The reason is their position regarding yesterday’s dramatic events at the war crimes tribunal.
Goran Beus Richembergh, the Member of Parliament and member of GLAS, a liberal political party founded after a split in HNS, has received death threats for his decision not to support an official statement by the Parliament to reject yesterday’s verdict of the Hague Tribunal, which found six Bosnian Croats guilty of war crimes and determined that Croatia took part in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. The verdict was followed by a dramatic suicide in the courtroom by Slobodan Praljak, one of the defendants, reports N1 on November 30, 2017.
Richembergh posted on his Facebook profile a screenshot of a conversation in which an unnamed person had announced that he would kill him and his family. The man also sent him a picture of a gun and threatened his wife would be killed first.
“When you receive specific threats directed against you and your family members, when you receive photos of a revolver, when they tell you they have a bullet for you, I’m still not afraid, because those who threaten in such a way mostly just talk. However, I’ve informed the police about this. All political officials should do this because we are talking about a criminal offence and we are obliged to report such things to the police. The police have been forwarded everything which includes open threats, and they should determine how serious the threats are. Unfortunately, you get used to a whole range of primitive insults, which come as part of the job. When you are active in public affairs, you have to be aware that not everybody will like the way you talk and what you stand for. Some people will voice their opposition in a nice and perhaps constructive way, while others will do it in the most primitive way possible,” Beus Richembergh wrote. Asked whether he would demand police protection, he said, “There is no need, I am protected by common sense.”
Vesna Pusić, former Foreign Minister and also a member of GLAS, has also received threats. The first message said she would be slaughtered. Pusić sent a reply that she considered that a threat and that she had informed the police about it.
The person replied that they did not care because they were not in Croatia anyway. “You traitor, I know you will not report me since you receive such threats every day,” Pusić informed the person that the police in Germany are even more efficient than they are in Croatia, which apparently scared the person.
“I am sorry, I was angry. This will not happen again. Please, forgive me”, wrote Pusić’s previously much braver interlocutor.
Translated from N1.
