Sasa Lekovic

The head of the Croatian Journalists' Association, Sasa Lekovic, accused Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovuic of "avoiding giving citizens information", after her office said that all documents about her trip to Washington in January were "confidential".

The European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, said on Monday that it felt "deeply concerned by the increase of hate speech and direct threats towards journalists in Croatia while impunity remains rampant".

"An alert will be submitted to the platform of the Council of Europe for the protection of journalism and the safety of journalists," EFJ stated.

A well known journalist on cultural and social issues, Tatjana Gromaca, claims that her former employer, the Croatian leftist daily Novi List, has sacked her for opposing nationalism.

"The rationale for my resignation, that they don't need a correspondent from Istria [on the Croatian coast] is ridiculous," Gromaca told BIRN.

Around 200 journalists and activists joined a protest walk from the headquarters of the Croatian Journalists' Association, HND to the culture ministry in central Zagreb on World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday to raise concerns about the media situation in the country.

After Vice-Prime Minister Tomislav Karamarko accused Croatian Radio-Television of being "in the service of one party", effectively accusing it of showing opposition sympathies, some prominent journalists have expressed fears that he could be planning to purge editors and other staff at the public broadcaster to ensure favourable coverage for the government.

Veteran journalist Boris Pavelic was told on Wednesday that his contract with the Croatian daily Novi list will be cancelled.

Zeljko Peratovic, a well-known investigative journalist, was attacked in his home in a village near Karlovac in central Croatia on Thursday evening.

Peratovic said that while he was in front of his house, three men drove up and started to insult him about articles written on the illegal excavation of gravel.

Freelance investigative journalist Sasa Lekovic, who was elected on Saturday as the president of the association for the next four years, said that the biggest problems for the media in Croatia was the issue of integrity.

A court in Hameenlinna, Finland, on Monday fined and paroled two officials of the Finnish state-owned arms company Patria for bribing Croatian officials during a sale of armed vehicles in 2007.

Heikki Hulkkonen and Patria's former representative in Croatia, Reijo Niittynen, were given 20 months parole and a 297,000 euro fine each for offering a bribe of 1.6 million euro.