Tomislav Josic,
Committee for the defence of Croatian Vukovar
Photo: Patrik Macek/Pixsell

The Croatian parliament had July 15 decided to hand the sensitive matter of whether or not to hold a referendum against the use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet on state offices in the city of Vukovar to the Constitutional Court.

Referendum supporters say that Cyrillic symbolically represents the utter terror and the horror inflicted upon innocent Croats in Vukovar as they went about seceding from communist Yugoslavia, seeking through democratic peaceful processes their freedom and democracy. The government (whose political predecessors, although a minority, did not want to secede from communist Yugoslavia) evidently has little or no empathy with the suffering of the Croatian people at the hands of Serb aggressor has after months of the parliamentary committee’s dragging out signature verifications objected to the referendum, calling it uncivilized and in violation of the country’s international obligations. It…