Milanovic: Don’t believe those who are trying to cause mass hysteria and profit from this situation
Even though Croatian media is following all developments professionally, covering all sides, some political figures and individual journalists are just not happy if they cannot cause a stir even if they’re using false information to do so.
Deputy mayor of Valpovo Dubravko Kučinac posted a status on his Facebook wall stating that “dozends of cases of urgent criminal processing against migrants were conducted in Zagreb over the last few days for attempted rapes and muggings”. Croatian Ministry of Internal Affair immediately published a rebuttal and called the public not to fall for these obvious attempts to cause panic. Kušinac removed his post in the meantime, but not fast enough since it was shared and recorded in other media.
Here is the reaction from the Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs in full, you can follow their regular updates HERE
Press Release
Due to the fact that approximately 14 000 migrants are currently on the territory of the Republic of Croatia via social networks and by e-mails the news that the mentioned migrants committed numerous criminal offences on our territory in last few hours have started to spread among citizens. Also, the news contains false information regarding the increase number of rape, attempted rape, street robberies and children kidnapping.
We urge the public not to fall for these false and disturbing rumors whose only aim is to raise panic and disrupt normal way of life. On the area of all our Police Administrations the increased number of criminal offence or misdemeanors is not recorded, as well as any other event here falsely stated.
Once again, we invite all our citizens to enable unobstructed work of police and other competent services throughout the Republic of Croatia.
Prime Minister Milanović adressed this issue this morning during his visit to beli Manastir: “Don’t believe those who are trying to cause mass hysteria and profit from this situation. This is the ugliest thing I have seen since the Homeland War”.
Now, further south, today we’ve noticed a newspaper article ” Fear in Makarska, Scandinavians are cancelling their bookings because of the refugee crisis”. Of course, I let my fingers do the walking, called several agencies, repersentatives of tourist boards along the coast and I can say that this news is also false. Individual cases, or cancellation of a group of 10 tourists in this particular case happen, but this is no reason to jump to conclusions, spread false information because it is just down right irresponsible.
