The Steering Committee of the BH Journalists Association strongly condemned the “political pressures” by the People and Justice (NiP) party leader, Elmedin Konakovic, on journalists and editors of the news portals Klix.ba and Istraga.ba, demanding that he stops publicly “calling out” journalists whose reporting he does not agree with.

The association said that, throughout the last two days, Konakovic published several comments on social networks in which he calls journalists “people of the regime”, alleges that they “spit fire”, that they lie, launched a “hunt” for him following articles published by Klix.ba and Istraga.ba on amendments to the Election Law of BiH, election results and plans of political parties for post-election coalitions.

“The Steering Committee of BH Journalists believes that such targeting of media outlets and journalists by the president of a political party is unacceptable, and represents open political pressure and an attempt to silence critical and analytical media reporting on decisions made by certain political parties,” the association said.

“In the last three years, political pressures on journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina via social networks have become more frequent, open and aggressive. We call on all politicians not to use this kind of communication with the media, because in that way they only further encourage hate speech in the comments of their sympathizers on social networks,” the statement said.