The Serb People's Council (SNV) leader, Boris Milosevic, said at a Christmas reception in Zagreb on Monday that 2019 had been marked by many ethnically motivated attacks against Serbs in Croatia, and therefore the society needed messages of peace and tolerance.

During the reception on Christmas Eve according to the Julian calendar, Milosevic said that the attacks started with an assault on players of Serbian water polo club Red Star in Split in mid-February. He recalled an attack against seasonal workers in the town of Supetar on the island of Brac in June and then a violent hate crime attack in the 21 August incident in the Uzdolje cafe near Knin.

However, he also mentioned those who helped the assaulted victims in Brac and Split as positive examples.

As for the topic of the Cyrillic script, Milosevic said that this script “cannot be a symbol of the war, but only a symbol of peace and dialogue.”

Addressing the guests at the reception, including high-ranking office-holders in Croatia, Milosevic wished that during 2020, schools for ethnic Serbs could be finally registered and that the country continued with the programme of the economic recovery in the areas populated by minorities.

Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said in his speech that the government had been addressing the above-mentioned problems in the last years and that all that proved that representatives of ethnic minorities should support the parliamentary majority as this enabled them to be protagonists who could impact solutions through institutions.