Campaign against threats of repression in Slovenia
YUGOSLAVIA
"U
NDER THREAT of being seized for 'revealing' military secrets, on May 13 Mladina, the weekly publication of the Slovenian Socialist Youth Alliance, "was prevented from publishing excerpts from the minutes of a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In this material, which was to have been published in issue number 19 of Mladina, [Slovenian party head] Milan Kucan disputed the Military Council's assessment of the political situation in Slovenia."
This was the introduction to a petition that began circulating recently in Belgrade calling for the release of Janez Jansa, one of the official candidates for membership in the presidium of the Slovenian Youth Association, who was arrested on 31 May in Ljubljana and handed over to the military, on the grounds that he was in possession of secret military documents. A similar petition campaign was also organized in Zagreb. However, by the time that these petitions started circulating, two more prisoners were being held in military prisons in Slovenia - Ivan Borstner and David Tasic.
All three arrests occurred within the space of five days. In Ljubljana, the Com-
He's in for murder, me for grievous badly robbery harm and Stane for arme What are you in tor? It can't I wrote
CRITICISM of the authorities has been particularly outspoken in
Slovenia, a northern republic in the Yugoslav federation.
The following article indicates the extent to which this has created a focus for the fight for freedom of expression in the land of
Tito's heirs.
MICHELE LEE mittee for Justice was formed to demand their release. This committee has received broad support from all walks of Slovene life, including workers, journalists, local government and party officials, the
Church, the Writers' Association and so on.
The party youth organization itself has intervened energetically demanding an explanation of the arrest of Jansa, who is an outstanding activist, a member of the peace movement, author of many noted articles about the Yugoslav People's
Army and theoretician of people's self-defence. Many of Jansa's articles were specially written for
Mladina. In fact, he is one of the journal's editors. The arrests, therefore, represented a blatant attack on Mladina, the Slovenian
Socialist Youth Alliance and on
Yugoslav democracy as a whole.
It seems clear that the Yugoslav public across the country has awakened to the danger of the army being used against "undesirauthorities and liberal use of the gaols.
The petition quoted above expresses "our solidarity with [Slovenian] protests and demands." Also, "in order to prevent further possible abuse of legal provisions relating to state, military and official secrets," it urges the Federal Assembly to initiate a thoroughgoing debate on the implication of what has happened in Slovenia. The instant responses in Ljubljana, Belgrade and Zagreb show an admirable degree of solidariLy on the part of Yugoslavia's democratic forces, be they inside or outside the League of Communists.
This swift reaction is also due to the fact that at the beginning of May well-founded rumours spread through Slovenia that last March the army had called for sweeping arrests in the republic (the figure of 300 was mentioned in this context) that would have removed all major figures in Slovenian public life. The meeting of the Yugoslav party presidium to which the petition referred, and the minutes of the meeting that Mladina was prevented from publishing, all related to this incident.
The circumstances of this affair have not been properly clarified. Those who initially rejected the idea of a military intervention in Slovenia must now be reassured about their "rational" attitude. In fact, statements made by people who witnessed the search of Jansa's premises, and by the chief and acting editors of Mladina (Robert Botteri and France Zavrl, respectively) show that no incriminating material was found during the searches. For example, the piece of paper confiscated from a folder lying open (!) on top of Tasic's desk in Mladina bore no stamp indicating that it was a secret document.
The last thing Yugoslavia needs is an army out of civilian control. On the contrary, what the country needs above all is democracy. According to Yugoslav law, people accused of revealing military secrets can be held without trial for six months without being charged.
The time has come first for a critical rebel a forty
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No document
International Viewpoint #144 • June 27, 1988 able" critics. In this way, under the convenient pretext of protecting military secrets, the local republic or provincial authorities can be bypassed. The possibility of a "Kosovization" of Slovenia is now being discussed. [Kosovo is an autonomous region with an Albanian majority and longstanding national tensions.] This means deliberate criminalization of demands embarrassing to the examination of the law and/or custom that allows informal bodies like the Military Council to intervene in politics; and second to take away the army's right to hold and try civilians. * 1. France Zavrl is himself involved in court proceedings brought against him at the insistence of the Federal public prosecutor for publishing an article on a junket of Branko Mamula, who was minister of defence at the time. It was entitled "Mamula go home," and condemned Yugoslav sales of weapons to the Ethiopian govemment.