Ivo Banac, president of the HHO After the unexpected death on 24 July, as the result of a heart attack, of Ranko Helebrant, the former deputy executive director of the Croatian Helsinki Committee (Hrvatski helsinski odbor / HHO), just ten days after he had sent an open letter to the press detailing the difficult situation at the HHO, for which he blamed the current president of the organisation, Ivo Banac, it appeared that the situation in that once highly regarded human rights organisation had settled to some degree. Ranko Helebrant's public statement was the result of a crisis that has lasted for several months at the organisation that, ever since Ivo Banac came to its helm in November of 2007, has seen the departures of, besides Ranko Helebrant, former HHO president Zarko Puhovski and executive director Srdan Dvornik, while Zdravko Bazdan has tendered his resignation as a member of the Executive Committee, as did Tin Gazivoda, while lawyer Veljko Miljevic has frozen his membership.

After the "summer break" that will be remembered by the Ivo Banac's defence of Marko Perkovic Thompson's right to hold a concert in Pula and his polemic with Slavenka Drakulic in the British paper The Guardian, in which he told her that she cannot expect Ustashe symbols to be banned in Croatia while there is no official will to also ban Communist symbols, thereby equating fascism and communism, it turned out that the situation in the HHO was far from being patched up, but has in fact, never been worse. Some long-time members have withdrawn their membership in the HHO, such as film director Rajko Grlic and professor Nikola Viskovic. Rajko Grlic explained his withdrawal by his disagreement with the positions Ivo Banac expressed in his debate in The Guardian with Slavenka Drakulic, and, in his letter, published by the Novi list daily, says this among other things: "As it appears to me that the HHO has been engaged of late more in politics than in human rights, I do not wish that I, as one who has never been the member of any political party, be represented by, or that someone speaks on my behalf, in light of current affairs".

Ivo Banac's custom of expressing his personal views as those of the HHO as an organisation, without prior consultation with the other members, is not something that bothers only Rajko Grlic. As one of the reasons for withdrawing from membership professor Nikola Viskovic of the Faculty of Law in Split did in fact cite the controversial political statements made by the HHO president without consultation with other members. Banac's contentious statements on fascism, communism and NATO, without indicating that they were exclusively his own positions, is something that also bothers other HHO members, among whom there is a sentiment that Banac's behaviour is very authoritative. Banac is, in the opinion of many, exceptionally crude in intra-organisation relations, while in his relations with other organisations he behaves as if human rights organisations are mutual antagonists, rather than those that should cooperate. Some members of the HHO feel that Banac is doing everything he can to take complete control of the HHO, and since he does not suffer a difference of opinion, that he has undertaken steps to purge the HHO of those who do not share his opinions. They also recalled that Banac behaved much the same way in other milieus in which he worked, such as the environmental protection ministry and the Liberal Party.

Nikola Viskovic also objected to the lack of reaction on the part of Banac to the closing down of the Feral Tribune paper, the editorial board of which Banac had once been a member, and considers Banac's harsh behaviour towards the now deceased Ranko Helebrant inexcusable.
Before his death Ranko Helebrant, namely, sent Ivo Banac a letter in which he tried to warn him of the difficult situation at the HHO. But instead of a direct answer, Banac sent an answer to all of the members to all of the members of the Committee except him, and Helebrant decided to speak out publicly about the problems in the organisation, which Nacional wrote about in July. Helebrant accused Banac of financial problems cause, among other things, by Banac's decision to suspend some of the existing projects, without applying for new ones, as a result of which the employees did not receive their wages for months, and of creating a conspiratorial atmosphere at the office, a lack of communication with the employees and his dependence on a single source of information at the office, that is on what secretary Marica Cicak tells him. And while Helebrant entered the correspondence with Banac with good intentions, to try to resolve some of the problems troubling the HHO in discussion with him, he had the opportunity to see before his death how Banac deals with those who do not share his views.

---

Ivan Zvonimir Cicak In his letter of 30 April, Banac called Helebrant a manipulator, an "NGO apparatchik", an unscrupulous person and a snitch, indirectly accused him of financial hanky-panky and tried to question his expertise and knowledge because he lacked a university education. Banac told Helebrant that he "was at his disposal in search of job offers that would be for him better, safer, and more lucrative", which Helebrant was three months later forced to do, seeking engagement at the B.a.B.e. association. After having thus disparaged Helebrant, Banac called on all members of the HHO to say freely what they though of his activities as president. The only one to respond was, again, Ranko Helebrant, which Ivo Banac responded to in a new letter of 4 July, again, not addressed to him directly, in which he says, among other things: "I have no intention of responding to this hypocrite who is able to talk with you with a smile on his lips, and sharpen a knife or prepare a noose behind your back. (...) I will do everything I can to publicly unmask Helebrant, so that the public gets to know all it can about another of our infamous former employees." And although Banac recommended Helebrant find other employment, in his second letter he seems astonished that B.a.B.e. employed him: "My position towards the B.a.B.e. association will depend largely on their further disclosures in this case, which cannot remain only at the level of the initiative of one employee, regardless of how marginal that employee might be."

Exactly 20 days after reading that letter, Ranko Helebrant died in his sleep of a heart attack. His friends and associates say that all of the affairs surrounding the HHO, an organisation to which he dedicated 11 years of his life and in which his colleagues recognised and respected him, and the attempt by Ivo Banac to depict his as a liar, manipulator and to belittle him, devastated him. And that Ivo Banac has not, even after his death, forgiven Helebrant for opposing him is proven by the fact that he did not only not come to Helebrant's commemoration of funeral, but that he also told HHO employees that they could only go to his funeral in a personal capacity, and that not even an "in memory" tribute to the man was put on the HHO Internet pages. What is more, Ranko Helebrant is still cited as a the head of one of their projects.

Parallel to the pubic outbreak of the entire affairs, which Ivo Banac in a 16 September interview for the Novi list daily describes as "getting out business in order", the HHO and Ivo Banac have become an ever more frequent topic in the Jutarnji list daily column written by former HHO president Ivan Zvonimir Cicak. In May he first attacked Zarko Puhovski, calling his withdrawal from membership the "manner of a capricious brat that tries by kicking up a racket to divert attention to himself." Then, in his column of 2 August, less than ten days after the death of Ranko Helebrant, Cicak wrote that the claims that the HHO was falling apart were "nonsense", and this: "On the basis of the compulsive scribbling of the late HHO employee Ranko Helebrant, Nacional has launched a real campaign of claims of the breakdown of the HHO, which much of the press has uncritically accepted." He goes on to list the members of the HHO that have left the organisation over the past months, about which Nacional also wrote, but making "bad guys" out of all of these people.

His comments on Tin Gazivoda are interesting: "Tin Gazivoda submitted his resignation to membership in the executive Committee because international institutions had objected to the fact that he was in fact a member of the Committee at all, which he could not be anywhere else in the world because of a conflict of interest. He is, namely, at the head of the Government's Human Rights Centre, a post he was appointed to by an executive order from Prime Minister Sanader." After he made it evident in several other of his columns that he was on excellent terms with Banac, Cicak on 6 September once again pointed out that Tin Gazivoda was in a conflict of interest and added: "I left the HHO some ten years ago, tendering a written resignation in which I stated that I was leaving the Committee because the 'unscrupulous careerist Tin Gazivoda' had been appointed its director. Time has shown that I was in the right."

10 years ago Tin Gazivoda was 23 years old and had just returned from getting his education at Stanford. At the time that Cicak was president of the HHO his thoughts on the concept of the Vote 99 campaign differed from those of Cicak. Cicak felt that the HHO should play the most dominant role in that campaign; while Gazivoda's concept for the campaign was that it should encompass as large a number of civil society organisations as possible. It was not long afterwards that Cicak tendered his resignation to the post of HHO president, but appears to have taken his falling out with Tin Gazivoda personally, and never to have forgiven him. If it is true that Banac plans to bring Cicak back into the ranks of the HHO, it may be assumed that Cicak wants no competition there in the form of Tin Gazivoda. Ivan Zvonimir Cicak was unwilling to comment neither the possibility of his return to the HHO, nor the story of his conflict with Tin Gazivoda, which he referred to simply as nonsense.

Ranko Helebrant But Tin Gazivoda, the director of the Human Right Centre, feels that Cicak's charges that he is in a conflict of interest, something was also asserted by Ivo Banac in his 16 September interview for Novi list, are absurd. "When I became the director of the Centre in 2005 I broached the issue of a possible conflict of interest on two occasions at sessions of the Executive Committee, and it was concluded on both occasions that there was no conflict of interest. When the issue was, for other reasons, again put forward at the start of this year, I immediately tendered my resignation to membership in the Executive Committee, and remained only a member of the organisation. Now I am, in fact, being asked to leave the organisation, and to do so before the issue is discussed in principle at a plenary session of the HHO. I feel that what is at issue is an unseemly attitude towards me as long-time member, pressure and a threatening of the right to free association. A discussion about whether I am in a conflict of interest is absurd and I maintain that it is not what is at issue here, because there really is no money or interest here, rather a desire to chuck me out so that Banac could have complete control over everything that goes on at the HHO."

Instead, Gazivoda says, the topic of Banac's flawed leadership of the organisation should be in the spotlight, and the fact that he has succeeded in the space of less than a year to enter into a large number of conflictual situations. "I am, in that context, only one in a series. If a man enters into conflict with Zarko Puhovski, and with Srdan Dvornik, and with Zdravko Bazdan, and with Ranko Helebrant, and with Rajko Grlic, and with Nikola Viskovic, and if, in the meantime he disbands the Media Council, the HHO Environmental Council, and if the HHO Youth Section disbands of its own accord, if cooperation ceases with a significant number of other non-governmental organisations with which the HHO has to date cooperated successfully, such as the Documente and B.a.B.e. associations, and if you add all that up, then I think the problem is not with me. And if we are going to discuss a conflict of interest, then, following the same criteria, we should raise the question of how Banac was elected to the post of HHO president while still serving as an MP in Croatian Parliament." Gazivoda sees the key problem in the fact that the HHO has been involved over the past year, not in protecting human rights, but with itself.

"I could never have even imagined that Banac would lead the organisation in this fashion, and create some sort of elitist organisation out of the HHO, from whence he has ejected all those that demonstrated a difference of opinion on certain issues", concludes Gazivoda.
But, on the other hand, the question that now arises is who shall be held responsible if the findings of an audit of the operations, ordered by Ivo Banac, show that there had in fact been financial wrongdoing at the HHO. Ivo Banac was unwilling to speak to Nacional because he feels that Nacional is leading a campaign against the HHO because of his involvement in the Pukanic case. Whatever the case, in his interview for Novi list Banac underlined that he still could not say whether or not there had been dirty dealings, but did say that the finds of the audit so far has shown that the data, although properly documented, where useless as they were not entered into the books by project. This intimation from Ivo Banac also indirectly points the finger at former president Zarko Puhovski, who responded saying that the audit has shown that there were no serious transgressions of rules pertaining to the administration of finances.

"Everything else is balderdash. It is true that the funds where not booked per project, as is currently still the case. For example, six months ago the HHO received funds to cover the costs of a human rights school at which I lectured eight months ago, and for which I received my fee two weeks ago. That is unavoidable in any organisation under the existing financing conditions. As far as the fee is concerned, I am not complaining – we did the same thing; just that I, unlike Mr. Banac, apologise to people for the lateness" Puhovski said. Puhovski would not comment the latest round of resignations at the HHO as he is no longer a member of the Committee, but he did say that he felt it was a continuation of the unsound behaviour of Ivo Banac, on which account he did in fact tender his own resignation.
As a result of all this the HHO plenary meeting, which is scheduled to be held in a few days time and show include all of the organisation's members, could see a very heated debate. It is not known whether now, two months ahead of the end of Ivo Banac's term in office, the issue of a new president for the organisation will be broached.

Ivo Banac's letter of 4 July 2008 to members of the HHO

To members of the HHO,

Ranko Helebrant's letter, sent to you today by this former employee of the HHO office, contains a number of lies, manipulations and arbitrary interpretations, without a single factual basis. I have no intention of responding to this hypocrite who is able to talk with you with a smile on his lips, and sharpen a knife or prepare a noose behind your back. But I will also not accept his blackmail and endeavour to cover up his lies and deception. Far from it, I will do everything I can to publicly unmask Helebrant, so that the public gets to know all it can about another of our infamous former employees, the likes of Pilsl and Magas, who also got everything from the HHO, only to then malign and attack it in every possible way. These kinds of people, again the likes of Magas, once a proud HHO activist, who investigated war crimes, always end up just as Magas did – as the spokesperson of the Zagreb branch of HVIDR (an association of disabled Homeland War veterans), and as an organiser and MC at Thompson concerts. Let Helebrant then run to Pukanic or to Marijacic, or to any other equally referential person on the margins of the Croatian press, let him offer his miserable lies as soon as he can, and I shall do everything I can so that the Croatian public can learn everything it needs for a complete portrait of Ranko Helebrant.

I would add this only: (1) If any of you desired proofs to the contrary of Helebrant's claims, please contact me right away on my mobile phone number or at my e-mail address; (2) Helebrant left the HHO office of his own free will to accept an offer to work at the B.a.B.e. association. And although there were tensions between Ms. Sarnavka and myself on account of the Pukanic case, I cannot believe that she would approve of Helebrant's attacks. Whatever the case may be, my position towards the B.a.B.e. association will depend largely on their further disclosures in this case, which cannot remain only at the level of the initiative of one employee, regardless of how marginal that employee might be.
Accept my heartfelt greetings,
Ivo Banac