Holy Trinity

Today I interviewed candidates for Humanity in Action. During the interview one of the candidates told us that she once participated in a conference about the Balkans, in which Macedonians, Slovenes and Croats from Croatia participated. What she said made sense- if it was about the Balkans, those were the people one would expect to participate. But there was something strange about what she said. And it took me a while to understand what.

But suddenly it struck me: she was talking about "Croats from Croatia", and I found it completely normal that she was saying it. However, is she would have been talking about Englishmen from England, Germans from Germany, Irish from Ireland or Norwegians from Norway, I would have looked at her strangely for the use of such a tautology- nobody talks about white snow either. However, here it made sense.

Because Croats on the Balkan may find themselves Croats, but that does not always mean that they are from Croatia. They can be from Bosnia as well, or even from Serbia. And there are slight differences between all those Croats. Differences that one as an outsider probably would not notice- it has mostly to do with political views (btw: for Croats you could read here 'Serbs' too).

In BiH Muslims, or Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs are the constituent people, and there are about 18 recognized minorities. However, all formal positions should be equally divided between the three constituent people. So even if a Croat is Bosnian, he or she is called Croat, for the sake of this so called 'ethnic key'. So here, in this part of the Balkans 'white snow' makes sense, and everybody understand you when you talk about Croats from Croatia, or Serbs from Serbia, or Albanians from Albania.....