Bilingual signs in Croatian town ignite bitter memories of war torn past

The Croatian town of Vukovar was under siege by Serbian forces during the Croatian war. Photo by Flickr user Peter Denton

Tensions are rising in the Croatian city of Vukovar, which lies on the border with Serbia, as a group calls to make the official language of the city Croatian. According to the 2011 Croatian census, the city has a Serbian population of about 35%, enough to allow for the Cyrillic alphabet to be used on official documents and public signs. Croatian Nationalists claimed on Friday that they have collected more than 650,000 signatures for a petition to that change–the amount required to hold a referendum vote to change the law.

Current law states that if an ethnic minority group makes up more than a third of a city’s population they are entitled to have their language used officially in local government and public offices. The referendum would ask citizens if they are in favor of changing the law to grant these bilingual rights only in places where the minority population makes up at least 50 percent.

Signs in Croatian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic have sprung up around Vukovar, but a petition by Croatian Nationalists has over 650,000 to stop that effort.

Slavka Draskovic, head of the government office for the diasporic Serbian population, warned against this change and the repercussions it could have.

‘Denying its language to the Serbian community is not a solution to escalating tension in Vukovar’, said Draskovic. ‘On the contrary, the measure increases the sense of insecurity among Serbians in the city’.

For many, Vukovar remains a painful symbol of the war for Croats due to its complex and violent past. Intense fighting occurred there during the Croatian War for Independence including the massacre of hundreds of Croats in 1991 during a siege by the Serbian army. Many war veterans are responsible for destroying the bilingual signs and remain an integral part of the campaign for the referendum.