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DYING to GO to STRASBOURG My Struggle with Croatian Courts Ranko Bon Motovun, Istria March 2015

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DYING to GO to STRASBOURG My Struggle with Croatian Courts Ranko Bon Motovun, Istria March 2015 DYING TO GO TO STRASBOURG My Struggle with Croatian Courts Ranko Bon Motovun, Istria March 2015 In memory of John Milton, one of the first to argue for the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate, artistic: is that how you would have men? Good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. From Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, p. 195. 2 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION: MY PLEA TO THE COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN STRASBOURG (March 17, 2015) I am appealing to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg because I have exhausted the legal means available to me in Croatia. In particular, I am appealing against the charge of insult by Slobodan Vugrinec, the former mayor of Motovun. I am also appealing against Croatian courts that help the likes of Vugrinec in political repression against those who criticize their policies. Libel and insult cases have been one of the favorite weapons of politicians, and they have been victorious all too often. In 2008 and 2009, Vugrinec took me to court first for libel and then for insult. In 2009 he also arranged yet another libel case against me by the Municipality of Motovun. All this was done in preparation for the municipal elections in 2009. Vugrinec and the Motovun Municipality lost the libel cases, but he won the insult case at the Municipal Court in Pazin in 2010. All of us appealed to the Regional Court in Pula, but the original decision was upheld in 2011. Then I appealed to the Constitutional Court in Zagreb, and the original decision was upheld once again in 2014. I learned about it only a few days ago. Thus my appeal to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In 2009 I likened Vugrinec to a cockroach while I was talking at a gathering of green activists about his undemocratic ways. It was a metaphor for working in the dark and behind closed doors, as I put it on that occasion. Of course, the metaphor had no effect on the municipal elections in 2009, when Vugrinec was elected mayor of Motovun for the third time in a row. Surprisingly, neither the meaning nor the effect of the metaphor were taken into consideration by the Croatian courts. Now, Vugrinec took me to court because I was one of the outspoken critics of golf development in Istria and the rest of Croatia at the time. The development was a part of the worldwide real estate boom in the early years of the new millennium, and it concerned a large number of apartments and villas rather than golf as such. The development was not sustainable, but the political hierarchy from Istria to Zagreb was very much behind it. Ivan Jakovčić, the former governor of Istria, 3 worked closely with the former prime minister, Ivo Sanader, to promote golf. As a picturesque medieval town, Motovun was to offer one of more than sixty golf courses across the country. Vugrinec chose the court as an instrument of political repression against me, and it can be safely assumed that he had all the political backing for it all the way to the top of the hierarchy. Vugrinec got legal help from the office of Goran Veljović in Pula. The same office represented him personally, the municipality, and the investor in Motovun golf. The same office represented many other golf investors at the time, and it was close to the governor and his political party. In addition, Veljović’s office wrote the golf law that Sanader rammed through the Croatian parliament. It was a law of eminent domain, which treated golf as an activity of national interest, no less. The judge selected to officiate in this case was Denis Hek from the Municipal Court in Pazin. He was known to be very close to the Istrian Democratic Assembly, the governor’s party. Again, the governor and his party were enthusiastic supporters of golf on the Istrian peninsula, where more than twenty golf courses were planned at the time. Hek was at their disposal for cases like those lodged against me. Over the years, I learned that the ultimate reason for political support of golf development across Istria and Croatia as a whole had roots in corruption and organized crime going all the way to the top of the political hierarchy once again. Politicians and their friends were to become investors in golf by means of foreign investment companies like the one that operated in Motovun at the time. It was a money- laundering scheme, whereby money illegally deposited in foreign banks would be invested in golf development. The politicians used their influence in Croatia to prepare the paperwork for the profitable endeavor. With strong political ties in Austria, the Croatian politicians had Austrian banks at their disposal, as well. In short, I am a victim of political repression with corruption and organized crime in the background. As many had noticed before the real estate boom subsided in 2008, I was in real danger for my opposition to unsustainable golf development. If the barrage of court cases failed to shut me up, other measures would have been used. Luckily for me, the real estate boom came to its end in 2008, the very year Vugrinec had lodged his first court case against me. In support of these claims, I offer a selection of pieces from my Residua (www.residua.org). Accumulated over seven years, this testimony has turned into a veritable book. Arranged chronologically, the selected pieces offer a lot of detail to all my claims. I cannot but hope that the whole book will be of value to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This applies not only in my struggle with 4 Vugrinec, though. When it comes to human rights, courts in Croatia need an overhaul. And soon. 5 CROATIA SPELLS CONFLICT OF INTERESTS (October 3, 2008) Politically and administratively, Croatia is a bizarre country. Only consider the key players in Motovun’s golf development, which is currently being vetted by the state, regional, and local authorities. This is a protracted and complex process, but one of its features is abundantly clear. The investor is Jupiter Group, a fund management company from London. Used to development in risky places such as the Caribbean and Russia, they hired the Croatian Civil Engineering Institute (Institut Gradjevinarstva Hrvatske) from Zagreb to produce the environmental impact study of the proposed development. The Institute’s director, Jure Radić, used to be Franjo Tuđman’s minister of construction. He teaches at the Civil Engineering Faculty of the University of Zagreb. The Institute straddles the academia and commerce, and it is one of the most profitable commercial outfits in Croatia with strong performance on the Croatian Stock Exchange. Not surprisingly, it is believed to be the center of the Croatian construction lobby. Next, the environmental impact study is submitted to the Croatian Ministry of the Environment, led by minister Marina Matulović- Dropulić, who is one of the Institute’s commercial partners and owner of a large segment of its shares. Following the law, she puts together a commission to vet the study, but she soon intervenes in its work to ensure that the investor’s interests are not jeopardized by expert judgment about development in a very sensitive place like Motovun. Although the commission is ultimately split, the study is deemed by the minister to have been successful. The environmental impact study then comes to Motovun, where it is open to the public for scrutiny and discussion. The mayor of Motovun, Slobodan Vugrinec, also serves as deputy mayor of Vrsar on the western coast of Istria, thus effectively holding two jobs and spending too little of his precious time in Motovun. The town council that will ultimately decide what to do with golf development includes many members who stand to gain directly from it by the sale of their land. This is why the mayor has selected them for the council in the first place. One way or another, the mayor and the council will do their best to limit and marginalize public discussion of golf development in 6 a town considered for inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage sites together with its historic surroundings. Parenthetically, Jupiter Group plans to build a settlement with five- hundred beds within sight of Motovun, whose historic core now holds three-hundred permanent inhabitants. Among other strategic resources, the new settlement will use a large amount of water in a region increasingly susceptible to drought on account of rapid climate change. Golf itself will use agricultural land of high quality, which will be subjected to a plethora of herbicides and pesticides right next to Motovun Forest along the Mirna river, which is famous for its rare white truffles, as well as a wide variety of wild animals. Before it moves to detailed urban planning, golf development will also be vetted by the regional authorities. Governor of Istria, Ivan Jakovčić, will be directly involved in this process. It was he who had placed the mayor of Motovun in his post to promote golf development, and it is he who has promoted it for at least a decade in the context of the privatization of state land. In major developments, such as golf in Motovun, the state land is leased for a period of many years, while the private land adjoining it is sold outright to foreign investors. The spatial or physical planning process preceding individual development projects is widely used in the region to ensure that leasing and sale go hand in hand.
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