Nowy Eurodialog

Franjo Tudjman wanted to solve Croatia's problems with history once and for all. His idea was truly simple: all that had to be done was to mix the ashes of the victims of Croatian fascism, murdered at the concentration camp in Jasenovec, with the bones of their oppressors, the Croatian Ushtashe who died at the hands of the Yugoslavian partisans. He must have imagined a grand national ceremony, have smelled the incense and heard the bathetic singing of the choirs; the winds of history would give him wings. However, the Feral Tribune, the independent Split weekly of "Croatian anarchists, protestants and heretics," could not understand the president's simple idea and mocked it. The government brought charges against the editorship. When the Feral Tribune won the case, the government appealed. Under the law extending special protection of the president and the four other highest state officials, as passed by a parliament dominated by the governing HDZ party, the Feral editors are liable to punishment for their sarcasm.

The Time of Dinosaurs

Tudjman holds an unquestioned position in Croatia. He trounced his opponents in the presidential election. His face stared down from large, ubiquitous color posters against a background of the checkerboard Croatian flag. The citizens regard him as the father of Croatian independence and the author of the successful lightning military strike that seized the Krajina -- the operation that finally humiliated those hated aggressors, the Serbs. On the eve of Independence Day, the Feral Tribune published a caricature of the president in his white, gold-embroidered general's cap; Tudjman's head grew out of the neck of a dinosaur. This is a part of the world where it seems that extinct ideas, like the antediluvian reptiles of Jurassic Park, have come back to life.

The young Croatian state is still playing with patriotic props and nationalistic symbols like an infant with a rattle. It cannot get enough of what was forbidden in Tito's old Yugoslavia. Its traditions, for the lack of any alternative, reach back to the fascist state created in Croatia and Bosnia by Ante Pavelic. It seeks respectable robes of authority in Catholic ritual. As Zrinka Vrabec-Mojzes, managing editor of the independent Radio 101 station in Zagreb says, "painted-over communists now go to church alongside the old fascists."

Croatia was the biggest winner in the war. Unfettered by a total embargo like the one imposed on Serbia, its economy could grow -- and the war produced a boom. With numerous and powerful western backers, it never suffered Serbian- style expulsion from the European family of nations. As long as the war lasted, or at least until the outbreak of the Croatian-Muslim conflict, it had international sympathy on its side. If you stroll through Zagreb, you feel that the people want for nothing. The shop windows look like those in Paris, Warsaw or London. The excellent Croatian wine goes well with a good dinner in an Italian or Mexican restaurant. The stylish Zabica cafe in the Old Town serves up a perfect spritzer. Taxi drivers do not try to rip off their fares, in contrast to their counterparts at the Belgrade airport. The art-nouveau townhouses in the picturesque little streets place the city firmly within the cultural sphere of Habsburg Mitteleuropa. Except that it is impossible to buy foreign newspapers in the many kiosks and people seem resigned to the fact that there are questions they cannot answer. Refugees from Bosnia vegetate in the Hotel Panorama (on the top floor, so as not to frighten the guests). Baby carriages and strollers are parked in front of the door, and old people with the characteristic empty look that I recall from the refugee centers at Zenica or Split sit motionless every day in the armchairs in the lobby, as if they were waiting for good news but knew that it will never come. Near the door to the hotel elevator, someone has pasted a notice about the interment of the remains of a young man who died in 1992, at the age of 28, in the fighting in Osijek (he must have been a hotel employee who volunteered for the front). Many peoples' remains have not yet found peace. On the streets, I see men who enjoy wearing uniforms.

Crowds of people have converged on the consulate of Bosnia Hercegovina and refugees fill the corridors, waiting to pick up brand-new passports with the Bosnian fleur-de-lis on the cover. Someone is making a ruckus; he wants to visit his family in Bosnia and still needs another document.

Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of the old Federation, lives in Zagreb. Now, he runs a private firm. He was urged to return to politics, but refused. Many people, like a retired professor from the Zagreb Immunology Institute whom I know, still long for the old Yugoslavia. "We had scientific contacts with the whole world then," he says. "Now, we're being pickled in our own sauce. Zagreb used to be a different city. The refugees have changed it.

What's it all about?" he wonders, shaking his gray head. "They give the weather forecast for Croatia and Bosnia on television. But Bosnia's an independent country... In the newspapers, they write that Croatians in Bosnia are losing their jobs and being replaced by Muslims."

Melting into the crowds of pedestrians on Ban Jelacic Square in the center of Zagreb, I wonder how these people are different from those on the streets of Belgrade. Perhaps I know - they seem sadder, although they have fewer reasons for sadness than the Serbs.

The Enemies Of Croatia

There is less media diversity in Croatia than in Serbia. Tudjman's party, the HDZ, behaves far more unceremoniously than Milosevic's socialists, who have learned to reign themselves in and yield ground under western criticism and pressure.

"Politicians try to foment discord among journalists," says Jagoda Vukusic of Novi List. She is the predsjednica or chairperson of the 2,800-member Croatian Journalists' Association. "They create conflicts and manipulate people. At their behest, journalists from the government-controlled television station have formed a new Association of Croatian Journalists. They call us "enemies of Croatia".

With the help of western-European experts and following models from democratic countries, the journalists managed to force a Press Act through parliament. This has made little difference, since President Tudjman and the four other highest-ranking state officials are shielded from any possible criticism by a different statute.

The government oversees radio and television. The local television stations in Zagreb, Osijek and Split are privately-owned, but the shareholders are HDZ activists. The mass-circulation newspapers concentrate on sensationalism and appeal to their readers' lower instincts. The ambitious new independent weekly Tjednik, with Soros Foundation financial backing, has been unable to make an impression in the market. The elitist magazine Arkzin, which opposed the war from the beginning and calls for the "construction of civic society," preaches to the converted, since its readership is the same narrow group as always. The editorial board of the Feral Tribune might fail to return from a court hearing someday. The church has also begun building up its media base. A nationwide Catholic radio station has finally gone on the air after a long bureaucratic process. Its chief is Mirko Matausic, head of the Association of Catholic Journalists and provincial of the Franciscans. His objective is to train a generation of Catholic journalists. There is no freedom of speech in Croatia, and journalists operate under political pressure. Some resign themselves to it in order to survive. Others try to fight back.

When the government tried to cancel the license of Radio 101, the popular station's journalists managed to bring 100,000 people onto the streets of the capital. Letters and faxes in protest poured in from around the world. The government backed down and renewed the license.

"I am afraid that the real problems are only beginning," comments Radio 101 managing editor Zrinka Vrabec-Mojzes, who is always ready to take up a challenge. She is in the eighth month of pregnancy. She modulates her professional radio voice as she recalls how, in 1989, Radio 101 was the first station to broadcast an interview with then-dissident Franjo Tudjman. Zrinka is not afraid to speak up. She criticizes the opposition, which has been too factious to form a political counterweight to Tudjman. Things look straightforward to her: HDZ is an oligarchical party of communist and fascists, brought together by Tudjman. They privatized the media, industry and the banks. They have money and they run everything... Now, they pray together in church and use religion as their tool. Some priests, especially in the provinces, have been willing tools...

People no longer trust politicians," says Zrinka. "They would like to see us as a political force, an antidote to the regime. But we are only journalists, carrying out our professional obligations... Slobodan Milosevic has been much more clever in his dealings with the Serbian journalists, leaving them more freedom. Tudjman keeps us on a tight leash..."

Sasa Milosevic, director of the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, looks back nostalgically to the situation in the Yugoslavian media in the late 1980s. "That was a great, wasted opportunity," he sighs. An Arkzin poster hangs on his wall. The poster shows an ecologically conscious figure tossing a Swastika and the Ushtashe symbol into a trashcan. The caption reads, "It's time to clean up the garbage in Croatia."

The Great Challenge

Tomislav is an ambitious young Croat who works for a foreign firm. "Is any sort of re-unification of the countries of the old Yugoslavia possible?" I ask him nonchalantly.

"Any sort of union or federation is out of the question," he answers. "Some sort of loose economic links might be possible, but that would require very adroit political maneuvering. Bosnia will never make it without Croatia. At the same time, as long as the Dayton accords are not respected, there will be no Bosnia. Now there are two Bosnian states. What next? What will happen in Kossovo?" "I don't know," I think. "Nobody knows."

Vesna Jankovic, editor-in-chief of Arkzin, gets around Zagreb on a bicycle. It is easier to park than a car. She tells me about preparations for a protest against the law that extends special protection to the president and the four other highest-ranking state officials.

"Objective journalism based on western standards is not enough," she say. "Wide-scale community education is needed..."

I know that Vesna is right.