Ethnic tensions and violence have flared in an ethnically mixed corner of the former Yugoslav republic of Serbia that stood peacefully on the sidelines of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Experts are struggling to explain the rise in attacks against the ethnic Hungarian minority in the northern province of Vojvodina, a vast agricultural plain known as the breadbasket of Serbia.
"A group of Serb youngsters beat me just because I spoke Hungarian with a friend," said a 20-year-old man in Temerin, a small Vojvodina town to the north of the provincial capital, Novi Sad. Still visibly shaken from the unprovoked recent attack, the man refused to give his name for fear of retaliation. "They broke my teeth and kicked me everywhere until I lost consciousness," he said.
Jozef Kasa, the leader of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, said local authorities have been dangerously dismissive of the problem, which he claimed is more serious than Serb police would like to believe.
"We are not talking about two or three cases, but about several dozen, and only one is dangerous and too much," the former deputy prime minister told AFP.
"Police have done nothing and have tried to cover up each incident, explaining them as fights between drunk or drugged youngsters."
According to police figures, 49 ethnically-motivated incidents have been recorded in the past six months, although at least one non-government organisation has said there were more than 40 incidents in less than a week in March.
One ethnic Hungarian family is known to have fled their home and sought asylum in neighbouring Hungary. The Setet family left Serbia last month after 19-year-old Denisz Setet was beaten twice, "Death to Hungarians" was scrawled on the wall of their house and a knife was placed on their doorstep.
Some locals believe inter-ethnic relations changed after general elections in December, when the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party emerged as the strongest single party in the Serbian parliament.
"December was a turning point for this new atmosphere in Vojvodina," said Sasa Vucinic of the Democratic Party in the Vojvodina town of Subotica, close to the Hungarian border. "Politicians have been using incidents to mobilise their supporters," he said.
Some analysts believe the influx of Serb refugees from war-torn areas of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s strengthened the Radicals in Vojvodina, traditionally one of Serbia's most liberal and ethnically diverse areas.
Some 12,000 refugees arrived in Subotica alone, a major influx to a town with a population of 100,000.
Ethnic Hungarians, the largest of some 26 ethnic groups recognised as minorities in Vojvodina, make up 14 percent of the provinces population, or some 300,000 people.
"There are two dangers in this situation - to neglect inter-ethnic conflict or to exaggerate it," Vojvodinas Secretary for National Minorities Tamas Korhecz said.
"It's difficult to estimate whether a conflict is ethnically motivated, so it's not easy to talk about figures, but the fact is that the amount of anti-Hungarian graffiti has increased" in the past year.
"At the same time, research shows that the level of intolerance is unacceptably high among youngsters," Korhecz said, adding that this was a consequence of growing up during the war-ravaged 1990s.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica visited Temerin and several other Vojvodina towns last month after Budapest publicly theatened to take its concerns to the European Union.
"Incidents have happened on both sides and they should neither be hidden nor exaggerated," Kostunica told reporters in Temerin.
Even so, Hungary raised the issue among its EU partners and the European parliament issued a statement critical of Serbian authorities for allegedly turning a "blind eye to violence".
A European parliamentary committee is expected to visit Vojvodina next month to assess the situation.
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