Death threats against CIVIL, campaign lasting for years, institutions silent

This morning, CIVIL received a call on its landline phone from a same person twice who didn’t want to introduce himself and who made death threats to the organization, which for two decades now has been promoting and defending human rights and freedoms, freedom of expression, the right to vote, social and workers’ rights.

In his anonymous call, the person who made the threat, among else, also said: “You will see when I destroy your life”. The call identifier on CIVIL’s telephone identified the mobile telephone number from which this person made the threat against the lives of the people of CIVIL.

CIVIL reported the case of vandalism in police station 1 (Beko), and the telephone threats on the telephone number 192, and also filed an appropriate report at the police station during the day.

This is not the first time that CIVIL has been a target of fierce attacks with hate speech, fake news and threats against lives. Last week, CIVIL’s office was vandalized, CIVIL’s sign was pushed to the ground and a shovel was put on top of it, while the front door was damaged.

After the April 27 events that took place in the Parliament in 2017, CIVIL’s office was broken into and computers, equipment and the electronic archive was stolen. The thieves probably didn’t know that the sensitive data is in a safe place and will never be discovered. Nevertheless, even though fingerprints and other evidence were taken from the scene, the case was never solved.

On the social networks, but also the media, officials of political parties, journalists, editors, directors of public institutions, and even a general, all close to the structures with an emphasized rightist ideology, are continuously carrying out a campaign with fake news and hate speech, and some of them also calling for violence and physical elimination of the head of CIVIL and of the organization itself.

The institutions, as well as civil society organizations, so far have not shown interest to warn them, prevent them or sanction these attacks that have been going on for over a decade.