Croatian war veterans #racist

Croatian war veterans #racist wtnh.com

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Wielding hammers, Croatian war veterans on Monday tore down signs written in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet that were put up on official buildings to boost minority rights in the new EU nation.

Dozens of angry veterans pushed away police guarding the state buildings in Vukovar, an eastern town on the Danube that was heavily damaged by the Serb-led Yugoslav army during Croatia's 1991 war for independence. Thousands were killed in the conflict.

Vukovar has a sizable Serb minority and having official signs in both the Croatian Latin alphabet and Serbian Cyrillic are in line with the country's law on minority rights. Vukovar war veterans, however, say the Cyrillic signs insult Croatian war victims.

Police said that several people were detained and four policemen were slightly injured during the skirmishes with the demonstrators.

Croatian state TV reported that about 300 people gathered later on Monday demanding the release of the detained protesters.

Croatia's president and the government condemned the sign destruction as "chauvinist violence."

Croatia became the European Union's 28th member in July. But about two decades after the war, ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs are still simmering, particularly in Vukovar.

10 comments

old comment by Hasan Prishtina

Another day, another sign destroyed. As is often said in this part of the world, "ovo je Balkan" - this is the Balkans. Go to anywhere in the former Yugoslavia and you can find multilingual signs defaced or destroyed; this country is full of them. As here, it's war veterans who lead the way in this display of chauvinism; their violence is a claim to speak for the nation, to be the arbiters of who is a patriot and who a traitor, to demand they be viewed as heroes who deserve generous pensions. I had hoped that Croatia, having gone through the acquis to get into the EU, was beyond such things. This sort of action makes the road for the rest of us - Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia - all the harder. Thanks, guys.

old comment by Vman

Hasan> So very true, I sign everything you said :( (including about the war veterans)

It's one thing for a country's leadership to realize that they have to make/change some laws and speak more nicely in order to satisfy the EU... but a true change in people is quite another, and is far, far away for too many of us. So yes, in many ways we're the same as the other 5 ex-Yu countries you mentioned.

Reynardine> not quite, but it's true that the differences are much smaller than some locals (and emigrants) would have us believe :P

Anyway, when these sorts of 'events' happen (among other things), I often remember that chorus from a certain TBF song: "Tu du du, nema nam pomoci..."

Though I don't think we in 'the region' are beyond help... just that it'll take a long, long time.

old comment by Vman

Oh, as for the Vukovar thing... since that first protest there was no more violence, but the war-vets and the assorted right-wingers have organized peaceful protests every day ever since, and show no signs of giving up.

The campaign is part caused by general discontent at the economical and other situation in Vukovar (many of the citizens of whom feel abandoned by the government and the rest of the country), part simple nationalist chauvinism, and also in good part it's a political project of our main right-wing nationalist party, HDZ (with the blessing of their Catholic Church buddies, of course).

Either way, the protesters apparently don't get the idea that one's rights stop short of denying the rights of another... and the issue of bilingual signs really doesn't hurt anyone in any way other than emotionally.

It's like the big health & sex ed (and by extension, gay marriage) issue that we had a few months back. Our religious right raised an incredible fuss, and a result of that was that they managed to obtain 700,000 signatories (total pop of Croatia being ~4,300,000) for a referendum which would demand a constitutional definition of marriage as strictly a union between a man and a woman. (this referendum is yet to be held)
An irony is that the whole time they claimed they represent the majority of the Croatian people... yet the point of writing it into the constitution was that it can't be changed as easily as a 'regular' law - constitutional change requires 2/3 majority.

So while claiming to be the majority, they were simultaneously planning to prevent a future majority from changing the law in a way the right wouldn't like (as at that point dangerously close to 50% of people in polls were saying they support legalisation of gay marriage... and that percentage was slowly but consistently on the rise).

All in all... my dear Americans, I feel your pain :P
Some things are different here, but many of the issues are rather similar.

old comment by Lucilius

Unfortunately, these attitudes aren't limited to the Balkans. I went to an international festival in a town that has a large Vietnamese emigre population, and a college with a substantial international-student enrollment. A bunch of old South Vietnamese guys set up a booth with their former flag.
Just the previous week, at a veterans' ceremony, they'd made all sorts of happy noises about reconciliation and brotherhood and whatnot. But at the international fest, there were also booths from international students - and a few of them were from Vietnam. In all innocence, they put up their country's flag. None were over 22 years old, so it was the only flag they'd ever known.
The old South Vietnamese guys threw a screaming fit at the organizers about the "insult" of seeing their old foes' flag on display. The organizers asked the students to move the flag to the back of their booth. Puzzled, the students did; and it had to be explained to them why the old guys on the other side of the park kept glowering in their direction.