Interior Ministry spokesman Krunoslav Borovec held a press conference in Split on Monday following rioting at the city's first Gay Pride parade on Saturday. He said that it was the best guarded gay rights march in Croatia to date and that the police and Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko condemned "any form of violence, hatred and intolerance."
Borovec said that the police, having learned from Saturday's experience, would provide even tighter security at the next parade, due in Zagreb on Saturday. He said that organisers always found fault with the police "regardless of the outcome."
"If a public gathering passes without incident, everyone says there were too many police, and when an incident occurs, organisers say that the police did not do enough to protect them. The impression is that the police are condemned in advance to a negative rating," Borovec said.
Borovec said that the cooperation between the Ministry and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community was never better, adding that before the Split parade as many as 250 police officers had undergone special training in cooperation with members of the LGBT community.
Speaking of security, he said that 688 police officers were deployed in Split on Saturday, including 460 riot police, and the fact that 137 rioters had been brought in indicated that the police were doing their job. He noted that of the 137 rioters arrested, 55 had a previous police record and 20 were football hooligans.
He said that the police were now watching footage and photographs of the parade to identify the rioters and that offences committed against the parade participants would be treated as hate crime. "Our next task is to identify the rioters and punish them appropriately, and a hate crime carries a sentence of between three months and three years."
Borovec said that the Ministry believed that calls for the resignation of Minister Karamarko were not the result of the incidents at the parade, but were politically motivated. He stressed that Karamarko was not going to resign.
When asked how the police would deal with a group that had used the on-line social network Facebook to spread hatred of the LGBT community, Borovec said they would need international assistance because the server was based abroad. The group was closed on Monday morning.
On Monday evening, the Split Municipal Prosecutor's Office formally asked the Split-Dalmatia County Police Department to carry out a criminal investigation of the violence at Saturday's Gay Pride parade.
According to earlier police reports, eight people were injured when anti-parade demonstrators hurled stones, bottles and other objects at the parade participants.
