20,000 Hit The Streets In Protest Against Serb Cyrillic Signs

More than 20,000 people took to the streets on Saturday in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, to protest against the introduction of the Serbian Cyrillic script in the town for official use.

The protesters urged Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic not to “test and provoke” those who fought to defend Vukovar during the bloody homeland war in the early 1990’s. Protesters held signs which said “This is not Serbia”, “This is not what we fought for”, and ” For a Croatian Vukovar, No to Cyrillic”.

Milanovic recently said that the introduction of Serbian Cyrillic on all signs was part of the Constitutional Law on the Rights of Ethnic Minorities.The law allows for ethnic minorities, where they made up more than a third of a city’s population, to be entitled to have their language used for official purposes. Around 35% of Vukovar’s population made up of Serbian nationals.

The protest was organised by the Committee for Defence of Croatian Vukovar, who also filed a motion asking the Constitutional Court to assess the constitutionality of the law on national minorities’ rights.