ZAGREB, May 4, 2019 - Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović has written on her Twitter account that it is devastating that the Serbian authorities allow persecutors of the Vojvodina Croats to gather again in 2019 in the town of Hrtkovci after they conducted expulsions of local Croats in early May in 1992.

"It is devastating that in 2019 the Serbian authorities allow the gathering of those same persons in Hrtkovci, the byword for the suffering of the Croats in Vojvodina," the president said on Saturday afternoon in her comment in reference to the Hrtkovci convention of the Serb Radical Party (SRS) which on Saturday re-elected its leader, Vojislav Šešelj, whom the Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in The Hague sentenced to 10 years in jail for expulsions and deportations of the Croats from Vojvodina and Serbia.

The SRS held its convention in Hrtkovci today and on 6 May 27 years ago leaders and supporters of that party held a rally in that Vojvodina village at which Šešelj read out the names of "undesirable" local Croats. In the following days, about 700 residents left the village due to pressure and threats.

There were no official reactions from Serbian authorities to demands that today's SRS gathering be banned.

The SRS leader and ICTY convict Šešelj said today during his party's meeting in Hrtkovci that the Radicals' ideology remained unchanged, and he persisted in denying persecution of Croats from Hrtkovci. He also demanded that Serbia should introduce a penalty of life imprisonment for all those who say that war atrocities in Srebrenica amount to genocide.

Šešelj said Croats were not deported but that they willingly left after they swapped their properties. "I did not commit a crime and I will prove it. All Croats who left Hrtkovci had swapped their property and that is not deportation, especially not a war crime," said Šešelj.

Last year, the Appeals Chamber of the MICT, the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), sentenced Šešelj to ten years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity over the inflammatory speech in Hrtkovci which it found resulted in the deportation, persecution, displacement and other inhumane acts against Vojvodina Croats. When that final ruling was handed down, Šešelj did not have to go to jail because the time he spent in detention in The Hague was credited to the sentence.

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

ZAGREB, May 3, 2019 - The Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) on Friday requested Serbian state institutions to ban a convention the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) plans to hold on May 4 in Hrtkovci, a village in Vojvodina that is considered a symbol of the expulsion and plight of the Vojvodina Croats in the early 1990s.

Serbian media said earlier that the SRS election convention would be held in a house in Hrtkovci which SRS leader and convicted war criminal Vojislav Šešelj bought last year.

"We consider the planned SRS convention to be not only an act of political provocation but unacceptable activity that should be banned by the Serbian state institutions. As members of a wounded community we have every reason to expect it because the convention can also be interpreted as an act of mocking the innocent victims," DSHV leader Tomislav Žigmanov said in a statement.

The SRS convention is to coincide with the 27th anniversary of a rally in Hrtkovci at which the names of local Croats were read out in Šešelj's presence and they were told to leave the village.

An estimated 35,000-40,000 Vojvodina Croats had to leave their homes during the 1990s campaign of intimidation and almost none of them have returned, the DSHV said, noting that "the issue of expulsion of the Vojvodina Croats is still not being dealt with adequately – judicial bodies have not prosecuted the crimes committed, there is not a single public memorial and commemorations are not held."

The DSHV also recalled that the Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in The Hague in 2018 delivered a 10-year prison sentence to Šešelj for expulsions and deportations of the Vojvodina Croats.

Šešelj has in the meantime completed his prison term.

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

ZAGREB, March 11, 2019 - Progress has been made only in four out of total 25 recommendations given in order to improve the status of the Croat minority in Serbia, which is why the delegation of the Croat community is going to convey dissatisfaction at a two-day meeting of the mixed Croatian-Serbian committee which will start in Zagreb on Tuesday.

Out of all the recommendations defined in the minutes of the seventh meeting of that committee, progress has been made in only four recommendations referring to education, according to the document the Croat representatives prepared for the meeting that will be held in Zagreb and Pakrac.

No progress at all has been made in nine recommendations, and ten recommendations are being implemented to some extent, reads the document.

The Croat community is dissatisfied with a lack of progress in key areas such as representation and proportional employment of ethnic Croats in state agencies and bodies of local authority in Serbia.

The main task of the Committee that will hold its 8th meeting in Zagreb and Pakrac is the improvement of the status and protection of the rights of respective minorities in Croatia and Serbia.

The previous meeting was held in early 2018 in Serbia.

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

ZAGREB, January 24, 2019 - The leader of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV), Tomislav Žigmanov, said that the messages and promises by the prime minister and president of Croatia during his visit to Zagreb this week were encouraging and stimulating for Croats in Serbia, Croatian-language media in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina said on Thursday.

Žigmanov said his delegation was encouraged by the readiness of the Croatian leadership to support, both politically and financially, their major projects.

He said that they had discussed several projects of great importance for the Croatian minority in Serbia, including the opening of the birth house of Ban Jelačić in Petrovaradin, an educational and recreational centre on the Croatian Adriatic coast, office space for the Hrvatska Riječ publishing house in Subotica, and the opening of regional offices of the Croatian National Council.

He said they had also talked about Croatian-Serbian relations and concluded that they were stagnating.

"These relations are currently almost at a standstill. We are suffering the consequences of that, but we cannot make them better," Žigmanov said, adding that expectations for 2019 are not optimistic because of an expected early election in Serbia and the ongoing instability over Kosovo.

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

ZAGREB, January 23, 2019 - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday that his government is ready to increase funding for specific projects that are important for the position of Croats in Serbia, a government press release said.

Plenković met in Zagreb with the head of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV) and member of the Serbian parliament, Tomislav Žigmanov, and the newly-elected president of the Croatian National Council in Serbia, Jasna Vojnić.

Plenković "expressed the readiness of the Croatian government to increase allocations in the coming period for specific projects that are important for the position of the 58,000-strong Croatian community in Serbia and for the protection of Croatian cultural identity," the press release said.

Žigmanov and Vojnić spoke of the dialogue they had begun at the start of last year with senior Serbian officials. They cited the importance of achieving better opportunities for education in the Croatian language and Latin alphabet and the appropriate representation of the Croatian minority in the National Assembly and regional and local legislatures. They also called for including the Croatian community in EU-funded cross-border projects, the press release said.

Žigmanov, said during a visit to Zagreb on Tuesday that the Croats in Serbia were "a wounded community" and needed Croatia's assistance in achieving their priorities. "The Croatian community in Serbia is poorly developed institutionally. We are a wounded community, a community that has the lowest GDP in Europe. We are the poorest Croats in the world, we live in a very unfavourable social environment where over 50 percent of people have a highly negative opinion of Croats, where tensions between the two countries reached the highest-level last year," Žigmanov told a press conference after meeting with President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.

He said that the Croatian community was considerably less developed than other minorities in Serbia and had much less money at its disposal. This makes the position of the Croats in Serbia more complex and diminishes their prospects, he added. "We expect to see how Croatia can help us with our priorities," Žigmanov said, noting that the Croatian community in Serbia still could not achieve certain things without the Croatian government's help.

Thanking the Croatian government for what it had done so far, Žigmanov said that the Croats in Serbia had "a vision and the energy" to carry through development projects, but needed assistance.

Speaking of the Croatian minority's basic political demand to have guaranteed representation in the Serbian parliament, Žigmanov said that this was the most complex issue and that it was still far from resolution. "We will see if and when it will be achieved, but we are not giving up on it."

Asked what would happen in Serbia if Croatian children did not stand up for the Serbian national anthem, as had been the case in Vukovar when Serb children remained seated at a sporting event during the playing of the Croatian anthem, Žigmanov would not speculate about it, saying he wanted to help relax Croatian-Serbian relations. "Such comparisons are very difficult to make. What is important is that we do not manifest such deficits of loyalty and have not had such experiences," he said.

"We, of course, are not happy when ethnically-motivated incidents happen, but what we have seen to exist as a practice in Croatia and not in Serbia is that there are condemnations and appropriate penalties and that attention is drawn to unlawful acts," Žigmanov said, noting that the situation in Croatia was generally much better than in Serbia.

"A convicted war criminal, Vojislav Šeselj, has threatened to commit a war crime against me, and none of the government officials has reacted to that, nor have any steps been taken by prosecutors or any other institution," he said.

Žigmanov said that the citizens of Croatia could be satisfied with the situation in their country, which he described as institutionally developed and well-functioning.

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

ZAGREB, December 23, 2018 - The leader of the Croat minority in Serbia, Tomislav Žigmanov, has praised Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić as a reliable partner in addressing problems faced by the Croat community in the country, Croatian-language media in the northern province of Vojvodina said on Saturday.

The community centre and a bridge in the Croat-majority village of Monostor are being reconstructed, a Croatian language instruction office has been opened at the University of Novi Sad, the network of Croatian-language schools has been expanded, and the process of granting the use of the house in Petrovaradin where Ban Josip Jelačić, the governor of Croatia in the mid-19th century, was born, to the Croat community is under way, Žigmanov told reporters during a visit to Tavankut where he inspected the reconstruction of the local Croat community centre.

"We appreciate President Aleksandar Vučić as more than a reliable partner in addressing problems faced by the Croat community in Serbia, which we raised in February this year," Žigmanov said, adding that this would help relax overall Croatian-Serbian relations. "I am certain that the improvement of the position of Croats in Serbia will be looked favourably upon by the government in Zagreb," he stressed.

Bogdan Laban, the mayor of Subotica and a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, said that about 40,000 euro had been allocated, with the support of the central and regional government, for the reconstruction of the community centre in Tavankut.

"We take care of all our ethnic minorities, including the Croat community with whom we have excellent relations. We take account of their needs and that will continue in the future," Laban said.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and her Serbian counterpart Vučić met in Tavankut in June 2016.

More news on the status of the Croat minority in Serbia can be found in our Diaspora section.

ZAGREB, December 1, 2018 - The Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV), which represents the Croat minority in Serbia, welcomed on Saturday the European Parliament's good remarks for progress Serbia made in economic reforms, but at the same time it regretted that Serbia had not yet launched the processes of facing the past, which was also noted in the EP resolution adopted on Thursday.

MEPs on Thursday in Brussels adopted a resolution which acknowledges Serbia's progress in economic reforms but which also notes that it was critical to make tangible results in judicial reform, corruption suppression and freedom of the media.

“The DSHV believes it is exceptionally important that this year the European lawmakers attached more attention to key areas of human rights and freedoms,“ DSHV president Tomislav Žigmanov said in a press release.

He said that facing the past in Serbia was still causing controversies.

He also recalled that exercising ethnic minority rights and promoting their social status was one o the key prerequisites for European Union membership.

For more on the status of Croats in Serbia, click here.

ZAGREB, November 18, 2018 - The Croatian National Council (HNV) in Serbia welcomed on Saturday a European Parliament resolution on minimum standards for minorities, passed on November 13, saying that it "will contribute to enhancing protection of the Croat minority in Serbia as part of the country's EU entry talks."

The European Parliament's conclusion, which has no legal force, calls on the European Commission to start drawing up a plan to define minimum common standards for the protection of ethnic minorities that would incorporate the best practices in EU countries and be based on the principle of subsidiarity and proportionality, the media have reported, adding that the plan should result in an EU directive.

"We welcome the initiative which should primarily be implemented in countries of belated transition such as Serbia, where international agreements are still not sufficiently honoured, due to which the Croat community is not satisfied with its status. We hope that during the pre-accession process the country will have to change certain laws, as well as certain practices, and that it will be obliged to implement what it has signed with Croatia, an EU member," HNV international secretary Darko Bastovanovic told the local Croat media in Vojvodina.

He said that he was referring to an agreement on the mutual protection of the Croat and Serb minorities in Serbia and Croatia, in the part that concerns ensuring representation for members of the Croat community in Serbia's parliaments and state institutions.

Different countries treat the issue of minorities differently, he said, "and while Romania has regulated the matter by its constitution, Serbia has more than 50 laws that regulate the issue of minorities, which has resulted in major confusion."

The EP resolution was supported by 10 of the 11 Croatian members of the European Parliament while one voted against.

For more on the status of Croats in Serbia, click here.

ZAGREB, November 4, 2018 - The list called "Croats Together" led by the Croat community's activist Jasna Vojnić, won on Sunday all the seats in the Croatian National Council (HNV), which is the 29-member umbrella organisation that represents the 58,000-strong Croatian community in education, media, culture and the official use of the language in Serbia.

The leaders of the Croatian minority were chosen indirectly, by 77 electors, at a session held in the Serbian National Assembly at noon on Sunday.

The electors are ethnic Croats who have gathered at least 60 certified signatures of support from their community. Of those 77 electors, 74 voted for the "Croats Together" slate led by the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV) and a few other Croat associations and prominent members from their community.

The DSHV leader Tomislav Žigmanov said after the election that the victory was ensured despite "obstructions in the organisation of the elections, spreading of defeatism and unfavourable political circumstances". Being committed to our unity we have managed to win the confidence of a large number of citizens, he added.

Jasna Vojnić said that "the new, fourth Croatian National Council will evenly develop the institutions in all communities where members of the Croat minority live." "The Council is meant to be a link with the Catholic Church, the motherland and with the majority nation as well as with all other ethnic minorities," she said.

In addition to the Croats, all other 22 ethnic minorities are also choosing their leaderships on Sunday.

The new HNV was elected indirectly because there were not enough Croatian voters to be registered in a separate voter roll which may enable them to hold direct elections. Furthermore, three more minorities elected their leadership by electors; and those are the Montenegrin, Macedonian and Russian minorities, whereas 18 ethnic minorities elected the new leaderships by direct vote.

To read more about the Croat minority in Serbia, Click here.

ZAGREB, November 2, 2018 - The Croat minority in Serbia on Sunday is choosing a new Croatian National Council (HNV), the 29-member umbrella organisation that represents the Croatian community in education, media, culture and the official use of the language.

The leaders of the Croatian minority will be chosen indirectly, by electors. These are ethnic Croats who have gathered at least 60 certified signatures of support from their community.

The Serbian Electoral Commission has found that 82 members of the Croatian community have gained elector status. They will meet in the Serbian National Assembly at noon on Sunday to elect the new HNV.

The new HNV will consist only of candidates from the "Croats Together" slate led by the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV) because it will be represented by 78 of the 82 electors. The remaining four electors come from the Croatian Civic Alliance and the Croatian Independent Slate.

The DSHV has gathered about 5,200 signatures of support.

Slaven Bačić, who has led the HNV in the last two terms, is not running for president of the HNV.

The new HNV is being elected indirectly, by electors, because there are not enough Croatian voters registered in the voter roll.

In addition to the Croats, all other 22 ethnic minorities will also choose their leaders on Sunday.

The status of Croats in Serbia has been in focus in recent years, and it is often influenced by the state of wider relations between Croatia and Serbia, which have hardly been fantastic lately.

If you want to know more about the status of Croats in Serbia, click here.