2013 Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia
| Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia | |
|---|---|
| Part of response to introduction of minority Serbian Cyrillic alphabet in co-official use in town of Vukovar | |
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| Location | Vukovar Zagreb Tovarnik Bogdanovci Lovas Nuštar |
| Goals | opposition to usage of minority languages and seeking modification of Constitutional Law on National Minorities rights |
| HQs for defense of Croatian Vukovar | |
Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia were a series of protests in late 2013 against the application of bilingualism in Vukovar, whereby Serbian and the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet were assigned co-official status due to the local minority population. The implementation of this decision became mandatory after the 2011 Croatian census, according to which Serbs in Vukovar comprise more than one-third (34.8%) of Vukovar's total population. Signs in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet had been put up as the Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities mandates bilingual signs in any area where more than one-third of the population belongs to an ethnic minority. This decision became subject of intense agitation by, among others, Croatian war veterans and many ordinary citizens who believe that due to events, particularly the Battle of Vukovar, the city should have been excluded from the application of the law on minority rights, although protests and vandalism have occurred in other towns and cities (i.e. Split, Dubrovnik, etc). The Serbs of Croatia are a minority group that have the narrowest usage of right to bilingualism among all national minorities in Croatia.
The Group called HQs for defense of Croatian Vukovar initiated protest rallies on 2 September, as soon as the placement of the signs written in both the Latin and the Cyrillic scripts began in Vukovar. With protests in Vukovar, in April 2013 there were also organized protests in Zagreb's main square with around 20,000 participants. Parallel protests were held in Tovarnik,Bogdanovci,Lovas, and Nuštar. A number of signs in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet were torn down, others were smashed with hammers, and protesters clashed with the police, leaving four police officers slightly injured. Some of supporters not directly connected to the protesters organized actions of writing pro-fascist Ustaše graffiti on the Orthodox Church of the Holy Annunciation in Dubrovnik and in Zadar.
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