Concern in Croatia over rising number of ‘racially motivated’ attacks

POLICE in Croatia last Saturday (9) said four men were arrested over a racially-motivated attack against foreign workers followed by three similar incidents that left one Nepali seriously injured.

Croatia is increasingly employing labourers from Nepal, India, the Philippines and elsewhere to fill thousands of jobs, mainly in construction and its key tourism sector on the Adriatic coast.

Police said last Saturday that the four people arrested, who are suspected of physically attacking a food-delivery worker in the coastal town of Split, were being investigated over a “hate crime”.

Late last Friday (8), a 41-yearold foreign national and one attacker sustained minor injuries, a police statement said.

The attack was immediately followed by three other incidents targeting foreign food-delivery workers, also in Split, in which one Nepali was seriously injured.

Another victim was Indian, while the nationalities of the other two were not disclosed.

Police said a search for the perpetrators was ongoing. The government condemned the incidents, calling them “shocking and disturbing” and vowed on social media “not to allow Croatia to become a country where violence and hatred towards foreign workers are normalised”.

“Foreign workers filled a segment in the labour market that we obviously could not,” prime minister Andrej Plenkovic told reporters, citing the construction and tourist sectors.

The European Union country of 3.8 million people is struggling to overcome chronic labour shortage as it faces mass emigration and a shrinking population.

Croatia in 2023 gave nearly 120,000 non-EU nationals work permits, 40 per cent more than the previous year. This year the figure will be surpassed, as nearly 150,000 work permits have so far been issued to non-EU nationals.

The number of attacks on foreign workers, notably those delivering food has been increasing, police in the capital Zagreb said earlier this year. In most cases, they were not racially-motivated but were robberies.