Addressing the ceremony, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Zlata Vasiljević said that many events, achievements and problems of the Croats in Serbia would not have been covered in the media if there had not been “the Hrvatska Riječ” newspaper.
This 52-page weekly is issued every Friday.
“These 1000 issues of the newspaper bear witness to political, societal and economic changes in the country in which we live, and they also bear witness to the political relations between Serbia and Croatia. What is even more important, these first 1,000 issues have covered all that has happened in the Croat community in Serbia,” Vasiljević said.
The head of the Croatian National Council in Serbia (HNV), Jasna Vojnić, said that the leadership of this ethnic minority is proud of the newspaper and praised the journalists in the newspaper for being reputable, professional, fair and incorruptible.
She recalls many obstacles and problems and pointed out that in some areas in Serbia there is still fear of buying and reading the Hrvatska Riječ in public.
The head of the DSHV party, Tomislav Žigmanov, said that the newspaper had grown into “the biggest mine of information about the Croat community in Serbia.
Dubravka Severniski of Croatia’s central office for the Croats abroad praised “Hrvatska Riječ” as a high-quality newspaper that helps ethnic Croats in Serbia to preserve their language and identity.
The publication of this weekly is financed from the budget of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
