Zagreb, Croatia -- Recent actions against the local branch of a prominent U.S. philanthropic organization have raised concerns here that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman is stepping up efforts to intimidate his critics in academe, the news media, and the arts.
The Office of the State Attorney here announced indictments this month against three officers of the Open Society Institute-Croatia for violations of income-tax laws. The institute is part of the international network of foundations established and financed by George Soros, the Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist. Its grant-making programs in the arts, education, journalism, and legal rights are aimed at strengthening fledgling civil institutions in Croatia. In partnership with some European donor organizations, the foundation has helped sustain independent weekly newspapers in several Croatian cities.
As of last week, officials of the foundation said, they had not seen the indictments, which were announced in the state-controlled press. They said the institute had violated no laws.
The indictments were the latest in a series of official moves against the foundation and other people and organizations perceived to be enemies of the Croatian state, as President Tudjman has put it. In a televised speech last month to a session of his Croatian Democratic Community, the ruling party, he accused the Open Society Institute-Croatia of undermining the state through the promotion of"alien” international ideas.
He also denounced several prominent liberal intellectuals, including Ivo Banac, a native of Croatia who is a professor of history at Yale University and also teaches on Central European University’s Budapest campus. A former co-chairman of the board of the Open Society Institute-Croatia, he has visited the region regularly and has been critical of President Tudjman’s authoritarian ways. Others singled out for criticism included the U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, and foreign journalists in general.
“His speech makes it clear that Tudjman is concerned about any organization that threatens his hold on power, and considers an independent media to represent such a threat,” said Robert Kushen, deputy director of the Open Society Institute-New York, home office of the Soros Foundations."The building of an open society consists of building elements that are not part of the government. That seems to make many leaders uncomfortable.”
A few days after Mr. Tudjman’s speech, border guards stopped two officials of the Open Society Institute-Croatia who were returning from Slovenia with $65,000 in cash in their vehicle. The funds were seized without explanation, and the officials were interrogated and subjected to strip searches. A camera crew from the state television network filmed the arrests. The foundation’s director, Karman Basic, said the funds had not been returned, despite the fact that there are no legal restrictions on the import of currency into Croatia.
Mr. Kushen, who was in Zagreb last week, said he could not discuss the confiscated funds or confirm that they were to have been used to pay staff workers or make grants.
The indictments came after government auditors visited the institute’s headquarters in Zagreb, seizing documents that they later said showed that the organization had violated Croatian income-tax regulations. The State Attorney maintains that the institute had not been declaring hard-currency salary payments to its employees. Such practices are illegal but are common among international organizations operating in the region.
The actions against the Open Society Institute have academics worried that the ailing Croatian president might also move against other organizations seen as a challenge to his regime.
“Tudjman wants to scare everybody back into submission and to increase the level of fear,” said Dr. Banac."The speech resembled Communist times, when the General Secretary would stand up and read a list of enemies without providing a basis for the charges.
“I don’t think such a campaign will succeed, because most people now see through it,” he added."Nothing’s happened to me yet, but you never know.”
President Tudjman’s six-year rule has been seriously challenged by mass protests and, lately, by questions about his health. In November, 100,000 protesters demonstrated in Zagreb in opposition to the government’s planned closure of Radio 101, one of the country’s only broadcast sources of independent news. At the time, Mr. Tudjman was undergoing surgery in a Washington hospital for what unnamed U.S. sources called terminal cancer.
But times have changed, said Zarko Puhovski, a University of Zagreb philosophy professor and former director of the Open Society Institute here."Three years ago, there was such a campaign against me. People spit on me in the street. I received bomb threats, threatening phone calls. But I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. People no longer believe what the state media say.”
Official harassment continues, however. The Croatian branch of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, of which Mr. Puhovski is deputy-director, is being evicted from its offices by city officials, and new quarters have been difficult to find. “Landlords are afraid to rent to us,” he said,"because they think their flat might be bombed.”