Authorities urged to react to letter threatening woman reporter

Banje received the letter, which bore her hand-written name, shortly after midday on Sunday, 5 July. “You are as poisonous as a snake and you will end up like Curuvija,” the letter said, referring to Slavko Curuvija, a Serbian journalist who was gunned down outside his Belgrade home by two masked men in April 1999. She immediately reported the threatening letter to the police but says she has no idea who wrote it. “We firmly condemn this threat and we remind the Croatian authorities that that have a duty to guarantee the safety of journalists,” Reporters Without Borders editor in chief Virginie Dangles said. “The authorities must carry out a thorough investigation in order to identify those responsible for this intimidatory message and bring them to justice. Combatting impunity is the only way to put a stop to threats and attacks against journalists in Croatia.” Reporters Without Borders deplores the climate of violence in which journalist have been working for the past few months in Croatia. Zeljko Peratovic, an investigative journalist who is the Reporters Without Borders correspondent in Croatia, was attacked and beaten outside his home on 28 May. An effigy of journalist Ante Tomic was publicly burned in a town square in February. Croatia is ranked 58th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.