Delo: Where two fight...

Ljubljana, 24 July - The tyres on five cars with Slovenian license plates were slashed in Poreč, one Slovenian was beaten up in a disco in Rovinj, and the holiday house of another Slovenian citizen was broken into and ransacked... All this happened to real people, with names and surnames, yet it can be explained in a number of ways. Formerly, Slovenians enjoyed visiting Istria and the population of Istria never had anything against this. What would be the good of sowing the seeds of dissent between Slovenians and Istrians now, asks Boris Šuligoj in his commentary for this morning's edition of Delo.
The Istrians would never do all the above, as they stand to incur losses rather than profit from such actions. The Istrians are seasoned workers in the tourist industry. The notion that they could undertake an all-out effort to entice as many tourists into Istria during the day and forget all about the past day's toil during the night and go around slashing the tyres of these tourists' cars, just doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't add up, in the commentator's opinion. Istria also is no longer what it used to be. There are many strangers among the Istrians - and by this, I do not mean foreign tourists, writes Boris Šuligoj, but strangers from the Istrians' own country, who are much less familiar with Istria than, for example, the Slovenians.