Zehida Bihorac
Season 2, Episode 9: Watched and Monitored: Protecting HRDs from Surveillance
Listen to this episode on:
Zehida Bihorac is an elementary school teacher and human rights defender from the Una-Sana Canton, located at the EU-border between Bosnia and Croatia. In 2018, she began to provide medicine, clothes, food and sleeping bags to the neglected refugee camps in and around her hometown Velika-Kladusa. In June 2020, she gave a speech in front of the Austrian parliament to report human rights abuses against refugees at the border and the backlash that volunteers face from the police and local residents.
Human rights defenders and journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina face threats and harassment from local authorities and hostility from the general public. Judicial harassment, trumped up charges, smear campaigns followed by anonymous online threats, hate speech and threatening phone calls are often used by the authorities and non-state actors to intimidate human rights defenders and to undermine their peaceful and legitimate work.
