Activist carrying cross arrives in Zagreb after 180 km trek

NEWS 05.04.201813:04
Patrik Macek/PIXSELL

Saša Pavlić, a 43-year-old activist who walked on foot some 180 kilometres carrying a wooden cross from Rijeka to Zagreb to protest the lack of funding for medicines for seriously ill children, arrived in the capital on Thursday.

Greeted and cheered on by a crowd of about a hundred supporters, Pavlić made it to Mark’s Square in Zagreb, flanked by the buildings of the parliament and the government.

Referring to politicians in those buildings, Pavlić said they were “divorced” from reality.
“We must know how to protect our children. What am I supposed to tell these people? We all know what they would say if they come out at all. They are divorced from the people, divorced from everything. Can’t we take care of about a hundred children and give them everything they need? This is an issue that concerns all of us, it is you who decides what you will read in the newspapers and on websites. Four million citizens will click on something pointless (today),” Pavlić told the crowd, which included families of seriously ill children.
Pavlić has spent several days travelling on foot from his home city of Rijeka to capital Zagreb, spurred into action after reading media reports about the government’s recent decision to spend 3 billion kuna (€404 million) to buy a squadron of used fighter jets from Israel, while at the same it said it couldn’t afford paying for treating some 40 children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

“The final straw for me was when I opened a newspaper and read that the government couldn’t afford medication for children, so it sends them to take part in a clinical study instead, with some of them not getting even that. And on the following page there was an article about the government spending 3 billion kuna on used airplanes. I think every person should be alarmed by this. I certainly was, and that (feeling) drove me to do what I did,” Pavlić told Index.hr on Wednesday.

Pavlić and several mothers who came with their ill children to support his protest were later invited inside the government building, where they were received by the ombudswoman for persons with disabilities.

(€1 = 7.43 kuna)

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