The Croats stole the language from the Serbs, and now they are also stealing the Cyrillic alphabet, one can hear in Serbia these days, in the midst of the debate - controversy and opposition - about the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet in Vukovar and other places and cities where, according to the results of last year's census, the Serbian minority exceeded a third of the population.
Thus, the Serbian linguist, Professor Miloš Kovačević, recalled that at the scientific meeting of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) at the end of 2012, the thesis was heard that "from the 11th to the 18th century, in large parts of the Croatian territory, the population expressed its cultural needs ( i) Cyrillic", and that on medieval monuments "Cyrillic and Glagolitic are mixed". Kovačević calls it, as reported by some Serbian media, "Croatian make-up of the past", and says that Croats only remembered "their" Cyrillic script in 2012 because of their path towards the EU, because in Brussels they want to have the right of precedence over the language and script with Balkans.
No matter how some are trying to claim the origin of the Cyrillic alphabet, a very clear provision of the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities, as well as legal provisions on the application of minority scripts in official use in Croatia, the real alarm was raised after the Croatian Government finally decided to proceed according to the letter of the law and that, where the conditions are met (more than a third of the minority population), the laws are applied. As expected, the biggest noise was made in Vukovar, a city that suffered heavily in the war and in which the wounds of war have not yet healed.
CONSTITUTION AND LAW: Serbs there, according to the census, make up 34,8 percent of the population. Therefore, the Independent Serbian Democratic Party (SDSS) requested the introduction of bilingualism and that (so far) only in the materials that are delivered to the councilors for the Assembly sessions, referring precisely to long-established constitutional and legal provisions. "Our goal is to make our neighbors understand that we are not a danger to people and that language or some writing is not a danger, but an asset," said the Deputy Mayor of Vukovar, Dejan Drakulić, a member of the SDSS, and Mayor Željko Sabo, a member, agreed with this. of the ruling SDP, as well as the president of that party and Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović, who at the traditional Christmas reception in the Serbian National Council (SNV) told the gathered representatives of the Serbian minority: "I will not tolerate you, because we can only tolerate adversity." I will respect you and I will live with you, I invite you not to live together, but to live together", and said that his government will ensure the implementation of laws that guarantee minorities bilingualism in areas where they make up more than a third of the population. "How can anyone be against someone's right to use their own language and script," he asked, rejecting the demands of some who would now change the laws that ensure bilingualism. "We will make it possible for everyone who wants it, not only because it is written in the law, because it is a legal state, but because it is a proper state," he added.
Consequently, in Vukovar and other cities where Serbs make up more than a third of the population, the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets should be used equally in public documents and official forms, on signs with the names of streets and squares, shops, city institutions, but also on signs with names of cities and towns.
SNV president and parliamentary representative Milorad Pupovac said these days that some cities and towns have already changed their statutes and introduced future changes, but the implementation of bilingualism will only begin when it comes to signs on municipal buildings, and other changes can only be made later. expect. According to Pupovac, this is already the third Croatian government that promises to implement the law, but the first government that has explicitly said - and sealed it with its decision - that it will actually do so. Resistance comes from the fact that some crimes are equated with the Cyrillic alphabet, and all this has been helped by linguistic intolerance and attempts to create "purity of the language", even though the fact is that the Cyrillic alphabet is part of Croatian writing, as well as Bosnian and Serbian traditions.
REFERENDUM AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION: However, some Vukovar parties and individuals do not think so. The most active is the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), which is collecting signatures for a referendum that would put out of force the - according to them disputed - provision of the Statute of the City of Vukovar on the equal use of the Cyrillic alphabet in public life. So far, as they say, they have collected more than seven thousand signatures, and Petar Macut from the Vukovar HSP explains it all: "Although many hoped that we would not succeed, especially from the HDZ 'SDDS Dr. Ante Starčević' - that you have a new party in Vukovar - the citizens of the city of Vukovar said no, they don't want the Cyrillic alphabet," claiming that more than 30 percent of Vukovar residents requested the referendum.
Not only the referendum, but also the review of the results of the population census - they say - should be carried out, because many citizens of Vukovar only fictitiously live in that city, and in fact they live in Serbia and only come to vote or during the census.
All this is joined by numerous defense organizations, mothers of the dead, and the little-known Association of Juvenile Volunteers of the Homeland War of Vukovar-Srijem County; all of them strongly oppose the announced introduction of bilingual signs and the Cyrillic alphabet in Vukovar and other municipalities where Serbs make up more than a third of the population, because in their opinion it is an insult to the victims.
"The introduction of bilingualism in cities and municipalities where thousands of their inhabitants lost their lives in the Great Serbian aggression, and more than 300 persons who are missing are still being searched for, from which all those who did not follow the Great Serbian policy were expelled, displaced, in which killed many non-Serbs who remained in the city of Vukovar during the occupation, is not a step towards respecting the rights of national minorities, but a step towards confirmation that aggression and crimes pay off, a step towards new divisions and intolerance in the city of Vukovar and other cities where they want to introduce bilingualism", said that organization, specifying that 92 minor volunteers defended Vukovar, 46 of them died, and among them was the youngest victim of Ovčara, Igor Kačić. "They deserve eternal peace, which this proposal does not bring," they state, similarly to other veterans' associations these days.
CYRILLIC FOR FIERCE CROATS: In the meantime, while spears are being broken around Cyrillic as an "enemy" script, all the absurdity shows the following: on the fence of the Elementary School in Kočerin near Široki Brijeg (Bosnia and Herzegovina), 12 Cyrillic letters carved in stone 1,4 meters high, wide meter and 25 centimeters thick, a "monument" made by Grgo Mikulić, director of the Tourist Office in Široki Brijeg. The author claims that it is an "old Croatian script", which is the reason why the "fierce Croats" from that region would accept these "monumental letters" in the middle of the settlement. Mikulić intends to make 15 more letters, and all of them - as he told "Slobodna Dalmacija" - will be illuminated, visible and legible to passengers traveling along the Mostar-Split and Mostar-Tomislavgrad-Livno roads.
"Our goal is for the Croatian Cyrillic alphabet to receive the status of intangible world cultural heritage in UNESCO," he explains artist of Croatian Cyrillic letters Mikulic.
Thus, in a way, the whole Cyrillic-Latin circus and absurdity is rounded off, in which - let's not forget that in the meantime we have all become polyglots who know strong languages from birth: Serbian, Croatian, Bosniak, Montenegrin - some have trouble with "Serbian Cyrillic ", and the other from "Croatian Latin", as if Serbs and Croats are responsible for the authorship of both letters.
In all of this, it should be remembered that the Cyrillic alphabet was kicked out of schools as long ago as 1990, that the libraries were ethnically cleansed in the following years because of the Cyrillic alphabet, that adults in Croatia are already deprived of the knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet, and consequently more illiterate than their ancestors and parents, who perceived knowledge of both letters - at least those who were really literate among them - as an advantage, not as a drawback and a burden.
The noise and fury that is on the stage about the constitutional right to use bilingualism about all these only important things, does not take into account, but still everything boils down to nonsense and indolence, illiteracy and ignorance.
