Vojvodina – The Hungarian Kosovo

Back in October 2005, Parliamentary Assembly of Europe members tabled a draft resolution castigating the human rights situation in the province of Vojvodina. Such resolutions are sure to proliferate Since bigger for Montenegro and Serbia looms. Vojvodina is widely considered the touchstone of all the post-Milosevic reforms of Serbia and a test case.

Milosevic is still a hate figure in Vojvodina. The region enjoyed an autonomy granted by Tito constitutions until it was abolished by him in 1989. Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister of rump Yugoslavia and also a 1 time winner of the first round of elections for the presidency of Serbia has replaced the autocrat as main villain. The Miroljub Labus, his competitor, won in Vojvodina and southwestern Serbia from the elections.

Just four years back, the provincial assembly of Vojvodina sacked the region’s deputy prime minister, also a Kostunica crony, and updated the status of Novi Sad to”capital city”. The speaker of the assembly stormed into the building of the TV and radio of Novi Sad to protest an Belgrade appointment.

Serb radicals required complete self-government, the large Hungarian minority – one eighth of Vojvodina’s 2 million strong people – petitioned from locales using a Magyar majority, moderates urged Belgrade to start negotiating soon. Hungary, under the prime minister, Viktor Orban, dimmed on behalf of its own ethnic kin. It looked like Vojvodina is going to join the ranks of Kosovo and Montenegro. Most Vojvodina Serbs respect it as central European.

Vojvodina’s denizens – pro-Western, highly educated, intellectuals, members of the professions, and globe-trotting businessmen – were horrified by the barbarity of all the tortured demise of Yugoslavia. They act as the conscience of Montenegro and Serbia.

Back in June 2002, Nenad Canak, the mind of the provincial parliament, required that the prosecution of journalists that led to”warmongering” through Milosevic’s reign. According to Radio B92, the organizers at Novi Sad at August 2002 of”Blood and Honey”, an exhibition of photo-journalist’s Ron Haviv’s work from the Balkan in the 1990’s, wrote in a letter addressed Kostunica, among others:

“Why do you stay silent regarding nationalistic and chauvinistic behaviour? Why is this problem being ignored? This is not an isolated incident, however, an financed, planned and organized activity. Does this mean that you’re turning a blind eye? The [fact ] is easy – wars occurred and crimes were committed in them, crimes that we might have to face, sooner or later.”

Even their dismay at the surgical demolition of their three bridges over the Danube and also their sole oil refinery through the 1999 Kosovo campaign of NATO did not turn them into anti-Western xenophobes.

In the end, at January-February 2001 and in January-February 2002, the parliament revived some of the land’s previous powers and privileges – on its own finances, agriculture, health care, religion, education, tourism, sports, the press, and societal services. Mile Icakov by the late Djindjic’s DOS umbrella grouping of parties, quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, uttered this admonition:

“That is something we had and that is something which belonged to us and nobody else has to give it to usbut to reunite what had been taken away against the law and contrary to the constitution… Everybody in Serbia has agreed on the largest-possible autonomy for Kosovo. If they really do exactly the exact same for Vojvodina nothing can change. It would be reasonable to provide Vojvodina the [same rights]. It is not reasonable that the bad child will get everything that he asks and the fantastic child will get nothing.”

Yet, the omission to handle the grievances of Vojvodina – or to consult with it in the March 14, 2002 EU-sponsored Deal on Restructuring Relations between Montenegro and Serbia annoyed the disgruntled province. Vojvodina is not just the bread basket of Yugoslavia, it lots of its own blue-chips, and harbors its oil business.

It is a net contributor to the budget and subsidizes the other areas of the rump Yugoslavia. It generates two firth of Serbia and Montenegro’s dwindling GDP and brings two thirds of its foreign direct investment – .

The French multinational Lafarge bought a majority stake at the Beocin cement factory near Novi Sad. It compensated million of that Vojvodina is likely to see quite little. Five loss making sugar factories were next in line. The privatization minister of serbia pledged to plough back 1 quarter of privatization receipts into the local market.

Then Dragan Veselinov, Serbian Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, offered also to buy tons of wheat and to metabolize sugar beet, soybean, and sunflower crops. But jangled nerves did not soothe.

Vojvodina was reluctantly flooded with Serb refugees from Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. Even the”invasion” changed its character. The bastion of tolerant civilization rendered fractious, corruption-ridden, and discernibly more nationalistic and was Balkanized. Anti-Semitic, revisionist, neo-fascist, racist, pro-Greater Serbia, and organizations proliferate.

The two pillars of the movement for self-governance are money and nostalgia. It is a belated response to the federation’s blood-spattered and convulsive disintegration. But it’s also a rejection of Vojvodina’s exploitation by the provinces.

Like Scotland and Flanders, northern Italy and Quebec, and the Kurd and Shiite areas of Iraq, Vojvodina Want to retain a bigger share of its resources for investment and local consumption. In an”Europe of regions” and also a world of disintegrating nation-states, this was expected. Back in August 2002, the Committee for International Cooperation and Relations with Euroregions of the Vojvodina parliament voted to join with the Assembly of European Regions (AER).

Vojvodina faces the outcomes of a decade of NATO military action and Western economic sanctions. Sanctions-busting smuggling operations through the rule of Milosevic criminalized some areas of the market. Novi Sad’s water, natural gas, the railway to Budapest, river freight transport, and telecommunications infrastructure had been rendered idle by the decimation of its branches.

The reconstruction of the first, largest bridge,”Sloboda” (or Liberty) was completed in 2004 and cost 34 million euro in EU capital, according to”Balkan Times”. Two crossovers cater to the demands of the people of Novi Sad – but they’re poor substitutes. Rail connections to the remainder of Europe have to be revived. The Danube of all unexploded ordnance’s intricate and expensive clearing was completed recently.

Vojvodina tries to be a regional hub. HINA reports that the Serb province and the neighboring Vukovar-Srijem county in Croatia have consented to rebuild bridges, in both the literal and the figurative senses. Vojvodina pledged to assist Vukovar demine its own environs, secure the return of art expropriated by the Serbs throughout the warfare, and discover the whereabouts of missing Croat soldiers and civilians.

Vojvodina’s parties have been members of the judgment. Even the Vojvodina Reformists, that backed Kostunica in the recent bout of elections, even once have teamed using a DOS breakaway faction to create a fresh, left of center power. Vojvodina plays an essential part in Serb politics.

The leader of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, Jozsef Kasza, confessed to the Yugoslav daily”Dnevnik”, which the status of the Hungarian minority is now improving”step by step”, although”Hungarians are still not adequately represented at the judiciary, prosecutions, in major positions in the market.”

He said:”During the Milosevic era they wouldn’t let’s have our universities, media, they prohibited the official use of the language. The situation has improved, the Law on national communities has been passed which needs to keep its execution increasingly more.”

In an inversion of the roles, the Beta news agency noted that the then secretary for education and culture, Zoltan Bunjik of Vojvodina, declared a string of aid programs targeted at the Serb minority in Hungary, such as a Serb culture and history curriculum.