City of Rijeka Intercultural Profile
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City of Rijeka Intercultural Profile This report is based upon the visit of the CoE expert team on 11 & 12 July 2016, comprising Phil Wood and Ivana D’Alessando. It should be read in parallel with the Council of Europe’s response to Rijeka’s ICC Index questionnaire, which contains many recommendations and pointers to examples of good practice. 1. Introduction Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia (after Zagreb and Split). It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,624 inhabitants (2011). The metropolitan area, which includes adjacent towns and municipalities, has a population of more than 240,000. Historically, because of its strategic position and deep-water port, the city was fiercely contested, especially amongst Italy, Hungary (serving as the Kingdom of Hungary's largest and most important port), and Croatia, changing hands and demographics many times over centuries. This is reflected in the city’s alternative names, it being known in Italian and Hungarian as Fiume, in Slovene as Reka and in German as Sankt Veit am Flaum. According to the 2011 census data, the overwhelming majority of its citizens (82.52%) are presently Croats, along with small numbers of Bosniaks, Italians and Serbs. Members of all 22 of Croatia’s official National Minorities are resident in the city. Rijeka is the main city of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County which includes several islands of the northern Dalmatian coast, and has a population of 296,195 and, for the purposes of Intercultural Cities membership, the whole of the County is included. The city's economy largely depends on shipbuilding and maritime transport although tourism is a factor in the wider area. Linguistically, apart from Croatian, the population also uses its own unique version of the Venetian language, (Fiumano), with an estimated 20,000 speakers among the autochthone Croats and various minorities. Historically Fiumano served as a lingua franca for the many ethnicities inhabiting the multicultural port-town. In March 2016, Rijeka was selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2020, and the title of its programme is ‘Port of Diversity’. 2. Background to Cultural Diversity in Croatia The particular nature of cultural diversity in the Republic Croatia is a result of complex historical movements, policies and practices, most of which were effective before the country came into being. Subjection to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two World Wars and to both the Kingdom, and then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia imposed massive forces resulting in large movements of people and producing a patchwork of languages, religions and cultures. Despite the current land 1 area of Croatia being an area characterised by sustained and steady emigration to other parts of the region, Europe and the World, it also experienced many decades of population growth, reaching a peak of 4,784,265 in 1991, of which Croats represented only 75%. However the Yugoslav Wars, which broke out in that year, were a watershed in terms of demographic diversity. The formation of several new states in the region, and the democratization of others, encouraged many minorities to migrate to their ‘parent’ country, whilst war and ‘ethnic cleansing’ forced the decision to move upon others. The corollary of this was a trend, which has continued to this day, of a relative growth in Croats as a proportion of the total population (up to 90% by 2011) even whilst they as a group, and the total population are declining in actual numbers. Population of Croatia according to ethnic group census 1991 census 2001 census 2011 Number % Number % Number % Croats 3,736,356 78.1 3,977,171 89.6 3,874,321 90.42 Serbs 581,663 12.2 201,631 4.5 186,633 4.36 Bosniaks 43,459 0.9 20,755 0.5 31,479 0.73 Muslims 19,677 0.4 7,558 0.17 Italians 21,303 0.4 19,636 0.4 17,807 0.42 Albanians 12,032 0.3 15,082 0.3 17,513 0.41 Roma 6,695 0.1 9,463 0.2 16,975 0.4 Hungarians 22,355 0.5 16,595 0.4 14,048 0.33 Slovenes 22,376 0.5 13,173 0.3 10,517 0.25 Czechs 13,086 0.3 10,510 0.2 9,641 0.22 Montenegrins 9,724 0.2 4,926 0.1 4,517 0.11 Macedonians 6,280 0.1 4,270 0.1 4,138 0.1 Yugoslavs 106,041 2.2 176 0 331 0.01 Others/undeclared 246,354 5.1 1,243,952 2.8 84,991 1.98 Total 4,784,265 4,437,460 4,284,889 Source: Croatian Bureau of Statistic On its declaration of independence, and then after the peace accords, Croatia settled into a model familiar in many parts of post-Communist east-central Europe of numerous ‘national minorities’, with recognition and rights embedded in the Constitution, but with little or none of the in-migration familiar to western Europe. Economic difficulties over two decades have ensured a steady stream of Croatian nationals seeking temporary or permanent emigration elsewhere, and it is only in the wake of the ‘refugee crisis’ of summer 2015 that Croatia has even been confronted with the prospect of immigration. One notable and quite unusual characteristic of Croatia is that the greatest centres of diversity are not the capital city and other metropolitan districts, but mainly smaller towns and rural areas, often because of their proximity to the borders of neighbouring countries or because of some historic specificity. Thus, as the table below demonstrates, Istria in the far west and Vukovar in the far east are the most diverse whilst the counties based upon big cities such as Zagreb, Split and Zadar are relatively homogeneous. Rijeka’s county of Primorje-Gorski Kotar falls somewhat in the middle of these extremes with particularly strong representations of Serbs (14,888), Bosniaks (4,877) and Italians (3,429), Albanians (2,410) and Roma (1,072). 2 3 The 2011 Census also found that whilst 410,578 people were of an ethnicity other than Croat, only 35,490 of these were actually foreign citizens, which represented only 0.8% of the total population. These foreign citizens derived from the following major groups: The Croatian Constitution recognises 22 national minorities (Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Roma, Romanians, Turks, Vlachs and Albanians) who are all guaranteed equality with citizens of Croatian ethnicity. The Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) praised the “favourable legislative framework for national minorities” in Croatia1. It also welcomed steps taken to promote access to rights of persons belonging to national minorities at national and local levels, although it noted that whilst the existing legal framework was often adequate, laws were often not implemented. The FCNM also warned that too few representatives of national minorities were employed in public services, and the right to use minority languages and scripts was not implemented in some localities. In particular it warned that “A surge in nationalism and political radicalisation is having a negative impact on minority rights, especially in those areas that were heavily affected by the 1990s conflict.” Hate speech has become more acceptable in the media and in political discourse, and anti-minority rhetoric and prejudice dominates much of the public debate on national minorities, resulting in many individuals refraining from accessing their rights for fear of negative repercussions, according to the opinion. The FCNM committee also highlights hurdles for the economic integration of returnees from the 1991-1995 conflict, including obstacles towards claiming citizenship. 3. National Policy Context In February 2013, the Croatian Parliament adopted the Migration Policy of the Republic of Croatia for the Period 2013-2015, which contains a section on Integration Policy (Section 5., including 5 measures). As part of the measures prescribed in the Migration Policy, the Action Plan for the 1 Advisory Committee On The Framework Convention For The Protection Of National Minorities (2015) Fourth Opinion on Croatia adopted on 18 November 2015. Strasbourg. 4 Removal of Obstacles to the Exercise of Particular Rights in the Area of the Integration of Foreigners 2013-2015 was adopted by the Croatian Government in July 2013. This would suggest that integration is becoming a political priority to a greater extent than was the case earlier, as the only previous official document dealing with migrant integration was the Migration Policy of the Republic of Croatia for 2007-2008. It prescribed 17 measures and activities, although only a few pertaining to integration: e.g. introducing compulsory language lessons and Croatian history and culture tests in the process of acquiring Croatian citizenship or permanent residence status and measures to prevent discriminatory practices and attitudes towards immigrants in economic, social and cultural life. Nevertheless, integration is not a subject of many public and political debates and is not high on the agenda of political parties in Croatia. Among the main parties in the Parliament, only the ruling coalition has a brief section on immigration in their political programme, which states the need to develop preparatory policies in order to deal with the phenomenon of immigration of workers and their families to Croatia and with their institutional and social adjustment to new circumstances2. It is clear from the Action Plan in particular, that when the Croatian government talks of ‘foreigners’ it is not really thinking about economic (or other kinds of) migrants but rather of refugees (or asylum grantees) and subsidiary protection beneficiaries.