Mesic-Bashing in Split

AIM Zagreb, May 8, 2001

When on May 6 Croatian President Stjepan Mesic invited residents of Kastel to have a morning coffee with him, it probably never occurred to him that the local Cafe Mozart would slam the door in his face. Namely, an organization calling itself the Coordination of Associations of Veterans of the War for the Fatherland in the Town of Kastel, urged the owner of the cafe in a written note that he should not serve Mesic, because he is not "a welcome guest." The owner, of course, immediately locked his establishment, not being particularly curious about how it feels to have a hand grenade thrown through your window by a mad veteran. Stjepan Mesic proceeded to Split, to attend a celebration devoted to the city's patron saint, St. Dujmo. The event took place only several hours before a big rightist gathering at the Split Promenade, whose slogan was A Croatian Split For A Free Dalmatia, and two days after Mesic's unpleasant visit to Drazevac.

The incident in Sveti Kriz barracks in Drazevac, of course, was not caused by Stjepan Mesic, but by the rightists, who, dressed in black shirts and wearing sun glasses and sporting crew cuts, have been gathering across Croatia for the past six months, attempting to organize a coup and return to power. The president visited Drazevac near Split to attend an event marking the tenth anniversary of the Fourth Guard Brigade and lay a wreath in honor of its dead soldiers. But in the barracks he was welcomed by booing civilians... Mesic responded by saying that the Chetniks in Belgrade have filed suit against him with the court Hague (the charges being high treason and genocide at the beginning of the 1990s), but that he did not know that the Chetniks had that many supporters in Split. Mesic's tour continued with a visit to the Split city council, where two aldermen of the Croatian Democratic Union verbally assaulted him.

One of them, Dujomir Marasovic, demanded at a formal session that Mesic explain why he had called Split residents Chetniks. There was, of course, no apology simply because Mesic said no such thing, but this did not help remove the bitterness caused by this provocation. Ultimately, the black-shirts' offensive ended with the protes rally at the Split Promenade, where some 10,000 staunch rightists gathered. They skillfully took advantage of the holiday, due to which about 10,000 people were also on the Promenade, to push for early elections. The rally thus resembled one held several months ago, when the Promenade virtually turned black because of some 100,000 protesters who -- wearing their favorite color -- launched their first serious threat against the constitutional order and peace in general. The chief protagonists of the dark Croatian circus were again very prominent public figures of yesterday.

The new Split rally was formally called to protest the dismissals of the managers and editors of the Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia) newspaper, which until the ousters was the rightists' only mouthpiece after their defeat in elections. The tightening of the neo-Ustasha ranks in the open was not an unexpected move, given that they care very little about expressing themselves through usual information channels, insisting instead that no civil communication is actually possible. The period ahead of upcoming local elections appears to have offered them a great opportunity to pursue their plans. The central figure of this protest -- as well as of the Drazevac incident -- was a retired colonel, Mirko Condic, otherwise president of the Headquarters for the Protection of the Dignity of the War for the Fatherland. In Split Condic labelled Mesic a "traitor," a "Gypsy, and a "bastard," prompting the crowd to chant "Mesic, you Gypsy," and sing Ustasha songs.

The songs, which mentioned two notorious Ustasha criminals of World War Two, did not prevent a host of journalists from taking the microphone and extending their support to Mirko Condic. Nenad Ivankovic (former editor of the Vjesnik paper), Carl Gustav Stroehm (former Vjesnik and Croatian state TV columnist), and (current) columnists of the Slobodna Dalmacija, Zoran Vukman and Josko Celan, spoke with such hatred of the current government that not even people watching on TV could take comfort in the fact that this was merely an outburst of savagery coming from a political minority. After all, the Croatian Democratic Union had ruled exactly under such circumstances for 10 years, much like the German Nazis who used the same means to seize power. Thus when the Split protesters say that "the rigid Yugo-communist faction, which persecutes everything national as Ustasha and fascist, is back in power" no one should marvel at the contradiction.

The new Croatian right does not hate the ruling group as much as it hates the fact that people without rightist convictions can be at the top. They do not mind being compared to the Ustashas; they are even flattered by this, as their readiness to sing Ustasha songs has so obviously confirmed.

What they dislike is when the Ustashas are described in a negative light: this is damaging in international terms, and Ivankovic and Stroehm would never admit in their other homeland, Germany, that they hold tunes of the 1941 Independent State of Croatia dear. This is why the rightists believe that to call someone a Gypsy or a bastard is the worst possible offense, yet they object to being called "fascists" only when the same adjective is used to characterize the Chetniks. It is another matter that Stjepan Mesic failed to react in a better way, responding instead to the provocations in kind ("Let's leave people's parents out of this")...

The Croatian state and society are not endangered because of the number of black-shirts, but because they can continue to act like savages without fear of any mature or widespread criticism, not to mention legal sanctions. It is a legitimate right of the citizens to boo their president or show dislike of him or any other person, but to call them "Gypsies" and "traitors" is another matter. That is offensive and threatening, directed against society as a whole, and equal to slandering individuals. The actual magnitude of the threat coming from the Croatian right is hard to estimate, because it depends on the passivity of society and the system, and much less on the agility of the rightists themselves. Croatia's democracy and the rule of law -- as opposed to the rebellious rightists and equally apathetic government -- are by no accident personified in the person of president.

Because he, too, is endangered and lonely, superficial and ornamental.

Igor LASIC

(AIM)