ZAGREB, March 7, 2019 – A union of Croatian police officers on Wednesday sent a letter to Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović, asking him to replace the national police director, Nikola Milina, over a case involving reporter Đurđica Klancir in which, the union says, police was used for political purposes.
Klancir, who works for the web portal Net.hr, was IDed by two police officers at workplace on Tuesday and the police officers told her that they were doing so at the request of an attorney who was filing a private lawsuit against her on behalf of Sisak-Moslavina County Prefect Ivo Žinić of the HDZ party, who was suing her for slander.
The Union of Police Officers (SPS) believes that police were used for political purposes in the case, which it describes as an attack on media freedoms. The police were used as the long arm of politics to intimidate the reporter based on a request by an attorney for a local politician who is a member of the ruling party, the union said.
The politician in question can be often seen in the company of Marko Rašić, who serves as Zagreb Police Department head and used to head the Sisak-Moslavina County Police Department, the union said.
Police could have established the reporter’s identity also through the Ministry of the Interior’s information system, the union said, noting also that the latest amendments to the Police Act that had been drafted without the participation of any police union, would put the police entirely under the control of politics.
MOST MPs Nikola Grmoja and Ines Strenja Linić will call for the parliamentary Committee on Information, Computerisation and the Media and the Domestic Policy and National Security Committee to discuss the abuse of police powers in the case of reporter Đurđica Klancir, the party said on Wednesday.
MOST believes that this is yet another example of intimidation and attempt to control the media by those in power to prevent reporters from writing about numerous scandals.
“It is unbelievable that HDZ County Prefect Ivo Žinić sent the police to identify Đurđica Klancir. This is an unprecedented case because police don’t take action on a call from a private person – in this case the attorney, who on behalf of his client, Prefect Žinić, called the police to personally go and collect information from the reporter,” Nikola Grmoja, who is a member of the Media Committee said.
He believes that that could have been done based on a written request, however this government’s aim is to stifle any freedom of the media and to demonstrate their power.
Strenja said that the party would submit a motion for the Domestic Policy Committee to examine the case due to justified suspicion that the police had been misused. “Public trust in institutions is already very low, and the more cases of this nature the more people are buying one-way tickets to Ireland and Germany,” Strenja said.
More news on attacks on the independent media in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.
