We came across a recent post on X with the claim that a Croatian Member of the European Parliament (MEP) called for the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be declared a terrorist organisation.
The post features a video where the MEP states that the WHO has been propagating lies during the Covid-19 pandemic and that the demands from the WHO for all countries to hand over the authority to declare a pandemic or procure vaccines are detrimental to humanity. The MEP goes on to state that signing an agreement with “the Colombian drug cartel” would be safer for humanity.
Who is the MEP?
A reverse image search of the video revealed that the speaker in the video is Mislav Kolakusic, who was elected as the Croatian Independent MEP in 2019. He serves as a non-attached member.
The European Parliament (EP) is the European Union’s (EU) law-making body where voters from the EU elect members. MEPs are organised by their political affiliations as opposed to nationality. Members who do not belong to any political group are known as non-attached members.
While Kolakusic is not affiliated with any political party in the EP, he has aligned himself with other anti-vax MEPs in the EP.
Fake video?
The post on X credits the video to Kolakusic’s X account where he had uploaded the same video on 22 May 2023. The video appears to have been cut and stitched at the 28-30-second mark where he alleges that it would be safer to sign contracts with the Colombian drug cartels as opposed to the WHO.
Our searches online revealed that the video was taken during the International Covid Summit (ICS) III press conference that occurred in May 2023. The full video can be found on YouTube.
The ICS does not appear to be an official EP event but rather, an event led by several MEPs. The topics covered in the ICS lean towards anti-vax sentiments.
Compared with the full video uploaded by ICS, the video uploaded by Kolakusic appears to have been cut and stitched to remove a portion of his speech. However, when analysing the full speech, the message of his speech was not altered in the extract that has been circulated.
Context of Kolakusic’s statements
The statements made by Kolakusic allude to the WHO “pandemic treaty”, which was first mooted in 2022. The treaty, which is still in the early stages of development, came about as members of the WHO agreed to negotiate an international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.
While the treaty aims to “ensure equity in both access to the tools needed to prevent pandemics [such as vaccines and expertise] and access to health care for all people”, it does not have the power to enforce its recommendations on members.
Hence, Kolakusic’s allegations that the WHO wants all countries to sign an agreement to hand over the authority to declare a pandemic, and procure vaccines are inaccurate and misleading.
Kolakusic and controversies
Kolakusic is no stranger to making controversial remarks such as calling Canada a dictatorship in its response to giving police and other authorities enhanced powers to disrupt the protests against vaccine mandates. He has also misrepresented Covid data previously by claiming that tens of thousands of Europeans have died as a result of Covid-19 vaccines although there was insufficient evidence to prove a causal link.
Hence, while it is true that Kolakusic called for WHO to be declared a terrorist organisation, his justifications seem to be based on inaccurate and misleading information.
