On January 20, 2025, a post was published on the Facebook page of Homeland Movement MP Stipo Mlinarić Ćipe, claiming that Serbs in Croatia allegedly hide automatic weapons in their homes and freely fire them when celebrating.

In his post (available here), Mlinarić attempted to justify a shooting incident involving his party colleague Josip Dabro. A video surfaced showing Dabro firing an entire magazine of bullets from the passenger seat of a moving car, which led to his dismissal as Minister of Agriculture in the government of their coalition partner, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.

Defending Josip Dabra, Mlinarić chose to shift the focus to Serbs:

„Croats don’t need an enemy from the outside. We are enough on our own. Here we go again. When a Croat commits even the slightest offense, we immediately jump on him. Crucify him, lynch him! And what about those who have been running wild for years, threatening, and shooting as if the war ended just yesterday? We leave them alone. Will I live to see the day when someone in the media dares to publicly ask – why do Serbs in those villages have automatic weapons? Where do they get them from? How many are there? The answer is obvious. They once had five times more weapons than Croats, and today that ratio is surely even worse. Rifles have been replaced by machine guns, and hardly any house is without an arsenal. And then what? Nothing. Silence.“

The claim that Serbian households in Croatia are hiding arsenals of automatic weapons, which Serbs allegedly take out of their closets and fire in bursts while intelligence services, the police, journalists, politicians, and the entire public turn a blind eye, was not supported by any examples or data by the MP. He did not report it to the police, nor did he provide any evidence to back up this claim. Instead, he continued the post with anti-Serbian rhetoric:

“For years, bursts of automatic gunfire have echoed through Serbian villages – for weddings, Christmas, Easter. In front of churches, on the streets, publicly, in front of cameras! And nothing happens. It seems the laws do not apply to them. But when a Croat fires a single shot from a pistol outside a populated area, it’s immediately considered a threat to national security.”

The controversial post, filled with insinuations, ends with Mlinarić calling on his coalition partners and urging the government to “make a shift in that area.”

“It’s time for questions, answers, and justice – for everyone,” Mlinarić stated.

The post received over 1,500 reactions, more than 1,000 comments, and was shared 87 times.

A Problematic Photograph

The absence of any evidence to support these accusations, along with the targeting of Serbs in Croatia, was illustrated by Mlinarić using a highly problematic photo.

The same photo had already been the subject of debate in the Croatian public during the summer of 2020 when it was published on the HOP portal on August 4, the day before the celebration of Operation Storm in Knin (available here, archived here). The photo shows three young women wearing caps with cockades. A nationalist campaign was launched on social media at the time against the then-MP Anja Šimpraga from the Independent Serbian Democratic Party, as it was claimed that she was one of the girls in the photo. Although the original post did not explicitly state that Šimpraga was in the picture, haters on social media “recognized” her, launching a defamation campaign against her.

The chain reactions on social media and in the media continued until Vukoslava Krulj, a nurse from Subotica, contacted the Indeks portal, revealing that she was the girl on the right in the picture.

“I was in high school in Subotica, this was taken in 2012 after some concert, I think it was Baja Mali Knindža. And I have nothing to do with your MP,” Krulj stated at the time for Indeks (available here, archived here).

The same photo was also discussed by the portal Faktograf in the article “No, this is not MP Anja Šimpraga from SDSS,” concluding that her association with Šimpraga was unfounded.

The photos from the event when the controversial footage was recorded, which took place on December 14, 2012, in a club in Subotica, are still available on the Subotica.info portal (here), where, based on the people in the pictures and the background of the controversial footage, it can be seen that it is the same evening.

Out of Context

Social media platforms provide fertile ground for the spread of disinformative and manipulative content, including montages, photoshopped images, and manipulated videos. However, even authentic photos taken out of context and manipulatively presented are also a means by which the public is misled.

This is precisely the case with the photo used in the post by MP Stipo Mlinarić, whose unfounded claims are a separate issue, presented out of context. Although the image was posted without a description, i.e., it does not claim who is in the photo, thanks to numerous media posts and discussions from 2020, the photo has remained in the public space associated with Anja Šimpraga, who is still an MP representing the Serbian community in Croatia.

Thus, the photo that has been circulated again does not feature Anja Šimpraga, who refuted this claim back in 2020. Furthermore, the photo was not even taken in Croatia, and it does not reflect the context implied in Mlinarić’s post. Its use beneath that post represents manipulation and deliberate distortion of the context, which, along with targeting the Serbian community, heightens tensions and intolerance, worsening interethnic relations in society.

 

 

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This post is also available in: Hrvatski