"Vlachs in Serbia (not) deprived of rights"

The Vlach community is not deprived of their rights and are not underprivileged, says Vlach National Council President Radisa Dragojevic. He added that Romania could not condition Serbia’s EU integration with the issue. "Vlachs in Serbia (not) deprived of rights" According to Dragojevic, the Vlachs and Romanians are two separate ethnic minorities. He told B92 that the problem had been created by a small group within the Vlach community which believes that their language is Romanian and that their center is Romania, to whom they turned for help. “What Romania is doing at the moment is a part of continuation of conditioning that is being set before the European institutions when we, the Vlachs, are concerned, with a desire to identify us as Romanians, to assimilate us. They even requested a category called Vlach-Romanian before the census, some transitional category that would turn us all into Romanians the next day, which we strongly resisted,” Dragojevic explained. He explained that Romania requested from the Serbian authorities to erase the Vlach option ahead of the population census so all ethnic Vlachs would be forced to declare themselves as Romanians or Vlach-Romanians and the Vlachs are not ready to agree to it at any cost. More than 40,000 persons declared themselves as Vlachs at the 2002 census and only 4,500 as Romanians. The results of the 2011 census still have not been fully processed. The EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Tuesday was not the first time that the issue of the Vlach minority in Serbia was raised. Romanian President Traian Basescu, who has visited eastern Serbia several times, has urged the Serbian authorities to allow all Vlach-Romanians to attend schools in the Romanian language and requested that they be allowed to have churches and media in their own mother tongue. (zagubica.org.rs) “Vlachs do not have equal rights” On the other hand, daily Danas has published a letter signed by the Vlach Democratic Party of Serbia, Ariadnae Filum Association for Protection of Vlach-Romanian Culture in Serbia, Traian Association of Romanian-Vlachs, Pomoravlje Association for Vlach Culture, Language and Religion, Danube Association for Vlach Tradition and Culture and the Vlach Cultural Initiative Serbia – Center for Rural Development, that deny Dragojevic’s claims that they have equal rights. “Vlachs do not have an opportunity to preserve their national identity, they are being manipulated by the majority of significant institutions, including the state. Also, we do not have a possibility to learn our own mother tongue in schools and this is why the Vlach language is being created now,” reads the letter. “The current (Vlach National) Council, in a series of provocations of Romania, repealed Romanian and proclaimed the Serbian language as our mother tongue. Why don’t the Vlachs have media in their own language and don’t have the opportunity to preserve their culture and tradition? If the state has been fair to the Vlachs, then why haven’t we had all those opportunities that most of ethnic minorities in Serbia have,” the Vlach associations stressed in the letter to the daily. B92

"Vlachs in Serbia (not) deprived of rights"

According to Dragojević, the Vlachs and Romanians are two separate ethnic minorities.

He told B92 that the problem had been created by a small group within the Vlach community which believes that their language is Romanian and that their center is Romania, to whom they turned for help.

“What Romania is doing at the moment is a part of continuation of conditioning that is being set before the European institutions when we, the Vlachs, are concerned, with a desire to identify us as Romanians, to assimilate us. They even requested a category called Vlach-Romanian before the census, some transitional category that would turn us all into Romanians the next day, which we strongly resisted,” Dragojević explained.

He explained that Romania requested from the Serbian authorities to erase the Vlach option ahead of the population census so all ethnic Vlachs would be forced to declare themselves as Romanians or Vlach-Romanians and the Vlachs are not ready to agree to it at any cost.

More than 40,000 persons declared themselves as Vlachs at the 2002 census and only 4,500 as Romanians. The results of the 2011 census still have not been fully processed.

The EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Tuesday was not the first time that the issue of the Vlach minority in Serbia was raised. Romanian President Traian Basescu, who has visited eastern Serbia several times, has urged the Serbian authorities to allow all Vlach-Romanians to attend schools in the Romanian language and requested that they be allowed to have churches and media in their own mother tongue.

“Vlachs do not have equal rights”

On the other hand, daily Danas has published a letter signed by the Vlach Democratic Party of Serbia, Ariadnae Filum Association for Protection of Vlach-Romanian Culture in Serbia, Traian Association of Romanian-Vlachs, Pomoravlje Association for Vlach Culture, Language and Religion, Danube Association for Vlach Tradition and Culture and the Vlach Cultural Initiative Serbia – Center for Rural Development, that deny Dragojević’s claims that they have equal rights.

“Vlachs do not have an opportunity to preserve their national identity, they are being manipulated by the majority of significant institutions, including the state. Also, we do not have a possibility to learn our own mother tongue in schools and this is why the Vlach language is being created now,” reads the letter.

“The current (Vlach National) Council, in a series of provocations of Romania, repealed Romanian and proclaimed the Serbian language as our mother tongue. Why don’t the Vlachs have media in their own language and don’t have the opportunity to preserve their culture and tradition? If the state has been fair to the Vlachs, then why haven’t we had all those opportunities that most of ethnic minorities in Serbia have,” the Vlach associations stressed in the letter to the daily.