Troll of the Month: Instagram Page Deportacija

The Balkan Troll of the Month is an individual, a group of individuals or a media outlet that spreads hate based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or other diversity categories. The Balkan Troll is selected based on hate speech incidents identified across the Western Balkan region.

An anti-migrant Instagram page Deportacija (translated as deportation), gained significant traction in September, now boasting over now over 12,000 followers. The page spreads hate against migrants, often based on disinformation.

The page had four times fewer followers until it published a viral post about ” a drunk Pakistani hijacking a bus in Niš and heading towards Pakistan”. A fact-checking platform run by KRIK (Crime and Corruption Reporting Network), Raskrikavanje, flagged this and other similar posts as misleading and based on disinformation. Niš police did not respond with information about this case, nor did the media report on it.

The page, whilst being a source of disinformation and hate itself, also serves as a breeding ground for further hostility and animosity. Posts usually share information surrounding violent crimes, mainly in the US, Canada and Western Europe, claiming they were caused by migrants. Raskrikavanje debunked a few of these posts and flagged them as misleading. In these posts, Deportacija often calls people to express their opinion on these cases, which results in hateful speech in the comment section, varying from claims about migrants being violent, to blatant racism and Islamophobia, as well as open calls to violence against migrants, refugees, Muslims and people of colour.  Some posts include videos of people of colour or Muslims littering, protesting or praying. One video of a prayer in a park reads, “This is Norway. What do you notice?”.

As Raskrikavanje reports, there are also bizarre claims by the page, such as in one of their videos with the caption “a fake asylum seeker (migrant) cooks himself a cat for lunch in the middle of the street”, alongside a viral post about foreign citizens receiving work permits in Serbia. According to the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration of the Republic of Serbia, at the end of 2024, around 50.000 foreigners in Serbia had a work permit, more than half of them Russian and Chinese citizens. However, anti-migrant messages on foreigners working in Serbia mainly focus on those from South Asia and the Middle East, Muslims and people of colour.

In one of its earliest posts, Deportacija informed followers that illegal entry is a deliberate violation of the law and a threat to state sovereignty. Deportation, it stated, should not be seen as a policy choice but as a “duty towards our country and our children.” Pages like these, which spread disinformation and baseless accusations, are dangerous in their attempt to fuel hate and division in society while targeting already vulnerable communities. Furthermore, the analysis carried out by Raskrikavanje documenting multiple fabricated posts and baseless accusations, underscores the page’s role as a powerful source of hate speech and disinformation, with the potential to fuel both online and offline hostility towards migrants. It is the role of the platform hosting such content, in this case, Instagram, to remove these pages, which clearly violate their community standards on several accounts. It is, furthermore, the role of users to report such pages to have these removed rather than feed into these narratives and spread hate.