ZAGREB, February 5, 2018 - The Vojvodina government will support the initiative to repeal a document dating from 1945 under which Bunjevci identified themselves as Croats, after the proposal was put forward to the province's parliament in 2016 by the leadership of a portion of the Bunjevci community who reject their Croatian origins.
Ethnic Croats in Vojvodina province, which is part of Serbia, see this as a continuation of the policy of interference by the Serbian authorities in the identity-related issues of the Croatian community in Vojvodina.
Support for the initiative has been announced by the head of the provincial government, Igor Mirović of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, in talks with the Bunjevci National Council (BNV), the body that represents those Bunjevci who do not consider themselves Croats.
After World War II, the Communist authorities in Vojvodina issued a proclamation on 14 May 1945 under which the Bunjevci and Šokci were to formally identify themselves as Croats. The present initiative seeks to have that document declared an act of forced assimilation violating human rights.
BNV president Suzana Kujundžić Ostojić said that the 1945 proclamation had "disastrous consequences" for the Bunjevci, as a result of which their community shrank from 100,000 in 1918 to about 16,000 today. "This initiative is not directed against anyone. We only demand a democratic right to identify ourselves as Bunjevci and we believe that all other ethnic groups should have the same right," Kujundžić Ostojić told Tanjug news agency.
The leader of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV), Tomislav Žigmanov, noted that such claims were being made by a beneficiary of aid from Croatian organisations in the 1990s. This comes from a person who received a scholarship from the Antun Gustav Matoš Fund, established by the DSHV, Žigmanov said in a Twitter post.
The 16,000 Bunjevci who deny their Croatian origins live in the north of the Bačka region. They are represented by the Bunjevci National Council, whose leaders are close to the Serbian Progressive Party of President Aleksandar Vučić. The remaining majority of the Bunjevci, including the leadership of the Vojvodina Croats, formally identify themselves as Bunjevci Croats.
In the 2011 census, nearly 58,000 people in Serbia identified themselves as Croats.
