I have no intention of entering into a public debate with Nenad Ivankovic, or Vjesnik, the newspaper he edits. However, I do feel that it is my responsibility to offer a reply to the public:
- Ivanlovic s accusations of my alleged cooperation with the Yugoslav secret police, the UDBA, are false.
- Ivankovic did not offer any evidence for the claims published in the article.
- Mr. Nenad Ivankovic is really only a political pseudonym of the forces he represents in the Croatian political scene.
With the appointment of Ivankovic to the position of editor, Vjesnik, once the most respectable daily newspaper in Croatia, has reached the lowest ebb in its history.
When Ivankovic was appointed, his brief, which he has since successfully carried out, seems to have been to turn Vjesnik into a police bulletin. By this I mean no disrespect to the Croatian police force. If a serious newspaper were about to publish accusations of such a grave nature, it would try to substantiate them or at least provide a space for the accused party to reply. The dubious nature of the said document is most evident when it s contents are examined. It is founded on the story of two Serbian officers who relate the story of a third, unnamed security officer, who in turn speaks of a document written in ink....
Certain details from my undoubtedly colorful biography are an effective response to the fabrications of Nenad Ivankovic, his political patrons and their collaborators from the Serbian secret service. I have always expressed all my political opinions and ideas openly in public and with more than a fair share of personal courage. This is why I do not take this form of attack on my person any more seriously than any of the previous ones. On the contrary, this is yet another attempt to instill a reign of terror in Croatia. The only true fact in the entire article is that I was indeed imprisoned for the first time in April of 1966, when the secret police tried to recruit me. I rejected their proposals and as a consequence was expelled from high school on May 15th,1966, the last day of the school year. I lost all of the credits from my fourth year of school and was was banned from continuing my education in any school in the former [Yugoslavia]. This reaction was provoked by a controversial essay I wrote for my school exam.
According to Ivankovic, his political patrons and their collaborators from the Serbian secret police, this was probably supposed to have been the reward for my faithful cooperation with the secret police. My entire life after that - the years which I spent in prison, my being denied the right to travel abroad, being shadowed by the police and harassed in many other ways - was supposed to be Bak s reward for serving Nenad Ivankovic's present collaborators. The Croatian public has become familiar with parts of my life through the many articles and interviews that have been published over the years. However, many people who really were police collaborators are still alive, and I hereby invite them to come forward and talk about what they know about me and my activities publicly. I have always argued for equal treatment to be given to all police files, which is why I hereby call upon the Croatian Secret Service to make the entire contents of my files accessible to journalists and to the public. I should know best what might be in those files, and I am ready to face any consequences that might result from the release of this information. Finally, I should like to call upon the Croatian Parliament to initiate a public inquiry into my police files and render the contents thereof to Parliament.
Throughout his life, Nenad Ivankovic has been an instrument and the executor of the darkest forces of all the political regimes that he has lived under. We were born only a few houses away from each other, and within a short time of one another. He is the son of an UDBA officer, and I was born to a former officer of the Croatian domobran force, who had endured tremendous suffering immediately after the war. The suffering of my family continues to this day.
Our lives are still linked in a curious way. I was brought up in a spirit of rebellion against authoritarianism, he in a spirit of acceptance. Until only a handful of years ago, Ivankovic was the leading writer for the most rigid forces of the previous regime. His objective was to run campaigns against myself and my colleagues, whom he called the Ustasha clerical-nationalist elements. Today he calls us enemies of the Croatian state, and me the old UDBA collaborator.
However, these latest accusations say little about me and yet speak volumes about Ivankovic and those forces in Croatian society that he identifies with. I shall strive to continue living and working as I always have, aware of the fact that such attempts at political assassination inevitably lead to other forms of violence.
I do not perceive this latest attack as an assault on me alone, but as a frontal onslaught on the ideas that people like myself stand for - and not only in Croatia. I sincerely hope that such attempts at political assassination will not impede the process of democratization which will enable the principles of human rights to becomes firmly rooted in Croatia. Even though hundreds of articles loaded with lies and false accusations have been written about me over the years, I have never, in the forty-nine years of my life, brought charges against anyone. I am unfortunately forced to deviate from my past practice and make an exception in this case. In my ongoing struggle for the establishment a state of law in Croatia, I am giving the Croatian judiciary the opportunity to address the issue of the latest crime by Nenad Ivankovic, the editor of Vjesnik.
Ivan Zvonimir Cicak
May 1, 1996
