ZAGREB, February 17, 2020 - Technical equipment including a laptop, a printer and a Wi-Fi router were stolen from the offices of the local cultural society of ethnic Croats in the village of Ljuba in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, local media outlets reported on Monday.
The Hrvatska Riječ weekly newspaper reported that the theft had occurred under still unclear circumstances.
A representative of the association, Željka Donković, told the newspaper that the local authorities in the municipality of Sid and the local community had provided the Ljuba NGO with space to work.
"We have invested a lot of funds and efforts to make the offices suitable for our work," Donković said, expressing hope that the perpetrators who had taken away the technical equipment would be identified and arrested by the police.
The head of the Ljuba local community, Mirko Belan, was quoted as saying that coexistence in the village was good. He does not think that there are any reasons to believe that this case of theft could be ascribed to ethnic intolerance.
On the other hand, the Democratic Alliance of the Vojvodina Croats (DSHV) says that "it is extremely concerning that this act happened in Srijem, where local Croats were exposed to large-scale persecutions in the 1990s." During that period, 30,000-40,000 ethnic Croats were forced to leave or decided on their own to depart from the area, the DSHV says.
The Ljuba association was set up in 2014 with the aim of preserving and promoting the customs and heritage of local Croats in that village in the region of Mount Fruška Gora.
More news about Croats in Serbia can be found in the Politics section.
