TUDJMAN CRACKING DOWN ON THE FERAL

AIM, ZAGREB, May 8, 1996

When recently, despite the vociferous protests of the opposition and the majority of journalists, on the proposal of its Vice-President Vladimir Seks, the Croatian Parliament adopted amendments to the Criminal Code it was clear to all who have democracy at heart that this was an attempt on the part of the ruling party at denying freedom of information and reinstating the much detested verbal commission. Namely, according to these amendments which Seks had already tried to push through within the Law on Information, but in a much worse form, public attorneys (prosecutors) must press charges against anyone who offends or slanders the President of the Republic, the Parliament, the Government, the Constitutional or Supreme Court, securing the approval of the offended parties beforehand. Thus, in contrast to England, instead of mad cows Croatia got "five holy cows". The second change envisages the prosecution of all those who publish a state secret, without however defining what that concept implies.

Both changes provoked not only harsh political confrontations, but professional ones too, because, despite the fact that other countries envisage similar protection, but one rarely resorted to, the question was raised what actually insult, i.e. slander meant. Is it, for example, insulting to say that the President of the Republic is incompetent and that his moves are stupid? Is it slander to say that the President of the Parliament is a usurper of the democratic rights of deputies? Or, are they only disclosing what is no longer a secret, as someone had to tell them? Alas, nothing could help prevent the HDZ voting machinery from passing the amendments to the Law, and their true intentions became clear in no time. The first to fall victim to the law on holy cows, which, sure enough, was initiated by the President of the state himself, was the "Feral Tribune", a Split satirical weekly which the state had already attempted to destroy by levying a "yellow papers" tax on it, which was later revoked by the Constitutional Court.

Last Friday, on May 3 a man barged into the editorial offices of the "Feral" claiming to be an officer of the Ministry of the Interior but refusing to show any official identification, and demanded to talk to Viktor Ivancic, Editor-in-Chief. He asked Ivancic to come with him to the police station for an informative talk, and on the insistence of those present in the offices he finally showed his identification papers and filled in a blank order on the spot, i.e. a citation stating that the reason for the "informative talk" was to give information according to a request issued by the Communal Public Attorney's Office in Zagreb on April 29. On the following day, on Saturday, May 4, Marinko Culic, a journalist of the "Feral" also received a summons for an informative talk in the police station in Dugo Selo, near Zagreb and only then did it become clear that Seks' law was at work for the first time.

So as not to leave any doubts the Zagreb Communal Public Attorney's Office announced on Tuesday, May 7, that is had filed charges against Viktor Ivancic for the criminal offence of libel and insult, and against Marinko Culic for libel. The acting communal public attorney Visnja Loncar stated that in the April 29 issue of the "Feral Tribune" in a column entitled "Concerning & Notwithstanding", in part of an article entitled "Bones in a Mixer" and in a photo montage entitled "Jasenovac, the Largest Croatian Underground City" Ivancic and Culic committed gross outrage upon the person of Dr.Franjo Tudjman, President of the Republic of Croatia. The bill of indictment was issued upon the approval of the President of the Republic.

Dr.Tudjman felt insulted and slandered because of the "Feral" chose to write about his "morbid idea to turn the Ustashi concentration camp into a Croatian variant of a Francoan forcible joint memorial of executioners and their victims". President Tudjman first floated the idea on the reconstruction of Jasenovac in an interview granted to the former (false) "Danas" (Today) three years ago, then repeated it in his annual address to the Assembly early in January, and after having been repeatedly criticized, not having been scared even by his "allies", the Americans, with Warren Christopher taking the lead, he relaunched the idea in somewhat modified form in his interviews to a number of Croatian papers and television.

What this proposal of his is really about is that Jasenovac should be not only a memorial park in memory of all those killed by the Ustashi knife and bullet, but also of all those who have laid their lives for Croatia, which means including those who committed these crimes and those who were in the war for the homeland.

Obviously, he wanted to transfer his obsession on the reconciliation of all Croats which, according to him, has taken place among the living, also to the dead. He referred to the Spanish and American civil wars as examples to follow, but he lost sight of the fact that not only Croats lay in Jasenovac, namely that they are a minority there and that primarily communists and partisans are there, and that the Ustashi killed Serbs, Jews and the Romany in the largest numbers. The second reason why Jasenovac should be a "mixer of bones" is that it was not only an Ustashi camp but a communist one, from 1945 to 1949 when many of those who had aligned themselves with Pavelic's infamous NDH (Independent State of Croatia), or of those whom the revolutionary regime simply declared public enemies, perished.

The "Feral" was not the only paper to comment on these ideas of Tudjman's, but, as always, it did it in its own characteristic way, harshly, sarcastically, and above all satirically, and now the two journalists in question are facing imprisonment of up to three years.

According to the book, as Vesna Alaburic, a jurist specialized in freedom of information says - libel is the presentation of untruthful facts defamatory to character and reputation. But "the libelous claim has to be seriously meant, i.e. made. Therefore statement made in a humorous vein, evident exaggerations, caricature and hyperbolic representations of the actual situation do not constitute a libelous statement which is the substance of libel". So, things are more or less clear. These are untruthful facts made with the intent to harm. But, not so with satire, for satire without exaggeration would be contradiction in adjecto, wooden iron, ergo simply inconceivable.

The court will thus, in the case of the "Feral" be indeed in a spot having to decide how and whether at all to put satire on trial, i.e. will have to prove what was it that hurt the name and reputation of the President of the Republic to such an extent, and indeed show what was untruthful in it.

Still, this is pure academic speculation where the Croatian situation is concerned, for it is hard to expect that a judge will be found who would dismiss an indictment initiated by the President himself, when we know that in the case of the "crisis of the Mayor of Zagreb" even the Constitutional Court acted like no more than a service outlet of the ruling party.

Commenting on the indictment, Viktor Ivancic said that in countries with even a hint of the initial "d" of democracy did not practice putting journalists on trials or bringing them in for informative talks. "And all this which has been going on over the past fifteen days or so foreshadows future developments in Croatia clearly. After all the President, in his speech at Okucani, openly announced the possibility of total dictatorship".

Ivancic is not isolated in his opinion for Stipe Mesic, for example, claims that the disbanding of the Municipal Assembly and everything which attended it will one day be remembered as the April dictatorship.

And indeed all sorts of things happened over a brief span of time: journalists of the "Nacional" were brought in for informative interviews; there was a customs and tax crack down on the "Novi List"; Ivo Pukanic, the editor-in-chief of the "Nacional" was indicted for spreading falsehoods; the financial police sealed off the premises of "Panorama"; the "Vjesnik" announced that it would be dismissing many journalists and accused Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, the Chairman of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, that he had been recruited by the security service already at the age of 18; the Vice-Premier threatened Edita Vlahovic. a journalist of "Novi List" with a gun; the Constitutional Court revoked the Law on Information because it had not been adopted by the required majority, and there are no indication that a new one will be adopted by June 30; the Zagreb's Radio 101 seems simply unable to get a frequency, while the Deputy Minister asked this popular radio station to send him a programme of no less than 1080 hours programme on the air; doctors are appointed managers of some local radio stations, who do that job en passant; and so on and so forth...

To add insult to injury all this is going on only a few days before the Council of Ministers is to say a definitive "YES" to Croatia's joining the Council of Europe. It is as if someone was at great pain to prevent that from happening. All this notwithstanding, that is where Croatia should be, because then laws promoted by the likes of Seks and his ilk will be made short work of, for the European Court will have the final say, and it will indeed be tragic and comic if journalists lose their lawsuits in Croatia and win them in Strasbourg.

It became evident that the Croatian public does not take such moves of the authorities calmly at a session of the Assembly two HSLS (The Croatian Peasant's Liberal Party) deputies - Vladimir Primorac and Bozo Kovacevic, who repeatedly sprang to their feet protesting against the way Ivancic and Culic were being treated, and the beating of the well known lawyer Slobodan Budak. They consciously risked being thrown out of the conference hall and were reprimanded publicly four times; three of their colleagues from the SDP and IDS also joined in and, fro the time being, have only earned one reprimand each. All this could be seen live on TV. At the same time the Croatian Association of Journalists organized a large gathering inviting representatives of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the Matica Hrvatska Society, the PEN, the Croatian Helsinki Committee, the Association of Writers, the Journalist's Trade Union, the Rome Club, the Croatian Association of Victims, the Croatian Association of Catholic Journalists, the European Movement, the Civil Initiative for Freedom of Public Speech and the Council for the Protection of Freedom of Public Information.

Tudjman's answer is not hard to predict. He has already declared the entire opposition a handful of enemies, so why not push all these organizations into that category as well. But, what then? Will all of them be put on trial too?

GOJKO MARINKOVIC