Source: Nova24tv.si
This past week, organised violent demonstrations echoed, last Thursday, with individual gangs of the criminal underworld destroying property, attacking police officers, seriously injuring one of the photojournalists and fighting each other at the scene. Calls for violent demonstrations were published on the social network by the Anonimus Slovenija group. This was then spread, the calls were made at least 14 days before, and the national TV Slovenia even broadcast the appearances of (organiser) Anis Ličina, who said: “Friday’s jingling is nothing, come on November 5th, then the matter will be serious.”
TV Slovenia is one of the media that has been constantly promoting violence against the government and closely following all unreported, illegal Friday rallies against it. Individuals from this national broadcaster do not even hide their hatred of the current government, even though they are trampling on all professional standards. After the violent demonstrations last Thursday, they published an article in the Tednik show on Monday, in which Anis Ličina also appeared as an interlocutor.
Ličina was presented only as a protester, he made fun of everyone without a protective mask, and when asked by a journalist why journalist teams were also beaten at the protest, Ličina answered: “I suggest if you are a journalist, you just have a vest, anything, marked with RTV and you will quickly avoid it.” Or else, in the violent protests we organise, we will not beat those who are ours and have vests with the RTV label, we will break others.
The reactions to Ličina’s performance and his statement were horrific, they were then forced to apologise on TV Slovenia, protecting the left-wing leader of Tednik, Jelena Aščić, and blaming the journalist: “The article was edited just before the show and time constraints caused a misunderstanding in the communication between the editor and the journalist who prepared the article,” they wrote in response to a question from the Siol.net portal. Those familiar with the situation state that this is a misleading explanation by the management of TV Slovenia, but the journalist had to insert Ličina into the article at the request of Aščić. The latter is also allegedly personally connected to Ličina, a well-known journalist and editor Vinko Vasle wrote on Twitter.
Interior Minister Aleš Hojs was also critical of the report in the Tednik show. He said on the day of the protests that the media bear part of the responsibility for what is happening in the country. He also pointed out that organised crime was behind the violent demonstrations in Ljubljana. In an interview with the newspaper Delo, when asked why he thinks so, he replied that he speaks on the basis of those who invited to the protests. “Among them was also Anis Ličina, who gave an interview for RTV Slovenia – I think this is scandalous – according to public announcements; it is known what proceedings the gentleman is in.”
Hojs revealed that the police began to monitor Ličina more intensively after he publicly called on television to come to Ljubljana on November 5th for “real” protests. “Then the police started to monitor him intensively and the director of the police told me that they also tried to contact him. Ličina told them that he was not in Slovenia, but in Greece, how he got there is not clear, probably from Belgrade. But when he came back, the police interviewed him,” Hojs explained.
Prosecutor to the police: Do not dream of bringing the protest organiser – Anis Ličina
The ministry is also working to make it a crime to call for protests and their organisation during the epidemic. Hojs explained this in the case of Ličina’s arrest, when the prosecutor allegedly told the police not to dream of bringing the protest organiser. “It is enough for the prosecutor to say that she will not prosecute him. When I was informed about this, I thought it would be right to write more clearly in the Criminal Code that this is also a crime,” Hojs said.
The Minister also revealed the conduct of one of the prosecutors. He did not give a name, but it was soon announced that it was Maja Ulčar, the district state prosecutor at the Ljubljana district prosecutor’s office. Experts then announced that Ulčar is supposedly a niece of lawyer Mitja Ulčar, a close friend of Franc Perčič, known as an adviser to former president Danilo Türk.
Ličina, the elite, criminals and drugs
Siol.net wrote that in the past, according to media reports, Ličina was allegedly involved in an international criminal group that traded with various drugs in Slovenia and Croatia, as well as around the world. Slovenian and Croatian police managed to break up the group earlier this year. About six years ago, Ličina found himself in court, as he was allegedly a member of a criminal group that smuggled people across the border.
Journalist Bojan Požar (pozareport.si) also wrote about the motives for the protests on his portal pozareport.si. In an article entitled “What do Sova and the Police know – criminals and the Ljubljana elite together at protests also because they are limping the drug business?!”, he wrote: “This means that well-known Ljubljana criminals who are protesting against Janša’s government are protesting because the government is collapsing their drug trafficking business, and the media-political protection they have proven to enjoy is – obviously – also a consequence of the fact that the “Ljubljana elite” is left without – drugs…?!”
Požar also states about Ličina that he has a rich criminal background. He was last arrested in February this year in a high-profile operation by Croatian and Slovenian police officers in the middle of Kamnik, where the police broke up an international association of drug traffickers. “TV Slovenia and also POP TV built him as a kind of protest star of the streets of Ljubljana through Friday’s protests, even in a media package with prominent opposition politicians, thus giving him legitimacy. At the same time, both televisions deliberately silenced his criminal background,” Požar added.
He also wrote that many acquaintances “correctly state that RTV Slovenia in this way puts itself in a similar role as played by the Serbian state television RTS in the time of Slobodan Milosević, where – for example – they promoted the infamous war criminal Arkan and other then “hard guys of Belgrade asphalt”. Požar also wrote that the resale of illicit substances during the covid-19 epidemic would further unite criminal cartels and part of Ljubljana’s elite, from the cultural to the political, especially within the transitional left. The former as traffickers, and the latter as consumers, consumers of drug trafficking, as the epidemic-related protective measures of the Janša government (curfew, boys can’t get out, etc.…) also started the drug trafficking business well. Let’s conclude with the thoughts of a Twitter user who wrote: “Whoever thinks that Ličina appears by chance in the footage on the national television and in the main reports, first as a cyclist, then as a terrorist, is incredibly naive.”