THE STATE AND PRO-LIFERS - HAND IN HAND

AIM Zagreb, March 23, 1996

With a somewhat unconcealed envy, I must admit that the best metaphor for existential position of women in ("former") Eastern Europe after the fall of socialism, was uttered by a man: "The Berlin Wall collapsed on top of the bodies of women", said Professor Upendra Baxi, Indian prilosopher. Developments were predictable, but this did not make them any easier to endure for women. In transitional economies, women are always the first to lose jobs. In Croatia, for instance, women form 53 per cent of the unemployed. One should bear in mind that state statistics consider as unemployed only those men and women who are registered by the employment agencies. Women from village households are not included in this number, nor housewifes who have neither been employed, nor have ever been economically independent.

It may sound even more paradoxical that with the birth of democracy, women of Eastern Europe have almost disappeared from public life and political decision-making. Former socialist parliaments - pro-forma and ornamental as they were

• had "quotas" of twenty to thirty per cent of women, while nowadays, they rarely appear in any parliament of new democracies with over 15 per cent. Apart from the fact that more, not less sexual political equality was expected from democracy, the paradox is even greater when one knows that women and women's initiatives in many socialist countries were among those who took the lead in autonomous organizing of civic societies and in formulating demands for change.

In the Croatian Assembly, after the first elections in 1990, there were 5.2 per cent of women (the level of Serbia, Cyprus, Moldavia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Belorussia). After the recent elections in autumn 1995, there are 8 per cent of them, although they form over fifty percent of the electorate. Various explanations could be heard for it, among other, the comment that in democracy (in the "free political market"), "biological feminine political inferiority" finally becomes evident, and disinterestedness of women for politics, in other words that such a result is in proportion with Croat national and catholic tradition and culture which respects women, but not in public, but at home with their husbands and children.

Should it be mentioned at all that democratic climate and democratic public institutions are not created in respect to biology and conservative tradition, and that it is impossible to imagine democracy without full and creative participation of women in all social spheres and places of decision-making.

Croat political culture is intentionally created in top echelons of the authorities and the state as narrow-minded, non-democratic, nationalistic and anti-feminine. The historically well-known legal marriage between state nationalism and policy which discriminates women and limits their human rights is increasingly penetrating into programs and laws adopted by the Croat Government and Parliament.

Towards the end of 1995, in Zagreb City Hall, almost all Croat pro-life population organizations gathered and discussed the National Program of Demographic Development of the Republic of Croatia. After two years of almost secret preparations (last summer it was already supported by State Committee of National Security, a special Tudjman's personal secret service, but it was completely inaccessible to the public), the Program was suddenly offered to the Assembly which "unanimously" adopted it. At least that is what state media reported, although complaints about the program were heard from all directions - from non-governmental women's organizations, the Serb minority in the Assembly and some experts.

Participants of the meeting in the City Hall supported the program, but with a few vigorous compaints. "Since creation of the state of Croatia to this day, 180 thousand children have been aborted. This means that in crimes of abortion, gineacologists have killed five to six times more small Croats than the Chetniks..." - stormed at the gathering the by now notorious don Anto Bakovic, Franciscan priest and leader of the Croat Population Movement. The other great evil which is exterminating the Croats, according to don Bakovic is birth control: "Anti-Croat health service underground has imported amost a million coils... Which is more important for us, the Croat future or 13 existing feminine associations which have not given birth to 13 children altogether", don Bakovic wondered, identifying the next great danger for survival of the nation - feminists who speak in favour of the abortion remaining safe and legal in Croatia, and accessible and healthy birth control.

Don Anto Bakovic is a well-known Franciscan fundamentalist, a militant pro-lifer. During the war, he was a coryphaeus of war-mongering, extremist chauvinist rhetorics against the Serbs and the Muslims ("When will Croatia stop offering refuge to wives and sisters of those who are slaughtering our boys in Bosnia", he used to roar on state television demanding banishment of refugees, women and children from Bosnia). Since the external enemy is sanctioned, or out of political opportunism it is no more allowed to spread ethnic hatred openly, according to the logic of totalitarian dialectics, the enemy should be sought among one's own ranks.

Participants in the debate discussed "wicked journals", "pesticides" against children such as birth control and sterilization, mass AIDS infection of the Croats, and demanded broadening election rights for people with more children (probably - as many children that many votes for each proud Croat parent).

The National Program of Demographic Development which was generally supported by the participants of the gathering, has only one essential imperfection: it does not advocate vigorously enough abolishment of the legal right to abortion and birth control.

The organizers concluded the meeting with the demand that Croatia abolishes the 1978 "controversial law" which made abortion legal and accessible in Croatia. It should be noted that since its enforcement, death rate of women in illegal abortions in Croatia has completely disappeared.

Zagreb City Hall usually is not open to non-governmental organizations and civic movements. Probability that feminine non-governmental groups would be given the hall for promoting their policy is quite low. Central news program of Croat television and three national dailies (state-owned or "close" to the HDZ administration) devoted huge attention to this gathering which they never do in case of truly independent non-governmental groups such as peace movements, groups for human and feminine rights, rights of refugees and similar.

This is just a tiny picture from Croat political everyday life which illustrates how the illegitimate marriage operates between the state and conservative church dictates which are most frequently pushed through by quasi- non- governmental organizations, such as those present at the mentioned gathering. And that is how a climate of political "inferiority" and exclusion of women from the public is created in Croatia.

Indeed, a glimpse at the immediate past will show that don Bakovic himself is the creator and spiritual father of the National Program of Demographic Development. Namely, in spring 1992, the Government of the Republic of Croatia, following Tudjman's initiative for "spiritual revival of the nation", established a Ministry of Revival with a special department for demographic revival. Don Anto Bakovic was at the time president of the department with the rank of an assistant minister. Among other, the program stressed motherhood as the most significant vocation and profession for women and elaborated the strategy for achievement of "ethnically pure" birth rate in Croatia, as well as limitations of immigration of non-Croats from other states of former Yugoslavia. Remnants of free media, women's groups and the world public they managed to alarm protested against the Government program at the time. After that the Program of Demographic Revival and don Bakovic quietly disappeared from the state ministry, but not from the Croat public. Don Bakovic's next move was foundation of a quasi- NGO, the Croat Population Movement which was publicly supported by the ruling party, its nationalistic politicians, including the President of the state and many national "intellectuals".

Privatization Fund enabled the Croat Population Movement to take possession of a small printing house, which shows that don Bakovic still remained a favourite of the administration and the state.

Although the present National Program for Demographic Development was elaborated by a "team of experts" (headed by Minister Dr Jure Radic) and replaced don Bakovic's phraseology with apparently expert language of demographic science, its essence remained the same. Reasons for indeed disturbing negative population birth rate in Croatia, which is among the lowest in the world, were not sought by Government experts in real historic, in particular economic causes and global emigration trends between the North and the South, but solely in petty-political interpretations of the recent, but more ancient history of the Croats: in circumstances created by the past centuries by "anti-Croat" politics, especially during the 45-year communist regime of former Yugoslavia whose main role was extermination of the Croat national being. Now that the political system has finally changed and succeeded in "resisting the Serb aggression", and the Croats finally have their own state, time has come for changes in population policy, too. Increase of birth rate should become one of the primary tasks od the state and the nation.

Demographic policy which results from such a source is focused on two points: growth of birth rate described as "demographic revival of the Croat nation and family" and "distribution of the population" or "planned deployment of immigrated population", and "selective immigration". The Project openly claims that redistribution of the population is a function of political and military circumstances, it deals with emigration of the Croats from B&H (which should be interrupted, because it is not a "national strategic interest of Croatia", and if it is impossible, as it is), immigrants into Croatia, Croats from Bosnia, will be forwarded to unpopulated regions, that is, into regions abandoned by the Serbs during the four-year war, which the Program labels as "regions of strategic significance" for the Croat state.

One of the Program conclusions is that mass immigration of numerous nations into Croatia has already begun. This could cause the Croats to become a minority in their own state by the end of the 21st century.

The Program does not even mention the possibility of return of hundred thousands Croat citizens of Serb nationality (assessments vary from 400 to 600 thousand people), but it quite meticulously deals with the return of Croat emigrants from Europe, the USA and Australia...

Along with various stimulating measures of demographic revival, the authors of the Program emphasize the role of the public. "Speech and behavior of public personalities should be permeated by respect for life from conception to natural death, as well as respect for the woman, marriage and family". "Beauty of family life should be promoted through mass media", the Program says.

Status of women is defined by the Government Program as nothing else but in the role of reproduction machines for producing new Croats. It stimulates "positive measures of population policy" such as privileges for families with three or more children (prolonged paid maternity leave, three years of it for the third and every additional child, tax exemptions for parents, welfare for children, professional status for mothers-educators, health and social insurance for parents with three or more children, etc.).

Current practice of social security in Croatia, however, shows that state institutions do not fulfill even the existing legally guaranteed obligations - children's allowance, extended materinity leave, or - pursuant to the Labour Law which is in force since January 1996, the determined paid status of mother-educator of four or more children.

Many critics of the Program, especially certain women's groups, believe that the national Program of Demographic Development, as well as the new laws which are or will be adjusted to it have no other possibility or intention but to be a political and ideological campaign aimed at achievement of as clean "blood group of the nation" as possible and shutting women off from paid labour and public life in order to return them to the traditional role of mothers and wives for "the kitchen, the family and the church".

Women all around Croatia already feel consequences of the campaign.

New draft law on termination of pregnancy will be adopted in compliance with the Program of Demographic Development. The draft does not explicitly prescribe abolishment of abortion, but makes access to safe abortion considerably more difficult and creates a climate of moral wickedness of abortion. Among other, the law prescribes the right of "conscientious objection" for the gynaecologists who for moral reasons do not wish to do abortions, but in no way oblige gynaecological departments to ensure the right to abortion for women. In January, in Split there were cases of "conscientious gynaecologists" who refused to do abortions in the hospital and - offered to do the intervention in their (illegal) private clinics (for the amount equal to the average monthly salary of women in Croatia).

Having conducted an informal poll, women's groups realized that physicians all around Croatia already fear moral pressures and a militant campaign of pro-lifers' religious movements which are increasingly supported by the state which openly offers its sympathies, finances and media to them.

VESNA KESIC