Index.hr, an independent Croatian news site, reports on September 16, 2019 that one of their journalists, Gordan Duhaček, was arrested this morning.
As he was returning from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia yesterday, he was told that the police were looking for him. He went straight to the police station in Heinzelova street as he returned to Zagreb, to see what that was about and discuss arrangements with them, as he was supposed to leave Zagreb today for a business trip. However, the police officers waited for him at the airport this morning, and have arrested him.
Supposedly, he was arrested because of the two tweets he published on his own personal Twitter profile. One of them is from the summer of 2018 (!), and the other one was written just a couple of weeks ago.
“Ispričao je i kako su ga na podu poprskali suzavcem te kako su ga u policijskom automobilu govorili da mu se ovo dešava jer se opire sistemu, jer nije poslušao njihovu naredbu istog trenutka te kako su oni najviši zakon i sl.”
Nedajbože da se itko opire sistemu. ?
ACAB!— Gordan Duhaček (@Prajdizan) July 26, 2018
The first tweet in question, given above, discusses how cops treat people while being arrested (sic!), and that you should obey anything the police tell you without any questions, as they’re the highest law there is, and it was completed with the phrase ACAB. ACAB is a well known anti-police slogan.
The other questionable tweet is, in fact, a series of tweets in which Duhaček satirically rewrites a famous patriotic song Vila Velebita, to bring attention to the problem of waste-waters being released into nature without any management.
U čast hrvatskog jezera govana na Plitvicama i izlijevanja govana u hrvatsko more od Dubrovnika do Splita, prilagodio sam tom hrvatskom domoljubnom fenomenu poznatu domoljubnu pjesmu.
— Gordan Duhaček (@Prajdizan) August 21, 2019
A day after that tweet has been published, Duhaček wrote about how someone has reported him to the police over that joke, and how ridiculous it is on what the police resources are being wasted.
To follow the latest on this story, here is the original on Index.
EDIT: At 5:47 pm Index.hr reports that Duhaček is currently at the Misdemeanor Court in Novi Zagreb.
You can find the original lyrics of the Vila Velebita song on the Wikipedia page; here is the English translation for those of you wondering what it’s all about:
EDIT: At around 7 pm, index.hr reported that Duhaček has been released from custody, having being fined 200 Deutsche Mark for his tweet mentioning ACAB. He said that the verdict on Vila Velebita will be issued in three days. And, yes, some fines in Croatia are still in Deutsche Mark, although they have been replaced in Germany and the rest of the world, except Croatian laws, back in 2002.
