Disoder in Police State

AIM Zagreb, 16 June, 1999

A great farce! These are the only two words which can at least approximately describe the ridiculous and at the same time pathetic denouement of the football scandal which, like some Latin American country, has chaken Croatia for weeks. Football referee Reno Sinovcic was arrested a few days ago in a spectacular police operation in Zadar where he was caught red handed in the attempt to extort 1100 German marks from a citizen. The unbelievable fact that a prominent football referee was involved in petty maffioso business was in the focus of the story published in the beginning of this month by Nacional weekly when the big football scandal broke out. Nacional carried a copy of the document of one of Croatian intelligence services which shows that the police has been shadowing Sinovcic for years because of a series of minor thefts (two mattresses from an abandoned Serb house), but also a lot of major crimes (threat to liquidate). Nevertheless, all that would not have made a big story if Sionovcic had not been allowed to continue undisturbed his career of a football referee even at the very finals of the football championship (Osijek-Cibalia match), which induced Nacional to make a perfectly logical conclusion that he was blackmailed to referee in favour of Tudjman's favourite team - Croatia.

Now Sinovcic is obviously arrested in a clumsy haste to stop the rumours, that is, to show that after a long and profound investigation the scoundrel was finally cornered. At the same time, however, the mechanism of repression has already been started against not only Nacional but others as well who are suspected of having revealed the document about Sinovcic which is importantly claimed to be top secret. That is how even the former head of one of the Croatian secret services (HIS) was arrested for a day, as well as the former minister of justice Miroslav Separovic who was them released, but an ivestigative procedure was launched against him along with the one against the editor-in-chief of Nacional.

His apartment was searched under suspicion that he was an informer of Nacional. This happened not long after the search of the premises of the weekly, obviously because it was believed that after nothing had been found in Nacional, the confidential papers had to be at Separovic's place. But, since nothing was found at his place either, it was claimed that the police was actually not looking for dossiers connected to football, but other documents, also qalified as confidential, of course. Even Branislav Nusic (known satirist) would be forced to stop to think how to end this comedy, but the problem is that this is no comedy, but, as already said, a farce which leads to two irrefutable conclusions.

First, it is clear that data are actually leaking from the most secret state services, in this case probably because a part of the police is fed up with servicing adolescent football passions of the head of the state and his often ridiculous clones. Furthermore, this denial of obedience ruffled police chiefs and Tudjman himself so much that they launched a tide of repression which will most likely last until parliamentary elections at the end of this year, and for the time being the targets are the media identified as the mouthpieces of the opposition, and right along with them secret services, more precisely their parts which are suspected of having denied obedience to the regine.

The intelligence "philosophy" of the campaign was recently presented in an interview to Vecernji list by Tudjman's advisor for national defence Markica Rebic. He declared that a special war was waged in Croatia against "the head of the state, the leadership of HDZ, the Croatian Army, and the secret service", and that the shock troops of this war was the still active network of associates of Udba (state security service of former Yugoslavia) among journalists. This is the first time that such a qualification was publicly uttered from such a place - so far only this was done only by various "weeklies" which are known to be controlled by Croatian secret services - and this is an announcement that the assault on independent newspapers will most probably be more serve than ever.

The other direction of Rebic's declaration was aimed against the "part of HDZ which is "always ready for a compromise" and which is suspected of having already entered into secret arrangements with the opposition about the forthcoming transfer of power. There are opinions that Separovic was attacked because a few days ago he had been seen at the round table discussion on national security organised by the Social Democratic Party. In his case, the sin was all the greater because it was known for certain that he had information which might make life miserable for the team in power, Tudjman inclusive. After all, Separovic himself had said so to the newspapers just before the police took him away for interrogation.

He said that his arrest was in fact a political showdown of Ivic Pasalic, mentor of all secret services, with him because "we were getting close to resolving a few scandals which Pasalic had been involved in" - he meant the scandal which concerned Dubrovacka Bank and SIS - and Tudjman "had known all about them". In a few interviews Pasalic denied that he had anything to do with Separovic's arrest, and he was assisted in it by Markica Rebic who naively claimed that at the time the former head of HIS was taken into custody Pasalic was on an excursion in Italy. The fact is, however, that a few days prior to Separovic's arrest, Pasalic had declared to Glas Slavonije that he did not eliminate the possibility that in the background of the football candal were the information handed over to Nacional by Separovic.

Indeed, nothing in this storm in the police helmet can be ruled out, but regardless of what was revealed afterwards in the scandal, it is sufficient for a true and plastic portrait of the regime. In parallel with this scandal, there are frequent cases of beating up of political opponents (Suvar, Tolic, antifascist veterans) and serious verbal threats (primarily of the heads of Party of Right Djapic and Kandare that they would get even with heads of Rijeka Linic and Antic "in the manner of fascists", and the threat of Miroslav Blazevic, football coach, that owner of Nacional Pukanic would be killed). This is probably the greatest paradox in this story. The scandal has shown that the police in Croatia was so strong and spread that one of its parts, the elite one, can calmly, with no risk for the security of the country be directed to service uncontrolled football passions of the head of the state and his sidekicks.

And this brings us to the best description of the police state which nowadays exists in Croatia. The police is everywhere where even the most commonplace interest of the ruling clique is protected, but it is nowehere to be found when the most vital interests of its political opponents are threatened. In this sense the best illustration is the scandalous statement of state attorney Berislav Zivkovic that indictments could not be raised against Djapic and Kandare because they were protected by "immunity of deputies" and the call to the damaged persons to lodge appeals against those who had attacked them because the state attorney's office had no time to register all these cases.

This clearly indicates that street attacks against opposition and trade union officials were not pure coincidence with the big police operation of search for secret documents. On the contrary, it seems more likely that the police is deliberately creating uncertainty and fear and that those who happen to step on its toes will not only have to face the organised forces for keeping order, but also those who are spreading disorder.

MARINKO CULIC