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HELSINKI MONITOR OF SLOVENIA
Human Rights problems in Slovenia 3.2.1999
With an aim to promote development of civil society and state of law according to its international mandate, Helsinki Monitor of Slovenia as the national Helsinki committee, is obliged to draw attention to deviations from the mentioned goals. Media pogroms against a journalist of the Slovenske novice, Mr. Bojan Budja who on December 28,1998 published an article titled »The Slovenes Were Shooting Prisoners of War?« and with an intertitle TO THE HAGUE, by all means are a disturbing deviation to Machiavelism and to the old mental patterns of ......... and reasurements of political ...... to authorities. Based on authentic direct sources Bojan Budja has published the article about a qute possible war crime at the Holmec border crossing, when at least two soldiers of Zugoslav Peoples Army (JLA) were killed, out of a group of sodliers who surrendered with a white sheet. Video shots of the event made by the national TV Slovenia, have all of a sudden become ....... Aside of that, according to the statement in Budja’s artcle, they became property of an individual and thus not accessible to the public. Before publishing the article on shooting soldiers of JLA, who were surrendering, Budja requested from the Ministry of Interior for approval of an insight in documentation. The request was rejected , since all documents of the kind were marked as state secret. Nevertheless the journalist acquired a kind of a document about the case. This is why the minister announced an investigation because of ............ of official secret. Simultaneously the Ministry of Interior intorduced an investigation against itself about the case Holmec. On January 16,1999 POP TV broadcast doubtless videoshots of the event taken by the Austrian TV on June 28,1991. (Helsinki Monitor obtained an opinion of an international military expert about the shots.) Following the TV broadcast a wave of meetings and ...... against the article and the videoshots (designated as worthless forgery and photomounting - according to the opinion of the organizers of meetings and alureates of Slovenian journalism) - as well as against the individuals who have brought the confidential document on Holmec to light. Public .... and summoning to responsibility have been directed/targeted to individuals, who triggered discovery of the war crime, and not towards those, who eventually committed it, and to those, who bear penal responsibility for ...... of war crime. In the newspapers certain employees of the Ministry of Interior are summoned to responsibility, presumably responsible for disclosure of confidential document on the Holmec killing, and the minister of the Interior is burdened by impeachment, for presumable objective responsibility in bringing the war crime to light. All these state officials have been defending themselves with grater and greater quantities of statemnts of loyalty to the state of Slovenia and its ten days of war in June 1991, to save their heads. A number of journalist have been writing ptiotic condemnations to the discoverers, summoning to public law and order and to the morality. The president of the Society of Journalists has .... the journalist Bojan Budja to the court of honour for breaching the code of journalists ethics. Until now only one article has been published as a letter to the editor, pointing out the topsy turvy world and appealed to establishing mechanisms of state of law in the case of Holmec. The author of the letter has been Franc Miklav?i?, president of non-parliamentarian party KSU - Christian Socialists. Since indepenance untill very recently the State Prosecutor’s Office has been led by Mr. Anton Drobni?, who advocates condemnation of extrajudicial killings of 1945 and rehabilitation of bishop Rožman, sentenced for collaboration with the nazis. Before his departure Mr. Drobni? established a special group of five prosecutors ...., to whom he asigned task of fight against organized crime and to investigate the mentioned crimes against humanity. We appeal to the State Prosecutor’s Office to initiate penal ..... and triggers investigation against unknown .....of killings at Holmec. We address a public question to the State Prosecutor’s Office, why in three years since the completion of criminalist ..... it hasnot prepared an inditment against Daniel B. from Postojna, who himself acknowledged to the criminalist, that on a party in Croatia he and the company grilled a certain Serb alive. The event was reported by the daily Dnevnik on Dec. 29,1991, while the State Prosecutor’s Office, led by Mr. Drobni?, a member of Christian Democrates, has not written an inditement - in spite of the acknowledgement of the doer, and despite numerous material proofs, an entire albume of photographs from the picnic of Daniel B. from Postojna suspected of war crime. The Holmec case, testimonies which arrived to the Hague, the grilled man - cannot be concealed and excused from political reasons in the name of newer and newer holy wars. War is legalised killing, and war crimes are those killings in which the international legislation has not been respected - they happen in every war. A stae is democratic, constitutional and civil if war crimes are not concealled, but broght to justice and sanctioned. It is clear that the responsibility is individual and not collective. The recent visit to support the policemen in police KADETNICA, presumably of shaken respect, by the highest representative of the Catholic Church, the Slovene archbishop, after the disclosure of the events at Holmec, is even more redundant and regretful. ...... without piety with which the highest representative of the church takes sides in the ..... war crime? Burrial of the dead, ..... of weapons, holy war or absolution? The ..... as well as the ecclesiatical authority. To the benefit of fulfilling
obligations of Slovenia as a state of law, theenclosed documents are given
to professional and public discussion. We summon the State Prosecutor’s
Office to start investigation of the Holmec case without delay and .....
against Daniel B. within 14 days, since in the opposite case we will be
forced to internationalize Statement No. 5.
PRESIDENT
Enclosed:
For information:
For publishing:
P.S. 17.3.1999:
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