ZAGREB, June 15, 2020 – Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic said on Monday that police were always efficient in the fight against hate speech and that he fully trusted state institutions in that regard.
“As regards the fight against hate speech, police are always efficient. I fully trust the system. You can rest assured that police will do everything in their power, as they have been doing, to bring to justice the perpetrator of any crime, notably crimes motivated by hate or ethnic intolerance,” the minister said during a visit to the Zagreb Hospital for Infectious Diseases.
Bozinovic made the statement in the context of an incident that happened last week, when a group of football fans displayed in a Zagreb neighbourhood a banner which insulted and incited to ethnic violence against Serb women and children.
After a police investigation, six young men aged 19-22 were arrested. Detention was set for them to prevent them from repeating the crime after police filed a criminal complaint against them.
Asked what members of the national coronavirus crisis response team were doing now that restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the epidemic had been lifted and there were no new cases or were only one to two new cases per day, Bozinovic said the team operated as it had before.
“We are following the situation in our immediate neighbourhood, in Europe, in the Middle East and globally. We must remain cautious and responsible,” he said.
Bozinovic would not speculate about the epidemiological situation in the autumn.
