AROUSING FEAR

Subject : arousing fear

AIM Zagreb, May 3, 1996

Ivan Zvonimir Cicak worked for state security police since back in 1966 - this title was printed in the central part of the front page of Vjesnik a few days ago. With no question mark, no reservation, no doubt of any kind.

For this grave accusation, the journal refers to documents of the Serb intelligence service of the late Krajina which the Croats got hold of after operation "Storm". Vjesnik says that it possesses a photocopy of an authentic document which "gravely accuses the head of the Croat Helsinki Committee". It is a report written by a Serb military intelligence officer in February 1994. He writes that in a contact with a member of the State Security Police, he went through certain documents which had allegedly been brought from Zagreb and among them as the most valuable he assesses the "original statement in hand-writing of Ivan Zvonimir Cicak in which he speaks about his activities and ideals, and in the end of the statement, there is a clause, written with his own hand, that he agreed to cooperate with the State Security Service and forward his reports under pseudonym 'Bak'".

"The allegation about my cooperation with the State Security Service is untrue and forged", Cicak responded. Stressing that the accusation that thirty years ago he had taken the obligation to work for the notorious Yugoslav secret police was in no way corroborated, he marked the new Editor-in-Chief of Vjesnik, Nenad Ivankovic, as responsible for its publishing, but also forces which backed him. "My vivacious and publicly known curriculum vitae is the best answer to all these fabrications", Cicak writes, stating that only one fact is true in the text in Vjesnik: thirty years ago he actually was taken into custody for the first time and in fact he was asked to cooperate with the State Security Service. He refused, and a month later, he was thrown out of every school in Yugoslavia. Later on, he was subject of constant police concern - after the collapse of the "Croat spring", as student Vice-Chancellor (of the University), he was in jail for a few years, deprived of his passport, oppressed and harassed in various ways. He experiences the attack in Vjesnik as just another attempt to introduce fear in Croatia, although he observes that such political murders may be an announcement of a different type of liquidations as well.

The professionally scandalous and politically obscure text in Vjesnik shocked the Croat public. People are abhorred by the fact that such severe accusations could be marketed based on extremely dubious documents, and not in a sensational newspaper either, but in a daily which has an ambition to be "the axis of Croat journalism". Ivo Banac, member of the Presidency of Croat Helsinki Committee, says that this act of the newspaper is a unique type of political assasination. This respectable historian warns against the following facts: the text is not signed, which means that it is an editorial; Cicak was not given a chance to speak for himself, which would be a minimum of journalistic correctness, especially since the document referred to by the journal is very far-fetched. Smiljan Reljic, head of the Service for Protection of the Constitutional System, claims that he knows nothing of Cicak's ever having worked for the State Security Service. He knows nothing about documents allegedly confiscated after operation "Storm", which accuse Cicak either. By the very nature of his post, Reljic would have to be informed about it, so the weekly Globus which consulted him, speculates that the Cicak case - which they believe to be "the greatest political scandal implicated with intelligence service ever" - was produced in one of the sectors of the Ministry of defence, which has already proved to be efficient in such matters.

It appears that the task of the text in Vjesnik was not to be convincing but to arouse fear. And the less arguments, the more reason for fear. If Cicak is accused that he has spent his entire conscious life as an agent of the State Security Service - in 1966 when he allegedly signed the mentioned document, he was only 18 - what can those who do not have his reputation of a martyr for the Croat cause expect. As Banac says, if coperation with the intelligence service can be laid at the door of Cicak, it can be done to anyone. It is not the first time that dubious dossiers from the past times are used as a weapon in current political conflicts. But the denunciation in Vjesnik nevertheless has a "new quality" because the mainstay of the ruling policy among the media introduced with it a rule that no evidence is needed for severe accusations. For that reason, its charges raised against Cicak are in fact a message to many others too.

In the meantime, certain developments offered futher clarification of the message. Perhaps spontaneously, but by no means accidentally, on the very same day when Vjesnik boxed Cicak on his ears, another member of his Helsinki Committee was literally beaten up. Respectable Zagreb lawyer, Slobodan Budak, was beaten up in the centre of Zagreb, for no serious reason, by Mladen Naletilic-Tuta, informal boss of Herzegovina, if not of other regions as well. Tuta is the commander of the ill-famed Herzegovinian punitive brigade, he allegedly used to collaborate with Arkan, and was extemely uncompromising with the Muslims. He is also a close friend of the Croat Minister of defence, Gojko Susak. The New York Times recently wrote that he had worked for former Yugoslav secret police, and that he was wanted by Interpol for several crimes and his connections with terrorists. The American journal claims that Tuta made a million dollars during the war and that he controlled the mob in Herzegovina. An opinion is quoted of a German policeman who worked for the European administration in Mostar and who claims that the " Croat Democratic Community operates as the mob".

Perhaps all that is the reason why Tuta beat up Budak in the midst of the elite Zagreb Hotel "Intercontinental" without anyone even trying to intervene. Not even persons who Budak was accompanied by reacted - a Croat ambassador and a high police official. As far as it was possible to learn, the police has so far taken no measures against Tuta, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to apologize to the Embassy of Netherlands. Namely, Budak was a guest at their reception, so that Tuta's private cuffing turned into a real diplomatic scandal.

In this construction of the infrastructure of submission and ruling with the help of fear, the latest stone are charged brought against Feral Tribune for an insult of the head of the state. Viktor Ivancic, Editor-in-Chief of the Split weekly, was arrested on Friday and taken for an "informative interview" to the Split police station, where he was told that state prosecutor would implement the just amended law which preserves the honour and reputation of the President of Croatia. In a statement of the editorial board it is said that on the occasion Ivancic "learnt that police hue and cry against him and Feral Tribune was raised at request of the President of the Republic of Croatia, Dr Franjo Tudjman who was officially insulted by texts and illustrations in the latest issue, which all, without exception, refer to his morbid idea about transformation of Jasenovac into Croatia's version of Francoist forcible common charnel-house for both executionrs and their victims". On the front page of that issue of Feral is a picture of a skeleton with a ribbon and the title: "All to Jasenovac".

In the same journal, Predrag Raos, writer and deputy of the dissolved Zagreb Assembly, says that it is possible to rule by the will of the people or by brutal force. It seems that Tudjman has made a choice. It is obvious that he is not loved as he used to be, but he simply cannot accept it nor reconcile himself to this fact.

JELENA LOVRIC