1998 World Press Freedom Review

The Croatian media is far from free. Government intimidation through the courts has reached an astounding level with editors of independent newspapers facing a plethora of criminal charges which appear designed to force them to spend more time sitting on court benches than at their desks. Moreover, the state owns a significant proportion of the influential broadcast and print media outlets, via which it pumps out the party line.

The Croatian Journalists’ Association launched a campaign this year, supported by IPI, to reform Croatia’s defamation laws. The need for such reform has been highlighted recently by a barrage of libel suits, both civil and criminal, against journalists and publishers. The 500 such suits currently pending before the Croatian courts - many of which have been filed by members of the ruling party - are having an extremely detrimental effect on freedom of expression and the press. These cases are costly and time-consuming and the threat of imprisonment continues to linger.

The problem is clearly illustrated by the case of Davor Butkovic, former editor-in-chief of Globus, acquitted on April 20 of charges of criminal defamation brought by 23 ministers in President Tudjman’s government. Had he been convicted he could have faced up to eight years’ imprisonment and fines of up to four million kuna (US$645,000).

Butkovic and Vlado Vurusic, the former editor-in-chief and a reporter respectively for the independent weekly Globus, had already been convicted and sentenced on charges of criminal libel stemming from an October 1996 article which claimed Ivica Rajic, an indicted war criminal still at large, had been spotted in a motel in Split, which the Defence Ministry owns. Butkovic and Vurusic were sentenced to suspended jail terms of four months and two months respectively for defaming the country’s Defence Ministry.

The much-publicised libel trial against deputy editor Viktor Ivancic and correspondent Marinko Culic of the satirical weekly Feral Tribune finally came to a close on December 21 when the two were acquitted. The journalists faced charges of insulting President Franjo Tudjman in an April 1996 article and photo montage when they strongly criticised his plan to bury the bones of Croatian fascists alongside their victims at the site of a World War II death camp by comparing it to a similar plan by Franco.

Ivancic and Culic faced criminal charges of offending President Tudjman’s "honour and reputation," which can carry a sentence of up to three years in prison. Feral Tribune face nearly 60 criminal and civil libel cases - filed mostly by officials and individuals close to the regime - totalling US$3 million. The newspaper’s editors charge that the government wants to bankrupt the paper through law suits. Despite continued domestic and international protests, the Government took no steps to revise articles of the Penal Code that authorise the criminal prosecution of journalists who insult the honour or dignity of the president, prime minister, the speaker of parliament, or the chief justices of either the Supreme Court or the Constitutional Court, as well as those who publish "state secrets."

Ivana Trump, the Czech-born former wife of American billionaire Donald, bought a major stake in Croatian daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija in January. She also announced plans to invest in a nationwide private television network .

On May 11, authorities closed independent local television station TV Moslavina, which broadcasts from Kutina (southeast of Zagreb), RSF reported. The station also had its licence revoked, which it had held for two years. TV Moslavina’s management regards the actions of the authorities as a "political measure." The procedure through which these decisions were taken allows no possibility of appeal for the television station. The control over broadcasting licences allows authorities to remove certain media outlets from the Croatian audiovisual scenery. In this context, in November 1996, the concession given to the independent Zagreb station Radio 101 was removed. Under pressure from the public and international freedom of expression organisations, Radio 101’s licence was renewed in November 1997 for a period of five years.

A bomb exploded at the offices of the independent weekly Imperial in Zagreb on June 18. While the staff luckily escaped injury, the explosion caused extensive material damage.

Some 50 journalists demanded the resignation of Croatian Interior Minister Ivan Penic in October after they were barred from entering a mass with Pope John Paul II. The reporters, photographers and television crews, all of whom had the required security passes, filed a written complaint after police officers refused to let them pass and mocked them. One journalist was injured in the leg. The Foreign Ministry, in charge of accrediting journalists to cover the Pope’s visit to Croatia, blamed the Interior Ministry for the incident and complained immediately when it heard of the problem. The journalists who signed the complaint said the police had used "unprecedented rigidity" towards the reporters who worked for Italian, Spanish, French and German television, foreign agencies and domestic media.

Forum 21 - a group of journalists working for both the state-controlled broadcaster and the independent media who demand the end of political interference in media - called for the resignation of four executives of Croatian state television (HRT) after they were appointed to a ruling party body in February. "We regard the exercise of political duties in the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) as incompatible with journalistic work," Forum 21 chief Damir Matkovic told a press conference.

The four were named as head of programming Hloverka Novak-Srzic, information director Obrad Kosovac, the head of creative programming Marija Peakic-Mikuljan and the editor of the evening news bulletin, Liljana Bunjevac-Filipovic.

According to Matkovic, a new law on the HRT, adopted by parliament on October 29, does not include most of the Council of Europe’s key suggestions, which are customary mechanisms in democracy. The law does not include suggestions that the dismissals and appointments of HRT directors be carried out by the HRT Council, or that the Supervisory Board cannot include members who are MPs.

Also discarded was the suggestion that the parliament or government should not have the right of electoral veto in non-government institutions which, according to Matkovic, leaves the possibility of retaining "suitable" and eliminating "unsuitable" parties.

Under the new law, HRT will retain three channels while a public concession will be advertised for the issuing of a licence for a fourth channel. Matkovic told the HINA news agency that launching a fourth channel is a "financial and technical adventure". It calls for a DM25m investment, and the whole project could be realised only in a few years, creating a delay which he believes would help HTV retain its monopoly.

The OSCE mission to Croatia announced that by supporting the amendment to the law on Croatian Radio-Television (HRT) an excellent opportunity for the democratic reform of Croatia was missed. The amendment to the law on HRT contains only a minor number of references delivered in the past six months by the Council of Europe and the OSCE mission to Croatia, said OSCE mission’s spokesman, Mark Thompson.

The Commercial Televisions Association issued a statement following the adoption of the new amendments to the law claiming that HRT, the main source of information for 70 percent of the population, has such an unfair advantage over commercial broadcasters they would not be able to survive. The association stated the HRT was collecting subscriptions and transmitting advertisements without any limits and at prices it itself sets, without public control. "In certain programme segments (such as sports programmes, foreign films and series), the HRT is exclusively a commercial television and acts inappropriately by broadcasting the logo of sponsors in the screen corner and transmits 15-minute blocks of advertisements before series and films, while the law only allows up to nine minutes of advertisements," the statement said.

The European Commission announced financial aid of DM5m to independent Croatian media for 1998. The establishment of a nation-wide independent television station and the creation of an independent newspaper distribution network were identified as the two priorities.

In the run-up to the Bosnian elections, the Election Appeals Sub-Commission (EASC), part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission to Bosnia, removed several candidates of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) from electoral lists on September 4 as a result of electoral regulation violations by the HRT. Independent supervision of HRT programmes, conducted in the period from August 27 to September 3, established that the HRT had covered the HDZ BiH four times more than the first subsequent party whose election campaign had been presented in both news and other programmes. The Media Expert Commission (MEC), which is part of the OSCE mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, had previously requested that the HRT urgently change the manner in which it presents political parties participating in Bosnia-Herzegovina elections, and warned it would take punitive measures if their requirements were not met.

HRT director, Ivica Vrkic, called the OSCE’s decision to remove the candidates from election lists as "tendentious, provocative and harmful to the general situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

In October, Croatia’s biggest bank offered a reward of one million kuna (US$167,000) to anyone who could reveal how confidential records of President Franjo Tudjman’s wife’s bank accounts reached the press. Leaked documents revealed that Ankica Tudjman deposited nearly half a million marks in Zarrebacka Banka - 210,000 marks (US$130,000) in one account in March 1998 and 230,000 marks two years earlier. Ankica Tudjman runs a children’s charity but has no businesses of her own and is described as retired. In a recent asset declaration, Tudjman said she owned nothing but a car.

Two bank clerks, Ankica Lepej and Robert Horvat, turned themselves in to the police and admitted passing the details on to the press. Both face between one and five years in jail if found guilty on charges of violating bank secrecy laws. However, the popular feeling among Croats seems to be that Ankica Tudjman should be investigated, and the clerks applauded.

The independent weekly Nacional accused the ruling HDZ party in November of trying, for the second time in a month, to force it out of business by squeezing it financially. Nacional’s editor Ivo Pukanic told Reuters it would fold unless the country’s main newspaper distributor Tisak - controlled by a tycoon linked to the HDZ - handed over 3.2 million kuna (US$515,000) it owed the magazine. Nacional itself has been pressed by its printers - state-owned Hrvatska Tiskara - to pay off a debt of 700,000 kuna (US$112,900) to them. Tisak owns hundreds of news stands and controls the sale of virtually every newspaper and magazine in the country.

The editor and four journalists of Nacional filed charges against the Croatian Interior Ministry in December for allegedly spying on them, RFE/RL reported. "These illegal actions resulted in the violation of the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights," lawyer Ivan Polan said.

Interior Minister Ivan Penic has admitted the secret police have targeted individual journalists, but only when part of a "security problem". He has never explicitly denied allegations of spying on the staff of Nacional.