Protests on the streets of Zagreb.
More than a thousand people gathered on February 1, 2016 at St. Mark’s Square in Zagreb for a “traitors” protest organized by the Workers’ Front, which wanted to express its disagreement with what “the new government is doing, talking and planning”, as well as with “those who are in government”, reports Jutarnji List.
The reasons for the protest were presented by an activist who drew loud cheers from the crowd for the following statement: “We do not want Karamarko to determine what we can say in public.” She said that the right-wing parties which are now in power represent “the most extreme government in Croatia at least since the 1990s”.
“This is not just one of those protests which are only ‘liked’ on Facebook, we have many more people here then we had expected”, said a representative of the organizers. According to reporters’ estimates, as many as two thousand people gathered, including Nenad Stazić, a Member of Parliament from SDP, and Mijat Stanić, head of the Independent Road Workers Trade Union.
In its invitation sent to people to come to the protest, the Workers’ Front stated that they do not want to live in a country where “professional patriots compile lists of undesirable people, abolish same-sex life partnership, restrict medically assisted fertilization procedures, destroy culture and (already barely existing) media freedoms, while at the same time yet again plunder the whole society, cutting workers’ rights, reducing wages and benefiting corporations”.
They said they were protesting because they “wanted a society of solidarity, equality, social justice and tolerance, and not a society of hatred, intolerance and exploitation”. Among other things, they pointed out that the reason for the protest was the fact that they “do not consider professional war veterans” to be the measure of all things, because “they do not think that diversity is bad”, because they believe that “HDZ did not create, but has actually plundered Croatia”, and because they do not want “sympathizers of the Independent State of Croatia to be ministers of culture”.
The protest, which started at 6.30 pm and lasted for about an hour, ended without incident.
