Thousands protest in Croatia to demand government clean up toxic waste

Demonstrators in Zagreb accuse Croatia’s government of dragging its feet on a hazardous waste scandal.

Thousands protest the delayed cleanup of illegally dumped hazardous waste in Croatia's Lika region, in Zagreb, Croatia, on September 5, 2026 [Borut Zivulovic/Reuters]

Tens of thousands of protesters have marched through the Croatian capital demanding the government urgently clear a vast illegal dump of hazardous waste that residents say is poisoning a once-pristine mountain region.

Saturday’s demonstration in Zagreb was one of the largest protests Croatia has seen in years, driven by growing frustration that authorities have spent months failing to remove more than 30,000 tonnes of waste, including medical and industrial material, buried near the town of Gospic in the mountainous Lika region.

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The anger has widened into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s conservative government, which opponents accuse of corruption and of covering up the pollution’s true scale.

Police and Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, arrested 13 people in February over the illegal importing and dumping of the waste, brought in from elsewhere in the bloc since 2023.

Investigators said the scheme earned suspects more than $4m before it was uncovered at an abandoned industrial site outside Gospic.

Plenkovic visited the site last week and said his government had chosen a contractor to begin removing the waste, the first phase of a promised cleanup.

Croatian officials have also said soil and water tests around Gospic have not shown contamination, a claim that clashes with an assessment published last month by Croatia’s anticorruption agency, which found elevated metal levels in the soil and detected PFAS chemicals, known as “forever chemicals” for how long they persist, in nearby groundwater.

Protesters in Zagreb warn of risks to groundwater and public health [Borut Zivulovic/Reuters]

‘Not a tragedy, a crime’

That gap between the government’s assurances and the pollution findings is what brought crowds into Zagreb’s main square on Saturday, where organisers demanded a complete cleanup plan with binding deadlines within 20 days and the removal of all buried waste within three months.

Many protesters said they no longer trusted official explanations for how so much waste had gone unnoticed for so long.

“This is not a tragedy, this is a crime,” demonstrator Ivan Rittinger told The Associated Press news agency, arguing that someone had profited while officials looked away.

Vjekoslav Busic, who leads the Gospic Is Our Home community group that organised the march, told the crowd the failure went beyond any single official, asking who had built the institutions and appointed the people that let the pollution continue for years.

The rally drew lawmakers from across the political spectrum, including the centre-left Social Democratic Party and Most, a smaller anticorruption party whose name means “bridge”, alongside the well-known Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, a sign of how far the anger has spread beyond any one faction.

Environmental experts say the damage has stayed local so far, but warn the region’s porous terrain and rivers could eventually carry pollutants towards the Adriatic Sea, a coastline the region’s tourism depends on.

Plenkovic has dismissed the criticism as an attempt by rivals to exploit the scandal, even as prosecutors continue investigating a Croatian company accused of burying toxic waste at several sites beyond Gospic.

Demonstrators fill a central square in Zagreb, carrying banners against the government’s handling of the Gospic waste site [Borut Zivulovic/Reuters]

萨格勒布的示威者指责克罗地亚政府在危险废物丑闻的处理上拖延不决。

2026年9月5日，在克罗地亚首都萨格勒布，数千人抗议克罗地亚利卡地区非法倾倒危险废物的清理工作迟迟未能完成。[Borut Zivulovic/路透社]

数万名抗议者游行穿过克罗地亚首都，要求政府紧急清理一个巨大的非法危险废物倾倒场，居民称该倾倒场正在毒害曾经原始的山区。

周六在萨格勒布举行的示威活动是克罗地亚近年来规模最大的抗议活动之一，起因是民众对当局数月来未能清除掩埋在利卡山区戈斯皮奇镇附近的 3 万吨以上垃圾（包括医疗和工业材料）的日益不满。

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民众的愤怒情绪已经蔓延开来，对总理安德烈·普伦科维奇的保守派政府提出了更广泛的挑战。反对者指责该政府腐败，并掩盖了污染的真实规模。

今年 2 月，警方和欧盟执法机构欧洲刑警组织逮捕了 13 人，他们涉嫌非法进口和倾倒废物，这些废物自 2023 年以来一直从欧盟其他地区运入。

调查人员表示，该犯罪团伙在戈斯皮克郊外一处废弃的工业场所被揭露之前，已为嫌疑人牟利超过 400 万美元。

普伦科维奇上周视察了现场，并表示他的政府已经选定了一家承包商开始清除废物，这是承诺的清理工作的第一阶段。

克罗地亚官员还表示，戈斯皮奇周围的土壤和水测试并未显示污染，这一说法与克罗地亚反腐败机构上个月发布的一份评估报告相矛盾。该报告发现土壤中金属含量升高，并在附近的地下水中检测到了 PFAS 化学物质，这些化学物质因其持久性而被称为“永久性化学物质”。

萨格勒布的抗议者警告称，地下水和公众健康面临风险 [Borut Zivulovic/路透社]

这不是悲剧，而是罪行。

政府的保证与污染调查结果之间的差距，促使民众在周六聚集在萨格勒布的主要广场，组织者要求政府在 20 天内制定具有约束力的最后期限的完整清理计划，并在三个月内清除所有掩埋的垃圾。

许多抗议者表示，他们不再相信官方对如此多的浪费现象为何长期未被发现的解释。

“这不是悲剧，这是犯罪，”示威者伊万·里廷格告诉美联社，他认为有人从中获利，而官员们却视而不见。

组织游行的“戈斯皮奇是我们的家”社区团体的领导人维耶科斯拉夫·布西奇告诉人群，这种失败超越了任何一个官员的责任，他质问是谁建立了这些机构，又是谁任命了那些让污染持续多年的人。

此次集会吸引了来自各个政治派别的议员，包括中左翼的社会民主党和规模较小的反腐败政党“桥”（Most，意为“桥”），以及克罗地亚著名演员拉德·舍博德兹亚（Rade Serbedzija），这表明愤怒情绪已经蔓延到任何一个派别之外。

环境专家表示，到目前为止，损害仅限于当地，但警告说，该地区多孔的地形和河流最终可能会将污染物带到亚得里亚海，而该地区的旅游业依赖于这条海岸线。

普伦科维奇驳斥了这些批评，称这是竞争对手试图利用丑闻，与此同时，检察官仍在调查一家克罗地亚公司，该公司被指控在戈斯皮奇以外的几个地点掩埋有毒废物。

示威者挤满了萨格勒布市中心广场，举着横幅抗议政府对戈斯皮奇垃圾填埋场的处理方式。[Borut Zivulovic/路透社]