Union on July 1, wants to put up
bilingual signs, in both the Latin script used for Croatian and
in Cyrillic, in areas where the population is more than one
third ethnic Serb later this month.
Croatia already has bilingual signs, in Croatian and
Italian, in the northern Adriatic Istrian peninsula, close to
Italy, but the issue of Serb language and script is much more
sensitive in the country still traumatised by the war.
According to the 2011 census, there are about a dozen
regions in Croatia with a sizeable Serb community, including the
easternmost town of Vukovar, which many Croats still see as a
symbol of destruction and suffering brought on by the Serb
rebellion against Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia.
The protest was organised by war veteran groups under the
slogan “For a Croatian Vukovar, No to Cyrillic”. The protesters
waved Croatian flags and banners reading “This is not what we
fought for” and “Don’t test our patience”.
Tomislav Josic, one of the organisers, said they wanted the
law on minority rights, which stipulates bilingual signs, not to
be applied to Vukovar “as a sign of respect for the sacrifice
Vukovar has made”.
The picturesque town on the Danube was reduced to rubble
during a three-month siege by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army
and local Serb militia in 1991. All non-Serbs were expelled and
some 200 patients from a local hospital were executed after its
capture by the Serbs.
It has been rebuilt, but the area remains poor, with high
unemployment and lingering ethnic tensions.
“For all of us who suffered in Vukovar, it is difficult to
accept (Cyrillic script). It is too early for that, after all
the victims, all the suffering we’ve been through,” said Nada
Soldi, a Vukovar pensioner who attended the rally.
The Croatian and Serbian languages are mutually intelligible,
but Croats, who tend to be Roman Catholic, use the Latin script,
while traditionally Orthodox Serbs use a Cyrillic alphabet
similar to that of Russian.
(Reporting by Tina Smole; writing by Zoran Radosavljevic;
Editing by Jason Webb)
