From the BBC:
"Croatia plans Cyrillic signs for Serbs in Vukovar"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20899868
"Croatia plans Cyrillic signs for Serbs in Vukovar"
Croatia says it will introduce signs
in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts to respect Serb rights in the town of
Vukovar, which was devastated by Croat-Serb fighting in 1991. Ethnic Serbs make up 34.8% of Vukovar's population, according to a 2011
census. Croats use the Latin alphabet, while Serbs mostly use Cyrillic script, but
they use a common language. The government says Vukovar and other areas with large Serb minorities must
have municipal signs in both scripts. Serb nationalists, backed by units of the former Yugoslav army (JNA), fought
against Croatian independence in 1991. Vukovar remains a painful symbol of the war for Croats, because 260 people
were murdered there by Serbs after a three-month siege by the Serb-led JNA. Some groups of Croatian war veterans have criticised the decision on
dual-alphabet signs. But the Croatian Minister for Public Administration, Arsen Bauk, said such
signs were necessary under a constitutional law that mandates bilingual signs in
towns where a minority accounts for more than 30% of the population. Yugoslavia recognised both scripts equally, but when the federal state
collapsed in the 1990s local nationalists favoured one or the other. Since
independence Croatia has officially recognised only the Latin script, while in
Serbia both are in official use. The coastal region of Istria, near Italy, introduced bilingualism in Croatian
and Italian several years ago. Croatia is under close scrutiny by the EU this year ahead of its expected
accession to the bloc in July. Human rights legislation is an important part of
the EU acquis - the rulebook - that member states are obliged to adopt and
enforce.
^ Croatia should be commended for doing this as they are not being required to. I know they are joining the EU later this year, but it's not an EU law to have the two alphabets. Croatia is doing it to show respect for the minority group living in that region - even though they fought that group in the 1990s. ^
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20899868
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