ZAGREB, February 16, 2019 - The editorial board of the Serb minority weekly "Novosti" and the Serb National Council (SNV) as its publisher on Friday held a ceremony to mark the 1000th issue of the weekly that was first published in 1999 and was distributed exclusively within the Serb community during its first ten years, hitting the newsstands across the country in 2009.

Editor-in-chief Nikola Bajto said Novosti was one of the few media outlets in Croatia with a critical approach to the country's reality and that from its perspective, that reality looked quite different from the official reality, prescribed by politics as well as right-wing circles which over the years frequently exerted pressure on the weekly and its publisher over its critical writing.

"Novosti has been lambasted many times over the topics it wrote about. Once it was over an illustration, another time it was over the satirical poem 'Our beautiful howitzer', and after that over the cover page caption 'Our beautiful homeland burns beautifully'. And in each of those cases we were just telling the truth in different ways - that there were civilian victims in Operation Storm, that that part of the country was looted and burned down, that Croatia keeps silent about it. It keeps silent about it so much that sometimes we have to be a little creative to make some of it heard in public," said Bajto, thanking all who read Novosti.

SNV president Milorad Pupovac said that he could not agree with the view that minority communities, notably those like Croatian Serbs, and political journalism did not go together. "Minorities should live in an open society and be open to the society they live in. Of all the impossible political missions we have embarked on, this one is among the more successful ones. A minority perspective, investigative journalism, critical journalism, and on top of that, satire. Very often accused as being hostile, Novosti is actually not a satirical paper, what is satirical is the reality it writes about," said Pupovac.

Croatian Journalists Association (HND) president Hrvoje Zovko, who was among those attending the event, said that Novosti had long stopped being just a minority paper and commended it for its investigative journalism.

Another guest at the event, the head of the Council for Ethnic Minorities, Aleksandar Tolnauer, stressed that the Council would see to it that the weekly continued being published "regardless of the various forms of pressure."

More news on the Serb minority in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, February 12, 2019 - The leader of the Italian minority in Croatia and deputy speaker of the Croatian parliament, Furio Radin, said on Tuesday he was surprised by the statement of the European Parliament President, Antonio Tajani, about "Italian Istria and Dalmatia", adding that it was incompatible with the present time.

"Nowadays when all of us are members of the European Union, we should take friendship among nations seriously. I expected that Tajani's speech would have been in accordance with that, however, his rhetoric was the rhetoric from the past and not oriented towards the future," Radin said in his comment on Tajani's speech during Sunday's commemoration for WWII foibe (karst pits) victims in Basovizza near Trieste, when he said "Long live Trieste, long live Italian Istria, long live Italian Dalmatia".

Tajani's speech was "the voice outside a great choir, and the voice was differently intoned". That speech "was an incident that occurred," Radin said in his statement to Hina.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, whose statement about "Italian Istria and Dalmatia" has caused public uproar in Slovenia and Croatia, has expressed willingness to visit the site of Risiera, a former five-storey brick compound in Trieste that served as a concentration camp for non-Italians during World War II, Slovenian media outlets reported on Tuesday.

The strong reactions in the two countries prompted Tajani to say that he was sorry to see that his statement was misinterpreted." My statements do not mean territorial claims in any way. I was talking about Italian-speaking Istrians and Dalmatians whose many sons and grandsons were present at the commemoration. The Italian, Croatian and Slovenian peoples and states have strong ties and I'm sorry if the meaning of my words was misinterpreted. I didn't intend to offend anyone. I wanted to send a message of peace to everyone so that what happened then doesn't happen ever again, Tajani said at the start of the plenary session of the European Parliament on Monday after Croatian MEPs Ivan Jakovčić and Ruža Tomašić asked for an explanation.

On Tuesday, Slovenian media reported that Tajani had expressed willingness to visit the Risiera compound in Trieste where thousands of Slovenians, Croats, Jews and Italian anti-fascists were killed in the last two years of WW II.

More news on the relations between Italy and Croatia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, January 21, 2019 - The leader of the Democratic Action Party of Croatia (SDA), Armin Hodžić, said on Sunday that the Bosniak minority in Croatia was dissatisfied with its status and that this was partly due to the fact that their MP Ermina Lekaj Prljaskaj was a poor representative of their interests in the Croatian Parliament.

"As representatives of the Bosniak minority in Croatia, we always point out that their status is very bad," Hodžić told a press conference in Zagreb.

He noted that the Bosniaks are the second largest minority in Croatia, with over 31,500 people, but despite this they share their constituency with four other ethnic groups – Albanians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenians. In the 2015/2016 election, they lost the possibility of having their own representative in the Croatian Parliament, he added.

"A few years ago, the Bosniaks lost their voice in Croatia. They lost the possibility of articulating their views and interests and presenting them institutionally. In the current circumstances, the Bosniaks in Croatia are not a second-category but a third-category minority," the SDA leader said.

Dissatisfied with the representation of the Bosniaks in the present parliament by independent MP Ermina Lekaj Prljaskaj, Hodžić said he would run for the position of Bosniak MP in the next parliamentary election in Constituency 12, which is designed for the ethnic minorities.

The chairman of the Bosniak Minority Council in Zagreb, Harun Omerbašić, criticised Lekaj Prljaskaj for the lack of interest, poor performance and avoiding communication, adding that despite that the doors of Bosniak minority representatives remained open to cooperation with her. "We take this opportunity to call on her to open the door of her office and start cooperating with legitimate representatives of the Bosniak minority in Croatia," Omerbašić said.

Hodžić also commented on current relations between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, welcoming the statements by the Croatian state leadership that Croatia was Bosnia and Herzegovina's greatest friend. He, however, noted that these statements should be "implemented in practice."

The problem, in his opinion, is that Croatia's leadership receives information about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina "only through one channel, the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BH) and its leader Dragan Čović."

Hodžić said that Čović’s latest political actions had shown that problems between the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks were not insurmountable. He noted that Čović's attendance at the celebration of Republika Srpska Day was his first since this day was declared unconstitutional, "which paints a completely different picture and sends a completely different message from what had happened before."

"I think this is not in line with the foreign policy of Croatia as an EU member state. That's why I hope that the Croatian state leadership will realise that it is necessary to ensure dialogue between legal and legitimate representatives of the Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all others who represent both the Croats and Serbs, and that common ground and a consensus will be reached on vital issues that have come to the fore lately," Hodžić said.

"This will not happen if war criminals continue to be glorified in Bosnia and Herzegovina, if city squares and schools continue to be named after convicted war criminals, and if insults on ethnic and religious grounds continue," he added, noting that had received threats and hateful messages because of his political engagement.

The press was also briefly addressed by Salih Huremović, the head of the SDA branch in Velika Gorica, who had been decorated for his role in the Homeland War and 1995's Operation Storm.

Huremović said that 25,000 Bosniaks had been involved in the 1991-1995 war in Croatia, of whom 1,180 had been killed, several hundred wounded and nearly 100 left fully disabled. "These figures cannot and should not be ignored. Unfortunately, this sacrifice is not appropriately recognised and marked today," he said.

More news on the status of Croatia’s national minorities can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, November 16, 2018 - Italy is satisfied with the status of the Italian minority in Croatia, while the Croatian minority in Italy still needs help in preserving its identity, Croatian Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković and his Italian counterpart Maria Elisabeta Alberti Casellati said in Rome on Thursday while discussing minority protections, the Croatian Parliament said in a press release.

Meeting with Casellati, Jandroković began a visit to Italy. Croatia wants to strengthen parliamentary cooperation with its western neighbour.

The two speakers also talked about improving the status of the Croatian minority in Italy, in the Molise and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions, and the need for further support from the two countries so the minority can nurture its cultural and language identity.

Casellati said she was satisfied with the Italian minority's status in Croatia, adding that the minorities were a bridge between the two countries.

She and Jandroković also talked about the need to advance the European migrant policy and about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Jandroković voiced concern about the situation after last month's general elections in BiH and the status of Bosnian Croats.

Jandroković on Thursday visited the Croatian church of St Jerome and the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, a Catholic college, church and a society in the city of Rome intended for the schooling of Croatian clerics.

After meeting rector Bože Radoš and Croatian priests, Jandroković said that the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome had a great spiritual and cultural meaning for the entire Croatian people and that through the history, the institution witnessed the connection between Croats and the Holy Father, the Vatican and the Catholic faith, the parliament's public relations office said in a press release.

Radoš briefed Jandroković of the activities of the Croat community in Rome and the activities of the college which is currently the home to 2 priests studying at various pontifical universities.

For more on Croatia’s relations with Italy, click here.

ZAGREB, August 26, 2018 - Ethnic minorities do not deprive the Croatian state or the majority ethnic group of anything, they rather enrich them, minority representatives said at a roundtable discussion on ethnic minorities in the context of migrations and security in democratic societies, held as part of the Lipovljanski Susreti event, taking place in Lipovljani in Sisak-Moslavina County on August 24-26.

ZAGREB, August 24, 2018 - The third festival of traditional folk singing known as “ojkanje,” which was to be organised by the Serb cultural society "Prosvjeta" in Petrinja on Saturday, August 25, has been postponed after 12 of 13 participating groups cancelled their attendance due to opposition from some local associations of Homeland War veterans and political parties, Prosvjeta said in a statement, noting that the festival would be organised in early November.

ZAGREB, June 13, 2018 - Representatives of the civil initiative The People Decide on Wednesday delivered to parliament 38 boxes with 405,342 signatures for a referendum question to amend election legislation and 407,469 signatures for a question depriving national minority representatives of the right to decide on the formation of the government and the state budget.

ZAGREB, June 6, 2018 - Representatives of ethnic minorities have warned against hate speech on the rise which negatively affects Croatia's democratic image, and they also pointed to the lowering of standards in broadcasts targeted at minorities and aired by the national radio (HR) and television (HTV).

ZAGREB, June 4, 2018 - Croatian Serb leader Milorad Pupovac said in an interview with the Večernji List daily that the Serb minority and the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) whose leader he is have been used as the key argument to persuade people to give their signatures for the referendum petition launched by "People Decide" civic group.

ZAGREB, June 1, 2018 - During its chairmanship of the Council of Europe (CoE), Croatia will be committed to an active and leading role in the protection and promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, Foreign and European Affairs Minister Marija Pejčinović Burić said at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), held in the Croatian parliament on Friday.