by ANA VRACAR
Croatia’s journalists’ union and professional association mobilized against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, condemning the targeted killing of Palestinian reporters.
“It is time to show that unions, as the most important force for workers, know how to take responsibility and take a stand when terrible crimes unfold before our eyes,” the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists (SNH) wrote in a call to action. Together with the Croatian Journalists’ Association (HND), SNH appealed to other labor groups and the wider public to join a protest on August 28 in response to the genocide in Gaza and the deliberate killing of more than 240 Palestinian reporters.
SNH union leader and current president of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Maja Sever, told Peoples Dispatch that the importance of media workers speaking out about the ongoing genocide cannot be overstated. “The first and simplest reason is that there is currently a genocide happening, and that is why media workers must speak out,” Sever explained. “They have a key role in shaping public opinion, and when mainstream media relativizes or silences the violence against Gaza’s civilian population – when they silence the genocide – there is a danger of normalizing the war and occupation. That, in turn, risks enabling the continuation of the genocide and the destruction of the Palestinian people. Silence or neutrality in this case truly amounts to participation in covering up the crime.”
The killing of Gaza’s media workers, SNH and HND warned, has dangerous implications for press freedom more broadly as well. “Their deaths send a dangerous message: that the truth must not be heard,” the two organizations added in their announcement. “By blocking access to Gaza for foreign journalists, the Israeli military is silencing freedom of expression and the public’s right to know. We are witnessing the literal silencing of voices of truth, of journalists – by starving them to death.”
Silence during a genocide: a moral and political disgrace
In recent months, journalists’ associations in Croatia, particularly their trade union, have organized initiatives denouncing the targeting of reporters in the Gaza Strip. Among them was a collaborative project with local artists, who produced dozens of portraits of journalists killed by Israeli occupation forces since October 7, 2023. During Thursday’s action, union members, artists, and cultural workers carried these prints in a march toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they reiterated demands for the Croatian government to act against the genocide.
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