Domovina uredništvo
Croatia’s self-proclaimed, leftist (if not communist nostalgic), fact-checker Faktograf accuses others of posting inaccuracies when they themselves spread falsehoods and inaccuracies. The following text was received with a plea for help from Croatians living abroad in order to lobby for eradication of such biased approach to confusing and twisting the truth which, it is said, has the ability to influence public opinion. Hence, anyone wishing to join the lobby please note the contact details at the end of this text. Ina Vukic
“Due to the media lynching and illegal censuring and suppression of free speech the portal Promise.hr (abbreviation of PROMICANJE ISTINE or Promoting the Truth) has been subjected to by the portal Faktograf.hr (published by the NGO called GONG, which is financed by George Soros), we are forced to seek protection from all Croats and Croatian patriots who live outside of Croatia and who care about Croatian sovereignty and freedom and the continued existence of the independent state of Croatia.
The competent Croatian regulatory body (The Agency for Electronic Media – which by law is bound to protect freedom of the press and media pluralism) has not helped us even though we turned to them for help many times!
We are therefore turning to Croats outside of Croatia for help.
Overview of the situation:
For the past two months we have been subjected to continuous untruths and banning of our texts by the so called journalists at the Faktograf portal who present themselves as ‘independent controller of the veracity of information’, and who themselves write falsehoods about Promise.hr on Faktograf.hr and falsehoods about our interviewees, primarily Dr. Srecko Sladoljev, an eminent scientist, and Veteran of the Homeland War, Croatian patriot and prominent fighter for justice.
On 26th March 2020, Promise.hr published a text entitled ‘Dr. Sladoljev, Professor at Oxford University also claims: The majority of people recover from Covid-19 without any symptoms!’
Our text contained claims by the British FINANCIAL TIMES and described the results of scientific studies lead by Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University.
The Study claims that less than one person in a thousand infected with Covid-19 requires hospital treatment and a large majority has very mild or no symptoms! The same or similar data was presented by Dr. Srecko Sladoljev for Promise.hr but Faktograf.hr censured it on several occasions, accusing him and Promise.hr of spreading lies.
Faktograf.hr stigmatised Promise.hr on its front page and in numerous texts labelled us liars who publish falsehoods and spread lies but we only published the same thing that the reputable Financial Times published and the claims of scientists and epidemiologists from the prestige Oxford University!
They banned our articles, blocked our posts on Facebook, accused us of lying and in the same way they punished individuals who tried to share our articles on social media!
In the abovementioned article, we wrote: ‘It’s time to show who was right and the Croatian public has the right to be aware of various studies by prominent experts or shall the self-proclaimed censors in Zagreb also censor the British Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph and even a scientist from Oxford?!’
After this article was published, people from Faktograf.hr again, for who knows how many times, further reduced the reach of our posts on social media (Facebook), even though we simply carried an article from the FINANCIAL TIMES!
They previously did the same thing (blocked us on Facebook) and in addition they published articles in which they declared Dr. Sladoljev’s claims and the articles on Promise.hr as untruths and smeared and defamed the Promise.hr portal.
Faktograf is literally jeopardising our existence and livelihoods as well as those of many other independent Croatian portals. They censor all of them and ban articles which is why we ask you to please help us so that we can together stop this attempt to OCCUPY Croatia by foreign mercenaries who are prepared to destroy all human rights and freedoms in Croatia for Soros’ money and to take away media and every other sovereignty from the young Croatian state!
We note that Faktograf.hr is published by the NGO called GONG which is by no means objective and for which Prime Minister Plenkovic recently said is in reality an ‘extended arm’ of SDP’ (for which claim there exists firm evidence).
The following was leaked about GONG from Soros’ archives:
It is well known that among the documents that were hacked from the George Soros’ archives was a leaked report by GONG which they sent to the umbrella organisation ‘Open Society’ after the elections for European Parliament in which they write that they are satisfied with the results and they openly say which candidates they support and which they do not. They also provide a brief overview of the resumes of all of the Croatian Parliamentarians that entered into the European Parliament and give their assessment of them, praising some and criticising others.
In August 2016, our colleague Marcel Holjevac wrote an article about GONG, the publisher Faktograf, Platform 112 and the Centre for Peace Studies in which he mentions the documents that were hacked from Soros’ archives which make reference to the Soros Foundation, ‘left representatives’ Biljana Borzan, Tonino Picula, Jozo Radoš, Ivan Jakovcic and Davor Skrlec as ‘proven allies’.
However, they particularly negatively assessed the patriotic representatives Ruza Tomasic and Marijana Petir (verified by the documents).
‘The problem is that GONG presents itself as objective and the abovementioned documents evidence that it is in fact very biased. Moreover, the documents show that GONG is an organisation that works for foreign centres of power who realise their interests in Croatia through GONG.
Under normal circumstances which would not allow foreign factors with ulterior motives, to influence the results of elections and to tailor them at will, this should result in either banning GONG’s activities and especially banning them from monitoring elections because they are blatantly in a conflict of interest, or to cease financing non-government organisations with funds from foreign embassies and international organisations when the Republic of Croatia has not authorised such practices or financing, each one separately.
Namely, an organisation whose activities are ‘monitoring elections’ cannot at the same time support ‘centre left parties’ which is apparently one of the essential tasks of organisations that work under the Soros hat’, wrote Holjevac in 2016.’
For the same reason, GONG should not be given a permit to publish a portal which granted itself authority to undertake censorship and suppress freedom of speech in Croatia!
I therefore ask that together we try to protect freedom of speech in Croatia from the self-appointed censors and spreaders of fake news who are financed by foreign centres of power.
How Dragan Zelic, for GONG Director was exposed:
The following is part of a text that appeared in an article on Promise.hr in which we exposed Dragan Zelic, the former long-time Director of GONG who pretended to be objective but in fact worked for the leftist (former communist party), and it was subsequently revealed that:
This is what Dragan Zelic, the then Executive Director of GONG, stated in 2011 when HDZ was in power:
‘Inflated electoral rolls serve as election fraud. Once again, it will be possible at certain polling stations when they are not busy, for somebody to just slip ballot papers from fictious voters into the ballot box and rig the elections in that way.’
Four years later, when Zoran Milanovic was in power, the author of this text, again approached Zelic on the same topic, asking him about inflated electoral rolls because the situation had not significantly changed in the meantime.
The same Zelic from GONG, who four years earlier fiercely went on about fake electoral rolls that serve electoral fraud, suddenly started singing a different tune. He no longer mentioned inflated electoral rolls nor election fraud but rather explained that suddenly, everything was purportedly better and more transparent even though almost nothing had been significantly changed!
‘There is a great deal of misunderstanding in the public in relation to the electoral roll as they are often compared to the population figures which is comparing apples and oranges because, eg. a person who does not have residence in Croatia and lives in Mostar or Belgrade and is a Croatian citizen will be registered on the electoral roll but will not show up in the census that was done in Croatia….”, Zelic responded at that time, attempting to justify Milanovic’s government and the former SDP Minister of Public Administration, Bauk, for doing nothing or the fact that the electoral rolls remained inflated with several hundred thousand excess voters remaining on the roll during their term in office.
It was not clear to the author of this text why Zelic completely changed his position even though nothing significantly changed in relation to the excess voters. However, after hackers got into George Soros’ database and published the information that they found there, it became much clearer as to why Zelic from GONG was not an objective interviewee and why he could not and cannot be equally critically towards the liberal Milanovic government as he is towards the HDZ government (it is interesting to note that Zelic of GONG later joined the SDP!).
It would be interesting for the Croatian public to know that, by all accounts, Soros financed GONG’s videos, as revealed by the hackers.
‘They co-financed a campaign to raise the public’s awareness of the importance of voting in the EU Parliamentary Elections and supported the activities around Partnership for Open Government which governments in Croatia and other countries promoted for better regulating the transparency of non-profit organisations’, said Jelena Berkovic of GONG.
However, a political scientist at the Institute for European and Globalization Studies warns that all those who finance someone expect something in return.
‘The operations of GONG and other civil society organisations serve the development of civil society but on the other hand, they serve to maintain the liberal left orientated order’, said Dr. Andelko Milardovic of the Institute for European and Globalization Studies in Split.
It should be noted that during the nineties, Soros financed many more projects and media in Croatia, especially those that opposed Franjo Tudman and HDZ’, which I published on Promise.hr in August 2016.
Falsehoods that Faktograf Stated about Articles on Promise.hr:
I have set out hereunder short texts that were published on Promise.hr in which we have detailed the falsehoods that Faktograf.hr is spreading about us:
‘In the last few weeks, Faktograf journalists have three times put a notice on our texts on social media saying ‘Inaccurate information, verified by Faktograf’ all of which concern the viewpoints and claims by Croatian immunologist, Dr. Srecko Sladoljev.’
‘After an article entitled ‘They are misleading you, Corona is just a harmless flu-like illness…’ was published on 26th February 2020 in which we quoted immunologist Dr. Srecko Sladoljev, a notice appeared on social media a few weeks ago saying: ‘The partially inaccurate information was checked by Faktograf’.
They also claimed as inaccurate that ‘a vaccine against the Corona Virus existed before the illness itself’, even though this is not what it says in the text and Sladoljev does not claim this at all. Dr. Sladoljev latter commented as follows: ‘Whoever read the article and the retraction will have seen that the ‘faktografs’ retracted their own retraction’.
On Thursday, 12th March 2020 they again proclaimed that Dr. Sladoljev’s claims in his interview for Promise.hr were lies.
The whole text in which Faktograf explains why they declared Dr. Sladoljev’s claims and the article in Promise.hr as untrue is itself full of untruths and twisted facts.
Faktograf writes that ‘Sladoljev without any evidence whatsoever and in complete contradiction to the views of national and international health organisations claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the ‘common cold’.
The truth is completely different. Nowhere in his interview for Promise.hr does Sladoljev say that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold but that COVID-19 merely compares it with the flu and says that it is no more dangerous than the flu but not that it is no more dangerous than the ‘common cold’, which is an important difference.
They further falsely claim that in recent years Dr. Srecko Sladoljev has become one of the most notable opponents of vaccines. In the documentary film ‘Ask freely’, which was supposed to have been shown these days at Zagreb DOX (cancelled due to the Corona Virus) and which trailer can be found on the internet, Sladoljev says: ‘I cannot say anything against vaccinations or vaccines. Vaccinations yes, but if this is done in a functionally and physiologically acceptable manner.’
It has been repeatedly mentioned in the documentary, ‘Ask freely’ that it tracks the Croatian immunologist who ‘advocates a different from of administering vaccines!’ Therefore, a different form of vaccination and not a ban on vaccinations, which is an important difference.
Faktograf.hr also twists the facts in the article claiming that Dr. Sladoljev and Promise.hr ‘support their inaccurate claims with a false video’.
They themselves write that the video is not false. However, they add the following ‘Even though many condemned the police brutality in this case, there is no evidence whatsoever that the woman was killed or died. Moreover, all of the information shows that after she regained consciousness, she was moved to safety’.
By all accounts, they insinuate that Sladoljev and the portal Promise.hr falsely stated that the woman in the video was killed, even though it does not say this anywhere in our text.
Nowhere did we claim that the woman was killed as they allege.
We quote the part of the interview that is apparently at issue:
We asked Dr. Sladoljev the following question ‘Is it accurate that the police killed a girl at the police blockade that was set up because of the Corona Virus’. We asked Dr. Sladoljev whether she was killed but we did not claim that she was killed.
“I am sending you a video and you can draw your own conclusions. In my view, she came to grief because of the ‘experts’ and bureaucrats at the Head of WHO and who are responsible for this madness”, replied Sladoljev, and we added in brackets: ‘the video shows the police forcefully pulling a petite young woman from her car, she is crying and squealing but they are all the more rougher. The women eventually remains helplessly lying on the road, surrounded by 6-7 police who have yellow jackets with the word ‘police’ inscribe on them as well as writing in Chinese (or Korean)’.
Therefore, nowhere do either the Promise.hr journalist or Sladoljev say that the woman was killed but they merely describe the contents of the video and the fact that she remained lying down (it does not say that she died, this is insinuated by Faktograf.hr).
The link to the abovementioned defamatory article published on Faktogaf.hr portal: http://promise.hr/medijski-mobbing-faktograf-optuzuje-druge-za-objavljivanje-netocnosti-a-sam-podmece-i-siri-neistine/
Conclusion: We are seeking cancellation of Faktograf’s concession for publication
We propose that we lobby together in order to put maximum pressure and to ask the Croatian institutions to terminate GONG’s concessions or licence for publishing a news portal and to ban Faktograf.hr.
In the hope that you shall take consider our arguments we remain,
Yours sincerely,
Damir Kramaric, Chief Editor of the portal Promise.hr”
Mobile Telephone No. +385 95-563-6284
email: dkramaric65@gmail.com, redakcija@promise.hr
