Opposition Official: Attacks on Slovak Community by Vucic's Thugs Very Dangerous

Dragana Rakic (BETAPHOTO/BRANISLAV BOZIC)

Democratic Party vice-president Dragan Rakic said on Aug. 11 that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was depicting members of national minorities as enemies, so as to round off his chauvinistic narrative on Vojvodina being threatened.

Commenting on a rising number of attacks on members of the Slovak community by thugs and so-called loyalists of the Serbian Progressive Party, Rakic told BETA that Vucic's Serbian Radical Party-era policy had always resided on spreading and fanning the flames of ethnic hatred and conflict.

Rakic stressed that Slovakia was a member of the EU and that "this kind of behavior by those who until yesterday supported introducing language patrols is not only anti-civilizational but deeply damaging, but also very dangerous."

"We are not going to allow Seselj's best student to repeat the 1990s. Solidarity, togetherness and the truth defeated Vucic's thugs in Backi Petrovac, and so it will be everywhere else where freedom-loving citizens and paid thugs meet," the Democratic Party's vice-president stressed.

The first attack on members of the Slovak community in Vojvodina happened on May 31 this year when a group of thugs were brought into Backi Petrovac from other cities in an attempt to prevent elections for the Council of the Slovak Motherland in Serbia.

Last week an exhibition of photographs taken during protests in places inhabited by Vojvodina Slovaks over the past nine months called "Freedom or Bust" was organized. Serbian Progressive Party officials and activists proceeded to attack Backi Petrovac citizens using force to remove the photos.