ZAGREB, October 30, 2019 - Representatives of the Croat community in Serbia on Tuesday held a news conference to point out the problem of a lack of working space for their activities in the Serbian capital city, underscoring that local authorities have been ignoring their requests for a few years.

Jasna Vojnić, the leader of the Croatian National Council, and Tomislav Žigmanov of the Democratic Alliance of the Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) and a parliamentary deputy in the Serbian assembly, told the conference in the Croatian embassy in Belgrade that in the last three years they had sent five letters with requests to the Belgrade authorities to ensure a working space for the local Croat community and for its cultural centre.

It is high time that in Belgrade there were some premises for Croat associations to meet and promote their culture to the benefit of both Croatia and Serbia, said the local Croat leaders.

They recalled that ethnic Serbs in the Croatian capital of city have the premises for their activities in the very centre of Zagreb, and that the high-level meetings have been held between the mayors of Belgrade and Zagreb on this topic, however, all that has not yet resulted in providing ethnic Croats with premises in Belgrade.

Vojnić says that in Belgrade there are 7,752 Croats and the space for their activities is essential for the survival of the Croat community.

Žigmanov warns that without the adequate premises the community could hardly organise its activities.

Unfortunately, we have not managed to solve this problem to date, he told the news conference.

Žigmanov said that the experiences and models for the activities of the Serb National Council and the Prosvjeta cultural society in Croatia should be followed by Serbia when it comes to creating conditions for activities of local Croats.

More news about Croats in Serbia can be found in the Diaspora section.

ZAGREB, October 8, 2019 - The Dubrovnik Piano Trio on Monday held a concert in Belgrade's Church of St. Anthony of Padua to mark Croatia's Independence Day, and the event was also attended by Croatian Embassy staff headed by Ambassador Gordan Bakota and Zagreb City Assembly chair Drago Prgomet.

Bakota said the event provided an opportunity to recall Croatia's path from a country fighting for its independence to a country that was a member of all international organisations and would soon be chairing the EU.

Warning against both national and social populism, Prgomet called for building a state that would provide equal opportunities to all, regardless of their political affiliation, ethnicity or religion.

"I believe that we will continue to build (Croatia) as a country which is tolerant and open to all who accept it as independent - both those who live in it and its neighbours," said Prgomet, who earlier in the day visited Subotica and Tavankut in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, which have sizeable Croat communities.

Bakota and Prgomet said they would like the Belgrade city authorities to soon fulfil their promise and provide premises for the Croatian Cultural Centre, which exists as an association but does not have premises where to hold cultural events such as the concert by the Dubrovnik Piano Trio.

More news about Croats in Serbia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 30, 2019 - The leader of Croats in Serbia, Tomislav Žigmanov, said on Thursday the "inappropriate" statements by Croatian and Serbian officials after last week's attacks on ethnic Serbs in Croatia were straining relations between the two countries and detrimental to Croats in Serbia.

"Ethnically motivated violence against members of the Serb community in the vicinity of Knin prompted inappropriate statements on both sides and they weren't in the function of defusing tensions and finding solutions," the president of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina said on Twitter.

Žigmanov said those statements increased the fear in the Croat minority in Serbia, causing them to withdraw, feel unsafe and unwilling to participate in public life.

He said such a state of affairs suited some politicians in both countries because they thought this is a way to mobilise voters.

According to him, football fans have contributed to the tense climate. "Tanks and tractors appear ahead of games. That certainly won't calm down the once again strained relations between Serbia and Croatia."

He once again condemned last week's attacks on ethnic Serbs near Knin.

More news about the status of Croats in Serbia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 12, 2019 - The leader of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) and a member of the Serbian parliament, Tomislav Žigmanov, on Monday called on Serbian Culture Minister Vladan Vukosavljević to pay more attention to the protection of the Croat cultural heritage in Serbia than to Nikola Tesla, who has recently caused new disputes between Belgrade and Zagreb.

Vukosavljević on Friday accused Croatia of laying claim to Tesla, a US and Croatian inventor of Serb origin, by planning to present him as a Croatian inventor at the Expo 2020 in Dubai.

"We have been following with regret a strange and unsolicited interest of Serbia's Culture and Information Minister Vladan Vukosavljević in Nikola Tesla, a Serb from Croatia, and his status in contemporary cultural practices in Croatia, a country where political representatives of the local Serb community are part of the governing majority," Žigmanov told Hina.

Žigmanov fears that "the minister's national exclusivity and zealotry" will hamper efforts to normalise relations between the two countries.

"On the other hand, Serbian citizens of Croat background would prefer the culture minister telling them how much funding has been set aside and which activities have been undertaken to preserve the local Croat material cultural heritage, particularly sites of worship since a number of Catholic churches is in a dilapidated condition," Žigmanov said.

Žigmanov also criticised the Serbian minister for having allocated significantly higher funds to the Bunjevci ethnic community who consider themselves non-Croats and who are a considerably smaller community than local Croats.

He wonders why the minister allows the laying of claims to ethnic Croat intangible heritage such as "Dužijanca", the custom of traditional thanksgiving pilgrimage celebrating the completion of the harvest season, and notes that although local Croats in the region of Subotica have been celebrating those festivities for more than a century, the Serbian authorities are set to register them as the heritage of the non-Croat Bunjevci community.

This past Friday the Serbian culture and information ministry issued a statement condemning what it described as an unacceptable attempt by Croatia to lay claim to Tesla, whom it said the entire world recognised and remembered as a Serb who spent a large part of his life in the United States.

At the Expo 2020 in Dubai, Croatia will present itself as a country of innovative projects, inventions and world-famous scientists, including Nikola Tesla.

The accusations from Serbia prompted Croatian Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek to underscore that Croatia "remembers Tesla with respect, without trying to deny his ethnic background."

"The Croatian encyclopaedia describes Nikola Tesla as a US and Croatian inventor of Serb descent. Tesla was born in Croatia, he was educated in Croatia and left Croatia for Austria and later for the Czech Republic, Hungary, France and the United States," the minister said.

She added that unlike Serbia, which has not stopped falsifying history and laying claim to other countries' great people, Croatia "remembers one of the biggest inventors with respect, without trying to deny his ethnic background."

Vukosavljević responded by saying that Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, "in the Austrian Empire, in an area called the Military Frontier, which was almost exclusively populated by Serbs, and his father was a Serb Orthodox priest."

"How has a Serb, born in the Austrian Empire, in the area of the Military Frontier, at a time when there was no inkling of a Croatian state, become a 'Croatian inventor'," Vukosavljević said, adding that he considered such an interpretation "illogical and historically unfounded."

More news about the status of Croats in Serbia can be found in the Diaspora section.

ZAGREB, July 24, 2019 - The Croatian National Council's (HNV) leadership believes it has raised the level of the Croatian minority's rights in Serbia, albeit by making big political efforts, through media pressure and despite a lack of understanding or passivity from local government, the HNV said on Tuesday.

The body which represents the Croatian minority in Serbia's state bodies in education, culture, information and official language use spoke about the first six months of its new makeup.

"Croats in Serbia are not part of the system. We don't have representatives in the executive authority, either state or local, unlike the Serb minority in Croatia which has deputy prefects and deputy mayors so for every, even the smallest issue, we have to... seek the intervention of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić," HNV executive board member Darko Šarić Lukendić said in Subotica.

He was speaking in the context of a standstill in the realisation of the biggest project in education in the Croatian language, the establishment of a Croatian school centre, because local government in Subotica has not adopted amendments concerning elementary schools which are a prerequisite for the Vojvodina province government to adopt a decision on the centre.

HNV president Jasna Vojnić highlighted cooperation with Croatia's prime minister and president as well as other state bodies.

More news about the status of Croats in Serbia can be found in the Diaspora section.

ZAGREB, June 16, 2019 - The football teams of the Serb minority in Croatia and Croats in Serbia played a match in Tavankut, near Subotica, in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina on Saturday, and the match in which the Croat minority's team defeated the guests 4-1, was organised by the Croat National Council of Serbia (HNV), the Joint Council of Municipalities and the Serb National Council of Croatia (SNV) with the support of the national football federations of Croatia and Serbia.

After the match the leaders of the respective communities, Tomislav Žigmanov and Milorad Pupovac, said that the score was irrelevant, and that it was more important to develop and strengthen the institutional cooperation between these two minorities.

The match took place three years after the two sides played for the first time in Vukovar, when the team representing the Croats from Vojvodina triumphed 4:0.

"We have gathered here to show that we can build bridges, mend communication and develop cooperation. Our experiences are different; however, our aims are the same. Therefore I think that Croatia and Serbia should support our efforts, our institutional cooperation through political and other necessary ways," said the SDSS party's leader Pupovac at a news conference in the offices of the local branch of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) after the meeting between representatives of the two minorities and the subsequent sporting event.

Žigmanov said that he was "glad to see that despite a relatively long stalemate in the Serbia-Croatia relations, we can hold a meeting at the highest political level on our experiences in efforts to ensure the prosperity of our respective ethnic minorities and on the framework of future cooperation."

"We have agreed that cooperation must resume and must be firmer institutionally and enriched with contents," he said and welcomed the envoys of the Serbian President and the Croatian Prime Minister, Sport Minister Vanja Udovičić, and Croatian Ambassador in Belgrade, Gordan Bakota, respectively at the day-long meetings and the match.

The HNV chairwoman Jasna Vojnić, said that the cooperation had been established some time ago but it must be more specific and frequent.

"The HNV is looking forward to this cooperation, and believe that in the future we will see more positive things in both countries," Vojnić said.

More news about the status of Croats in Serbia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, June 7, 2019 - The Croat minority in Vojvodina is satisfied with its treatment of the local authorities when it comes to education of Croats in Serbia, however, they request that they can have more representatives in institutions in proportion to the size of the Croat community, local Croat leader Jasna Vojnić said at a meeting with the Council of Europe Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination in Novi Sad on Thursday.

The PACE committee convened in Novi Sad to analyse a state of affairs and the experiences of ethnic minorities in Vojvodina considering the exercise of minority rights.

Addressing the meeting, Vojnić, who is the president of the Croatian National Council in Serbia, said that "Croats are faced with a series of obstacles such as non-inclusion in decision-making processes, a lack of integration in the social and political system, marginalisation in the society and high ethnic distance".

She also called for putting an end to the practise of renaming of streets in Vojvodina cities and towns which have been until recently named after Croatian great men.

Vojnić proposed the registration of the intangible cultural heritage of the ethnic Croats.

Apart from Vojnić, a representative of the local Hungarian minority also addressed that Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

More news about Croats in Serbia can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, May 23, 2019 - The leadership of Croats in Serbia on Thursday called on local Croats who have dual citizenship to go to the polls and vote for Croatian candidates in the 26 May elections for the European Parliament election.

Polling stations for the election will be set up in Croatia's diplomatic missions in Belgrade and in Subotica.

The leader of the Democratic Alliance of the Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) Tomislav Žigmanov said in a public statement calling on eligible voters to go to the polls, that DSHV is a Democratic Christian party and that it supports the options that advocate such views.

"The Croats in Serbia can exert influence on the composition of the new European Parliament by voting in the election! Let us go to the polls on 26 May, Sunday," Žigmanov's statement reads.

The DSHV encourages all members of the Croat community to exercise their right and go to the polls to elect members of the EP who will advocate the same political values and work on the implementation of EU projects.

Žigmanov recalled that during the last EP election, the turnout by the Croat community in Serbia was modest.

In that context he explained that eligible voters can vote only in person at polling stations at two places in Belgrade and Subotica.

This considerably affects the situation of voters who live in parts of Serbia and Vojvodina that are far away from the above mentioned two cities.

Therefore, Žigmanov suggests that postal voting should be introduced for eligible Croat voters in Serbia and Vojvodina, just as Hungary enabled their voters which was why the turnout was that high in the Hungarian ethnic community.

The leader of the Croatian National Council in Serbia, Jasna Vojnić, said that the EP election has an impact on the Croat people in Serbia.

By casting your ballots in the EP election, you can, in a way, impact the improvement of the status of members of our community, she said.

An estimated 35,000 ethnic Croats in Vojvodina and Serbia are eligible to vote in the EP election.

More news about European elections can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, May 18, 2019 - The Croat community in Serbia is in possession of a part of the house where Ban (Viceroy) Josip Jelačić, who served as the governor of Croatia from 1848 to 1859, was born, after the Serbian government donated 600,000 euro for its purchase, but it still does not serve as the community centre of ethnic Croats, which will be its purpose, a conference said in Petrovaradin, a section of Novi Sad, on Friday.

"So far the Croats of Petrovaradin have not had any space to meet and show and promote their culture. We will have at our disposal the basement, the ground floor and one apartment in the house, with a total area of 300 square metres," Croat National Council (HNV) vice-president Darko Vuković told the Croatian-language media in Vojvodina.

The house needs thorough renovation, he said, adding that the Croat community expected help from the Town of Novi Sad and the governments of Serbia and its northern province of Vojvodina.

Vuković said the local Croat community wanted the house to become "an attractive cultural centre with tourism potential, where guests will be received, cultural events held, and where business people from Serbia and Croatia will meet. The property will also be used for Croatian consular services and serve as the HNV office."

The purpose of the Petrovaradin conference was to present information on how similar, well-established cultural centres in Croatia and Vojvodina operate.

The Croat minority in Vojvodina had been asking for years to be given the house of Viceroy Jelačić, built in 1745, so that it could turn it into a memorial centre and the seat of the local Croat minority.

Progress in that regard was made after Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's visit to Zagreb in February 2018, when the status of the property was defined during talks on the status of the Croat minority in Serbia.

More news about the status of Croats in Serbia can be found in the Diaspora section.

ZAGREB, May 6, 2019ina) - The football teams of the Serb minority in Croatia and the Croat minority in Serbia will play a match in Tavankut, near Subotica, in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina on June 15, organisers announced.

The match has been organised by the Croat National Council of Serbia, the Joint Council of Municipalities and the Serb National Council of Croatia with the support of the national football federations of Croatia and Serbia.

"The football match will be an opportunity for the political representatives of Croats from Serbia and Serbs from Croatia to meet and use their cooperation in sports to improve relations between the two countries. In that way they believe they will show that both ethnic minorities want to be a true bridge of cooperation and make their contribution to the further advancement of relations between Serbia and Croatia," leaders of the Croat minority in Serbia said in a statement.

Milorad Pupovac, a member of the Croatian parliament and leader of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), is expected to attend the event.

The match takes place three years after the two sides played for the first time in Vukovar, when the team representing the Croats from Vojvodina triumphed 4:0.

More news about relations between Croatia and Slovenia can be found in the Politics section.