Roughly a hundred people on Tuesday gathered in front of the headquarters of the Croatian Institute of Public Health (HZJZ) in Zagreb to protest against COVID-19 protocols and testing in schools, and an estimated 60 people protested in Split.

Similar protests with just a score of protesters were registered in Zadar and Rijeka.

During the rally in Zagreb, protesters carried banners with the messages “Stop Terror against Children!”, “No to COVID passes!”, “Stop to Uniformity!”, and the most vocal protesters criticised politicians, epidemiologists, educational workers and journalists.

The entrance to the HZJZ headquarters was guarded by riot police officers, while the protesters demanded a meeting with the HZJZ leadership to hand in their requests.  At the end of the protest, one of the representatives of the rally was let in the building to hand in their demands.

During the rally, Andrija Klaric, who also led anti-vaxxers’ protests in recent months, said that COVID certificates should be abolished as they were useless and he was also against the testing of healthy people, insisting that this would only be an irresponsible loss of money.

Marin Miletic of the parliamentary Opposition Bridge party, and MEP Ivan Vilibor Sincic of the non-parliamentary Human Shield party called via Facebook on opponents to the COVID certificate to hold rallies.

A Religion teacher, Ivan Pokupec, told the Zagreb rally that not enough protesters had gathered, adding that the opponents should continue fighting for their cause in a silent manner until more protesters could turn out at rallies.

In Split, about 60 opponents rallied outside the county headquarters to criticise the plan for weekly testing of school children for coronavirus.

They declined to give statements to the press and some of them only expressed anger at media outlets.