Bloggers Doubt Police Monitors Groups Promoting Totalitarian Ideologies on Internet
- I felt horrible while they searched my apartment. When they took two laptop computers and a cell phone, I demanded that they are sealed. They looked for USB sticks, CDs, `proof`, believing that I was connected with the Facebook group that posted a photo of prime minister Ivo Sanader with fascist insignia – says Klečak. The internet portal Net.hr comments that, on first sight, the police acted within its prerogatives and followed the law that forbids use and promotion of fascist symbols and messages, but doubts the intends were honest because of the existence of dozens of internet groups that glorify the Ustaše (Croatian fascist movement during WWII responsible of some horrific war crimes) and nazism. A group of internet activists and bloggers sent a letter to the Office of the Director of Police Krunoslav Borovec asking for sanctions against Ustaša groups on Facebook. They asked why there is no police reaction, although the authors of such groups don`t even try to hide their identities. Unlike Klečko`s group that gathers together Sanader-haters, such groups directly promote and glorify nazism. - We believe that should suffice for urgent action and send investigators to ransack their homes, confiscate computers and detain them for questioning, - says the blogger CNN Blob, calling the police to action and presenting it with a list of links and full names of the authors. DSP President Zoran Milanović says this whole case is a dangerous precedent and attack on freedom of expression and opinion, adding that such a presentation of the prime minister in nazi uniform may be in bad taste and ultimately wrong, but is not forbidden and is a form of satire. Sanader, on the other hand, condemned the practice of use of internet and freedom of speech for, in his view, `glorification of totalitarian and fascist ideologies`, adding that `toying with swastikas is a mockery of Croatian democracy`. |
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