Independent journalist Iva Anzulovic, who threw a bucketful of faeces at the entrance of the government building in Zagreb on Tuesday, said on Wednesday she would continue protesting in similar ways to warn about organised crime in Croatia, and to emphasise she was free to express her opinion.

The police must do their job, and it is the duty of the press to allow them to do it freely and make it impossible for someone to say “Do you know who you’re dealing with?” Anzulovic said at a press conference she held in front of the Croatian Journalists’ Association (HND) in Zagreb.

There are murderers, war profiteers and rapists walking our streets who have not been legally processed, she said, adding she did not mind spending 10 days, or even 10 or 20 years in prison because she was safer there than if she were free.

Anzulovic was escorted to a nearby police station after the incident on Tuesday, and released later that same day. She was sentenced to 10 days in prison with six months’ probation.

She said she wanted all the journalists in Croatia who wrote about crime without reporting it to be arrested.

When a reporter remarked that journalists in Croatia had faeces thrown at them as well, she said she did not want to compare her actions to anybody else’s, and that she was not inspired by anyone.

When asked if she thought she did the right thing yesterday, because she embarrassed the cleaning crew who had to clean up the faeces in front of the government building, as well as her colleagues, the reporters who were there doing their job, Anzulovic said that the cleaners would have better salaries if Croatia were an orderly country and there would be no need for her to act in that manner.

The fact that the cleaning lady had to carry a bucket with water back and forth ten times in order to clean the street is not as important as drawing attention to crime, she said.

She said it was important to point out that some 1,000 judges were fired, relocated, or sent to early retirement in 1990, in order to create conditions for crimes during the privatisation process. We need to face facts that there exists a large corruption network in Croatia, starting in judiciary and the State’s Attorney Office.

Judges of the Supreme and Constitutional Courts meet every month behind the penitentiary in Turopolje, in the town of Velika Gorica near Zagreb, to fix verdicts, she added.

Wearing a t-shirt with a picture of the late radio journalist Sinisa Glavasevic made famous by his wartime reports from inside the besieged eastern Croatian town of Vukovar during the 1991-95 war, Anzulovic put signs in front of the entrance to HND with logos of privatised Croatian companies and messages such as Arrest the Press.

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