The Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (HHO) on Monday called on the government, media, political groups and citizens to advocate prevention rather than repression in the fight against the spread of Covid-19 as 'repression restricts human rights.'

“Even the minimal restriction of human rights creates room for the weakening of adopted democratic standards and the strengthening of authoritarian models of governance,” the NGO said in a press release.

Possible restrictions of human rights, such as restrictions on free movement, regardless of how necessary they are, cause many dilemmas and protests in part of the public, the HHO says.

The Constitutional Court has for now legitimised the work of the national Covid-19 response team but the question poses itself what the actual effect of the latest restrictions will be and whether some of them should nonetheless be confirmed by the parliament, the HHO says.

It says that there is well-grounded concern that governments in some countries could make vaccination against Covid-19 compulsory for all its citizens, about which debates have started in Croatia as well.

“Regardless of the good intentions of the proponents of that idea, the HHO believes that it significantly encroacheson individual freedoms and basic human rights,” the HHO says, noting that it advocates voluntary vaccination.