Hungary Welcomes Annulment of Law on Hungarians’ Collective Guilt in Serbia

Budapest (MTI) – The Hungarian government welcomed on Sunday the introduction of a resolution in Serbia that annuls the law on ethnic Hungarians’ collective guilt in three villages in Vojvodina.

Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen told MTI in a statement that he welcomed Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s announcement of the resolution. Vucic said paying tribute to the innocent victims executed in 1944-1945 is a symbolic step in Serb-Hungarian reconciliation and fulfils a long-existing aspiration by Hungary.

Serbia passed the resolution to annul legislation that stated the collective guilt of ethnic Hungarians in the villages of Curug (Csurog), Zabalj (Zsablya) and Mosorin (Mozsor).

Vucic addressed a memorial event in Subotica (Szabadka) paying tribute to innocent victims of the 1944-1945 raids. This was the first time that Serbian leaders paid their tribute at the memorial place in the Subotica cemetery.

He said the Serbian people consider ethnic Hungarians as their own and they would like to see ethnic Hungarians consider the Serbian people also as their own.

A new statue was inaugurated which replaced a previous statue dubbed Floundering Bird that had been stolen. The statue pay tribute to hundreds of mostly ethnic Hungarian, Croatian and German people who were executed in the Subotica cemetery in the autumn of 1944. Serbian troops that moved in the Backa (Bacska) region of northern Vojvodina in the winter of 1944-1945 introduced military administration and launched an attack lasting for months against the innocent Hungarian civilians who lived in relative majority in the region. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the cities of Novi Sad (Ujvidek), Subotica and Sombor (Zombor) and other towns and villages with ethnic Hungarian residents and were buried in mass graves. A total of 852 victims have been identified so far.

Photo: erdely.ma

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters