STA, 10 May 2020 - In the wake of an anti-government rally that saw several thousand people take to the streets across the country on their bicycles on Friday, a photo of a protestor taking a photo with a police officer has raised a lot of dust. The officer became a target of online criticism, prompting a police trade union to issue a letter of support.
"The pogrom that came from the ranks of certain politicians and even government ministers is highly offensive toward all of Slovenia's 8,000 police employees," the Police Trade Union (SPS), one of the two in Slovenia, said in an open letter of support.
On Saturday Cohesion Minister Zvonko Černač tweeted "Such officers make up less than a 1% of the police force. They are an insult to thousands of their colleagues. Therefore they need to be removed of their masks and should switch from riding motorbikes, paid by the taxpayer, to bikes."
Trade union head Kristjan Mlekuš underlined in the letter that police officers at rallies are always devoted to their fundamental mission and that their top priority is for the protestors and themselves to return home safely.
Lepo je to videt. @policija_si ???? pic.twitter.com/rhAnrfwS9Y
— Matej Špehar (@MatejSpehar) May 8, 2020
"The police officer who has been target of discreditations acted in the given moment according to his strategic consideration and clearly showed the crowd with his action that his job was to ensure their safety," the union said.
Sometimes, in tense situations, police officers must react to provocations with a smile and not make the situation worse. "And police officers are capable of this because we do our jobs without bias, with dedication and professionally."
The union said police officers will not be discredited for doing their job professionally and commended the officer in question as well as all other who worked at the rallies for a job well done.
Prime Minister Janez Janša responded to the trade union's letter, tweeting that Slovenia was the only country in the world where a police trade union is fighting against measures to make police officers' life easier and supported violations of the infectious diseases act.
Meanwhile, the other police trade union also expressed support for the police officer smiling for the selfie. "Politicians should deal with politics, and leave public order and peace and internal security to us," the union said on its web site.
The photo and reactions to it has stirred a variety of responses, among them by former Prime Minister Marjan Šarec, who expressed support for the officer. The police officers' "job is hard enough without threats from minister."
The protests themselves were also criticised by the ruling coalition. Janša indicated on Friday that they had been orchestrated by the "extreme left", sharing a photo of Social Democrats (SD) members at the protests and a photo of a man waving the Yugoslavian flag at the Maribor rally.
MEP and member of the SD Tanja Fajon tweeted in response that "this was not a protest of the extreme left, but a peaceful protest of the civil society across the entire Slovenia against a populist right-wing government".
Janša also said on Saturday that if the coronavirus epidemic measures imposed by the government had been bad "the caviar socialists would not have been able to ride their bikes yesterday. They would have been in hospital, quarantine or self-isolations."
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Matej Tonin tweeted that the message of the protestors must be taken seriously and that the society must do its best to preserve democracy and develop it through dialogue and within democratic institutions.
Tonin also tweeted that he perceived the protests as a reflection of people being tired of limitations and fearing for their future.
Tonin later deleted the tweet, saying in a Facebook post on Saturday that he had done that after realising that a part of the opposition abused the protests and incited with false arguments.
The police have meanwhile said that 23 warnings had been issued at the protests, which were staged despite a ban on public gathering still in place in Slovenia.
It forwarded 49 reports to the National Institute for Public Health (NIJZ), the body with powers to impose fines for the violations of relevant health legislation. Moreover, the police also initiated three misdemeanour charges for public order violation.
Rallies were staged in many towns across the country, the biggest in Ljubljana, where some 5,500 people rode their bikes around the city centre, according to police estimates.
