Veritas President compares Croatian digital speech control to Iran

Savo Štrbac, president of the Documentation and Information Center ‘Veritas’, has drawn parallels between the judicial actions in Iran and recent legal proceedings in Croatia regarding digital speech.

Following the news that 23-year-old Iranian student Najmeh Amini was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy on social media, Štrbac argued that both systems treat digital spaces as physical public squares where privacy does not exist. He noted that while Iran operates as a theocracy under Sharia law and Croatia is an EU member state based on liberal values, the functional mechanisms of controlling public discourse are strikingly similar.

Štrbac specifically referenced the prosecution of Serbs in Croatia for social media posts, such as those glorifying Ratko Mladić or the former Republic of Serbian Krajina. He suggested that the methods used to monitor and penalize digital footprints in Croatia mirror the control mechanisms seen in Tehran.