Cyrillic Croatia

From the BBC:   
"Croatians tear down Serbian signs in Vukovar"

Dozens of protesters in the Croatian town of Vukovar have torn down signs written in the Serbian Cyrillic script. The signs had been put up because of a law that makes bilingual signs mandatory in any area where more than one-third of the population belongs to an ethnic minority. Vukovar was reduced to rubble during the war for independence with Serb-dominated Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The town has now been rebuilt, but ethnic tensions remain. The signs were put up on some of Vukovar's official buildings on Monday morning, but not long afterwards Croatian war veterans wielding hammers came to remove them. "The protesters managed to overcome the police protection and smash new signs in Cyrillic on the local tax office and police station," the state news agency Hina reported. "Cyrillic letters used to come to Vukovar on army tanks," one of the protesters, called Josic, told local media, referring to the occupation of the town by Serb rebels during the 1991-1995 war. The Croatian and Serbian languages are linguistically similar, but Croats use Latin script while Serbs use Cyrillic.  Croatia became the European Union's 28th member in July.

^ I can understand why the people of Vukovar (and the rest of Croatia) feel the way they do - especially after all the suffering done in the town and the rest of the country in the 1990s, but the war ended 18 years ago and it is time for all sides (Croat, Serb, Bosniak, Slovene, Montenegrian, Macedonian, Kosovar and Bosnian) to move forward. Croatia is now part of the EU and so they clearly want to break from their past and look to the future. Signs in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets should be a common sight now throughout the country. I know in Bosnia (which isn't part of the EU) the Latin alphabet is used only in the Bosnian Federation while the Cyrillic alphabet is used only in the Serbian Republic (both of which are part of the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.) I also know that in Serbia (also not part of the EU) it has become common to see websites and signs in both Serbian Cyrillic and Serbian Latin alphabets. These examples show how people and Governments have tried or have not tried to move forward since the end of the Yugoslav Wars. When I was in Croatia it was before they were part of the EU we had a private tour of Dubrovnik and the woman told us that the Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrian and Serbian languages are the exact same exact for their alphabets - unlike Slovene, Albanian and Macedonian - and that when Serbs come to Croatia they speak English so no one will know (from their accents) that they are Serbian. I assume the same is true of a Croat in Serbia. That is a sad testament to the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Wars. While I understand it is hard to forgive people who murdered your friends and family I also understand that things in the Balkans will not get better until people from all sides can live, work and travel freely. ^

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23934098