Leaders call for action to halt ethnic violence in Vojvodina

Vojvodina and Serbia officials meet to establish a commitment to combating violence between Serbs, Hungarians.

By Biljana Pekusic for Southeast European Times in Belgrade -- 14/03/13

Nationalist organisation Obraz was banned by Serbia's Constitutional Court. [Nada Bozic/SETimes]

Several incidents of ethnically motivated violence in Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina during the past few months have leaders and citizens calling for action to reduce tensions.

Vojvodina Assembly President Istvan Pasztor met with Serbia Prime Minister Ivica Dacic to request that the police and other authorities prevent violence "which recalls the atmosphere of lynching in the 1990s."

"Extreme-right is on the rise and must be reacted to more sharply than similar incidents that do not have a nationalist insignia," Pasztor, an ethnic Hungarian, told SETimes.

The autonomous province is home to 26 ethnic groups, with the majority being Hungarian.

The most recent incident was in early February in Temerin, when police arrested five Serbian men ages 19 to 21 who allegedly used bricks to smash windows at the home of a Hungarian family. The suspects attacked three Hungarian youths who had sought refuge in the house of a friend.

"The attackers cursed and threw bricks and stones at the house," Bela Corba, president of the regional organisation of the Democratic Party of Vojvodina, told SETimes.

Temerin is located on the border between the relatively homogeneous Hungarian population in Backa and centres of Serbian neo-Nazi organisations in Novi Sad and Veternik.

In 2011, the Serbian nationalist organisation Obraz held a political debate in Temerin that drew about 500 young people, and organised a midnight march through Hungarian neighbourhoods. Obraz was later banned by Serbia's Constitutional Court.

At the meeting with Pasztor, Dacic agreed that participants in ethnically motivated crimes should be moved through the penal system more rapidly. The prime minister promised to continue co-operation for "a peaceful and secure life for all citizens of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation."

Residents in the area are eager to see progress.

"There should be actions involving young people of all nationalities in Vojvodina, for example, discussions to talk to each other about what separates them," Milica Jakovljevic, a sociology student from Pancevo, told SETimes.

"Young people need to constantly send messages about ethnic tolerance at all levels, and this is not [occurring] in Serbia," Djerdj Farkas, an economics student from Pancevo, told SETimes.

The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina said it would examine whether there is an interethnic divide between youth in Vojvodina and report to the public about how authorities have responded to ethnic incidents over the past few years.

According to Snezana Ilic, executive director of the Centre for Civil Society in Zrenjanin, ethnic tensions in Vojvodina have been influenced by Serbian authorities' request for the creation of an association of Serbian municipalities in Kosovo.

"Each ethnic view of the problem of the status of … Kosovo and Metohija can have enormous consequences," Ilic told SETimes.

Source: SETimes.com