Following the actions of U.S. Facebook users isn’t a good idea in other countries, especially Croatia. Niksa Klecak, a Croatian Facebook user decided to create a group protesting the country’s Prime Minister, Ivo Sanader, after seeing the group, “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush!” surpass 1 million users.
Klecak’s group, “I bet I can find 5,000 people that hate the Prime minister” has already surpassed its target size. I doubt Klecak will be updating the title of the group anytime soon though as Svetlana Gladkova reports that he has since been arrested. Prime Minister Sanader has been under extreme pressure as a direct result of the global financial crisis. According to Gladkova, he has even stated “publicly that he would not allow the wages in the country to grow.”
Croatia currently has over 400,000 users on Facebook and that is more than a 15 percent growth over last month according to our own internal statistics. Facebook tends to be one of the first locations that younger generations turn to for expressing their political frustrations. There is no doubt that Facebook will continue to be a center for political expression.
Svetlana Gladkova suggests that the primary reason he was arrested was not simply that he created the Facebook group but that, “he is actually the president of one of the local branches of the youth of SDP (social democratic party) which is in opposition to the government in Croatia.” Niksa Klecak was eventually released due to a lack of evidence after being initially arrested for keeping “Nazi symbols and propaganda at home.”
I’m a little confused as to why that is illegal but perhaps part of this story has been lost in translation. Initially I was confused about why it was illegal but commenters have since reminded me about certain laws in Europe banning Nazi paraphernalia. I’m sure we’ll here more about it in the coming days. Regardless of what exactly took place, it’s clear that there is tension between citizens of Croatia and the government based on activities taking place on Facebook. This tension has erupted in other countries around the world as Facebook has become an effective tool for spreading Democratic ideals and individual freedom.
Image from America.gov.
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The law likely refers to the Ustaše, a political & military organization that lead an “independent” Croatia, under the auspices of Nazi Germany, during the Second World War. I suspect it is similar to existing laws in Germany regarding Nazi paraphernalia.
Comment by Chris — November 30, 2008 @ 9:37 am
Chris is right, Nazi symbols and propaganda is banned pretty much throughout entire Europe, but like the article mentions, that's not the reason for his arrest. Dirty politics and hidden agendas is what's beed dominating Croatian politics in the last few years, but they need to mask it somehow, since they are still trying to get accepted in EU.
Comment by Bojan — November 30, 2008 @ 10:32 am
Well… just a quick update; chef of police has announced today that police has raised criminal charges against creator of facebook group “Break into my place, you Gestapo wannabes. Croatia isn’t a police state!” Reasons? Same as before… “glorifying” of fascism….. Please… if someone can, spread word around about his!
Comment by kalipso — December 1, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
The point here was that the Nazi symbols were used as satire. It wasn't like the man was supporting nazis or ustase. He used it to show his dislike for the prime minister and compared him to nazis. There is a big difference between satire and actually supporting nazis.
The prime minister even said "There is no satire with nazi symbols" I wonder if he ever watched The Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin.
Comment by Dave — December 3, 2008 @ 5:02 am
Dave is right. I can tell you that because I'm from Croatia. And don't think this is place like Afganistan or so, but we've got prime minister (Sanader) who is targeting to set his own cult (he's ruling under somewhat autocratic manners, although you still have freedom of speech – you can lose your job because of it; fortunately, we still got right to protest). every minister is his puppet. you can tell it whoever you want.
P.S. Chaplin's ''Great Dictator'' uses two crosses instead of nazi cross
Comment by Luka — December 4, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
[...] week I wrote about a Croatian Facebook user who was jailed after creating a group called “I bet I can find 5,000 people that hate the Prime [...]
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