Do you remember the
Facebook group “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike
George Bush!“? The group easily attracted more than a million people with
Facebook members joining willingly and spreading the group’s popularity virally to all their
friends. It all looked like an innocent way to express one’s feelings about the
president of the
US but it looks like in some
countries such activity can be viewed as far from innocent and can even result in
arrest.
I have just heard that a man has been
arrested in
Croatia for creating a
Facebook group with a very similar name and a much less ambitious goal. A couple of month ago a guy, Niksa Klecak, created a group called “I bet I can find 5,000 people that hate the
Prime minister“.
The reason for this was in the
financial policy of the current
Croatia government along with its Prime minister. The thing is that in the recent months the
Croatian government headed by the Prime minister Ivo Sanader has been encouraging people in the country to spend less money to better cope with the recession and the world
financial crisis. The head of the country even said publicly that he would not allow the wages in the country to grow.
These ideas have not been popular among the people in the country, obviously, and they started protesting everywhere, including on
Facebook which happens to be the most popular
social network in
Croatia. Basically people said that the ministers should spend less money themselves instead of making people earn (and spend) less. There has even been created a dedicated group on
Facebook intended specifically to demonstrate the government that the ministers should learn to save
money and spend less, not the people of the country.
One of such acts of protest was the group created by Niksa Klecak which currently has over 7,000 people instead of the 5 thousand he wanted to bring in. But the main problem with it was that the guy was not just some regular citizen unhappy with his Prime minister and the financial ideas of the government - 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. And as a member of the political opposition his actions are obviously more noticeable - especially when he chooses a platform like
Facebook to make people hear what he wants to say and easily gets even more people to join him than he initially wanted.
But the result of this situation is simply outrageous as yesterday the guy was
arrested by the
police that claimed he kept some Nazi
symbols and propaganda at home. When they could not find any evidence, they claimed he had links to child
porn somewhere and that could be another reason for the
arrest. Eventually Niksa Klecak was let go by the
police for lack of evidence but the
social networks and the local
media outlets are all abuzz about these actions of the
police.
To people in
Croatia it seems obvious that the guy is persecuted for his loud protests against the government and the Prime minister. In fact, the situation even resulted in a new group created on
Facebook with its name translated like “Break into my place, you Gestapo wannabes.
Croatia isn’t a
police state!” where
Facebook users protest against the prosecution of people unhappy with the policy of the government and the recent measures.
But the most dangerous thing is that it already looks like a trend in
Croatia with a similar situation from a year ago involving a guy who posted
videos with the country’s politicians saying stupid things. And to me it obviously looks like the police in
Croatia have already learned how to track protesters online,
social networks like
Facebook included, and how to
arrest them for any number of dubious reasons only to make people stop complaining online. Honestly, I am not happy about watching
freedom of speech
violated in yet another
European country at all.
by
Svetlana Gladkova,
http://profy.com
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