ZAGREB, May 25, 2018 – About 50 researchers and experts dealing with national minorities, migration and security from nine countries gathered on the northern Adriatic island of Brijuni on Friday for a three-day conference entitled “National Minorities, Migrations and Security in Democratic Societies”.
The chairman of the National Minorities Council Aleksandar Tolnauer said that the times in which we are living presents new challenges regarding migration, security, the escalation of intolerance, hate speech, revision of history and glorifying past criminal regimes which in turn cause divisions in society and “erode the fundamental democratic postulates and standards of the European Union.”
According to Tolnauer, after Croatia joined the EU in mid-2013, certain social and political groups attempted to bring the attained minority rights, especial their political representation, into question. “Any form of restrictive interference in the level of rights attained would have very negative consequences for Croatian society. Special minority rights aren’t any sort of additional rights that would improve the status of minorities compared to others, but are rights that ensure that minorities equally exercise their human rights with the others,” Tolnauer said.
Recalling that the Government Office for Human and National Minority Rights was established in 2012, its director Alen Tahiri said that the government devotes special attention to ensuring respect for the rights and liberties of the national minorities and the rights enshrined in the Constitution and constitutional law on national minority rights. “Minority rights form the basis of social coexistence and they are founded on justice, security and peace,” Tahiri said.
The chairman of the organising committee and professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb Siniša Tatalović said that in these turbulent times it is necessary to stimulate further research and other matters regarding national minorities, migration and security in democratic societies. “The struggle to protect minority and human rights and with it the fight against all forms of discrimination never ends,” he underlined.
