engleski

Symbols that Unite the Ones are Symbols that Divide the Others

The Croatian legislation allows for persons belonging to national minorities, in cities or counties in which they reside and where they make up more than one third of a city’s or county’s population, to use their languages and scripts as co-official ones. After the data from the 2011 population census revealed that persons declaring Serb ethnic origin account for 34.87% of Vukovar’s population, the Government displayed bilingual plaques on public institution buildings in Vukovar, a city in Slavonia region which was besieged and severely destroyed by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and the Serb paramilitary forces in 1991. The plaques contained both Latin and Cyrillic script, since the Cyrillic script is a script used by the Serb national minority in Croatia. However, historical memories and the symbolic meaning of Cyrillic script were instrumentalized as a tool for political mobilization by the far-right political parties and war veteran organizations. They staged anti- Cyrillic protests across the country, got involved in organised vandalism by scrapping plaques in Latin and Cyrillic script, and initiated a protest petition that attracted 650, 000 signatures requesting a nation-wide referendum to raise the threshold for legislatively guaranteed co-official status of minority language and script for national minorities from the currently requested one third of the overall population of a local self-government unit to at least a half of the local population. Such acts mobilized the public both against the Serb minority and against the realization of minority rights. In addition to this, in 2013 and in 2015 the Vukovar City Council voted amendments to the City Statute that abolished all previously granted language rights of persons belonging to the Serb national minority both in relation to local authorities and in the public space. The Constitutional Court played a seminal role in defending minority rights by acting as an arbiter in the emerged inter-ethnic cleavage, although its decisions were not immediate but somewhat delayed. Not only did the Court reject the referendum initiative, deeming the referendum question unconstitutional because it is contrary to the fundamentals of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, but it also gave its assessment of the compliance of Vukovar's Statute and the Statutory decision on the equal official use of the Serb national minority's language and script in the City of Vukovar. This article analyses the Constitutional Court's decisions (U-II-6110/2013, U-VIIR- 4640/2014 and U-II-1818/2016) relating to the symbolic meaning of the Cyrillic script and realisation of linguistic rights in the ethnically diverse Croatian society.

protection of the use of minority languages, the right to have topographical indications displayed in minority languages, language rights of persons belonging to the Serb national minority in Vukovar, Cyrillic script, Vukovar, contestation of minority rights by referendum initiative, integration of ethnically diverse societies

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