Croatian Activists Condemn Media Reporting On Migrants

More than 700 organisations, individuals, journalists and public figures in Croatia have signed an open letter on Thursday, criticising the media's "one-sided, simplified and ultimately dishonest and unfair reporting" about migrants and refugees.

Ivana Peric, editor of the H-alter website, one of the signatories, told BIRN that the media were overwhelmed by fake news about refugees.

He accused numerous media of violating professional standards with reports that were often one-sided.

"Our society is dominated by fear, resulting from insecurity, economic subjugation and a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness, and this fear is being instrumentalized politically, with the help of the media, in a disastrous way; it is turning into weapons against refugees and migrants, who are already disempowered and marginalized people," he said.

Peric said right-wing forces were thriving on the fear, and were using the recent migrant protests on the Velika Kladusa-Maljevac Bosnia-Croatia border crossing - and the dispute over the UN "Marrakesh Declaration" on migration collaboration.

The so-called Marrakesh Political Declaration on migration collaboration, signed by 31 European and 26 African countries on May 2 as part of the Rabat Process of Euro-African Dialogue on Migration, pronounces migration a positive thing, stressing the beneficial idea of migration of certain groups.

Croatia's President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic abandoned attending the inter-governmental conference on the declaration, however - which drew claims that she was pandering to the right, which opposes it.

Bruna Esih, MP and president of the Independent for Croatia party, to which the well-known right-wing politician Zlatko Hasanbegovic also belongs, told N1...