ZAGREB, 4 Sept, 2021 - The biggest challenges faced by the ethnic Croats in Serbia are exclusion from decision making and the policy of ignoring or denying crimes committed against them in the 1990s, a round table on the Croats in Serbia's Vojvodina province was told in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek on Saturday.

The fact that the Croats in Serbia are still excluded from decision-making processes raises a number of concerns because they cannot deal with their problems institutionally, said Tomislav Žigmanov, director of the Culture Institute of Vojvodina Croats. The needs and interests of the Croat community are instead addressed ad hoc, he added.

The authorities in Serbia still ignore or deny the crimes committed against Vojvodina Croats in 1990s, notably the fact that "they were the victims of ethic violence, persecution and murder, and that 30 years on there is still no act or monument commemorating the most tragic period for the Vojvodina Croats," Žigmanov said.

He also warned of the very strong state interventionism in the identity dispute over the Bunjevci community and their being part of the Croatian people, which he said is a scientific truth.

"Unfortunately, we do not have enough power to oppose this, and we expect Croatia to continue asserting its interests when it comes to our cultural heritage," Žigmanov said.

Zvonko Milas, state secretary at the Central State Office for Croats Abroad, said that the biggest problem for the Croats was that Serbian institutions have still not accepted what had happened in the past, "all the crimes against Croats, terrorism, killings and the departure of tens of thousands of Croats from those areas."

The Croatian government and the Central State Office will be partners in raising public awareness both in Serbia and in Croatia, where people should also know what our ethnic kin went through and what they need today, Milas said.

The deputy head of Osijek-Baranja County, Mato Lukić, said that about 70 percent of Croats had moved out of Serbia in the last 50 years, and that the majority of Vojvodina Croats had been expelled.

"The Croats in Vojvodina are often stigmatised, which is one the reasons for their departure," Lukić said.

Lukić said that there would be a population census in Serbia next year and that it would be good if the Croats identified themselves as Croats. He said that there were reports indicating that some of them did not want to identify themselves as Croats in order to avoid possible problems.

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ZAGREB, 20 Aug, 2021 - The head of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Croats (DSHV), Tomislav Žigmanov, on Friday condemned the opening in Subotica of an office of the Captain Dragan Foundation, run by convicted war criminal Dragan Vasiljković alias Captain Dragan.

The office has been set up in the centre of Subotica, a year after that foundation established its branch in that city in the north of the province of Vojvodina, and the purpose of the foundation is to "assist the Serbs unfairly convicted and imprisoned in the countries of the region," that is in Serbia's neoghbourhood.

In September 2017, Split County Court sentenced Vasiljković to 13.5 years for crimes committed against prisoners of war in the Croatian towns of Knin and Glina during the 1991-95 Homeland War. Born in Belgrade and holding the citizenship of both Serbia and Australia, Vasiljkovic was arrested in 2006 in Australia where he lived under a false name and worked as a golf coach.

He was extradited to Croatia in July 2015 and denied the charges from the very start of the trial. Given that the eight years and nine months he had spent in extradition prison in Australia were credited to his sentence, Vasiljković's sentence expired in March 2020 when he was released from prison in Lepoglava and transferred to the Bajakovo crossing on the border with Serbia and banned from entering the European Economic Area for a period of 20 years.

Addressing the press on the topic of captain Dragan's foundation's office in Subotica, Žigmanov said that he was worried but not surprised.

"We are registering more and more activities by convicted war criminals and the downplaying of their verdicts, their rehabilitation in the public and their influence on public opinion creation," Žigmanov said.

He recalled that ICTY convict Vojislav Šešelj purchased a house to open the office of his Serb Radical Party in the town of Hrtkovci, a byword for the persecution of Vojvodina Croats in the 1990s.

Upon his transfer from Croatia to Serbia, Vasiljković engaged in political activities and ran in parliamentary elections.

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ZAGREB, 27 April, 2021 - Croatia's President Zoran Milanović said on Tuesday that he would recall Croatian Ambassador to Belgrade, Hidajet Biščević, after the ethnic Croat leader Tomislav Žigmanov criticised the diplomat for working against the Croats in Serbia.

In the meantime media outlets have reported that Ambassador Biščević did not react to the developments in which ethnic Croats received death threats, and that he also failed to even telephone those members who received threats to express sympathy with them.

Žigmanov, who is the leader of the Democratic party of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV), recently claimed that the Croatian ambassador had made a "tepid reaction" to attempts by Serbian authorities in Subotica to introduce the Bunjevci vernacular as an official language in that northern city and that the ambassador communicated with people whom Žigmanov described as persons "who are actively working on the destabilisation and dissolution of the (ethnic Croat) community."

All that prompted President Milanović to say today that he did not know whose policy Biščević "is pursuing there."

I cannot know whether all those headlines are true and I will summon him back to Zagreb for consultations, Milanović said in his address to the press at the Gašinci military range in eastern Croatia.

The Večernji List daily has reported that on 30 March, Žigmanov sent a letter to Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman to inform him that Biščević was working against the interests of the ethnic Croat community in Serbia.

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