Rumours about rapes and even wild duck hunting are spreading in Bosnian border regions.
Ever since refugees and migrants started arriving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, false news and rumours began to appear, trying to incriminate, dehumanize, defame, and in many other ways negatively contextualize the refugees, writes the Klix.ba website, citing a recent example of a news report about an Afghan refugee who entered an apartment in Bihać, near the border with Croatia, and tried to rape a 36-year-old woman, mother of two children. However, this information has been denied by the Ministry of Interior, stating that the police had not received any rape attempt report, reports Index.hr on July 28, 2018.
Furthermore, there are reports that migrants are hunting wild ducks from the Una river and grill them, but no one has provided any evidence of it. There is also no evidence of many refugees being criminals, as they are often represented. The latest fake news is that, after a massive fight between migrants in Velika Kladuša, one person died due to the injuries sustained. This has also been denied by the Ministry of the Interior. “One migrant died in Bihać yesterday, but he was a patient who was in the hospital for a few days and did not participate in the fight,” said a police representative.
NGOs also describe a campaign “which some media in Bosnia and Herzegovina are conducting against refugees and migrants from the Middle East.” They cite examples of “alleged” estimates that there are tens of thousands of migrants in the area and that there are 50,000 people waiting to enter Bosnia, as well as that the majority of them are ISIL members. Some media also publish untrue claims about a high crime rate among refugees and migrants. The police officials have confirmed that not only that the crime rate did not increase, but the number of criminal offenses was actually lower compared to the same period last year.
“Of course, they are doing this intentionally, because it is quite difficult to accidentally publish stories without any evidence that will later be challenged by all relevant institutions, and it is particularly difficult to do it several times in a row. That creates negative emotions among people and poses a potential danger. It is possible there are hidden political motives in the background, but I still cannot grasp or justify such irresponsibility and endangering the collective sense of security,” said Adis Nadarević, freelance author, columnist and public relations advisor.
“Those who do it because of clicks and profits do not have political backgrounds. These are mostly anonymous obscure websites whose only goal is to bring in as many readers as possible and they do not care about ethical and moral principles. The other reasons are of political nature, with certain websites being linked to political power centres. Such websites usually follow what leaders of political parties are saying,” said news editor Emir Zulejhić.
Translated from Index.hr.
