IVO BANAC handed the HHO to Cicak last week when he grasped that the organisation was beyond salvagingThe Croatian Helsinki Committee (Hrvatski helsinski odbor, HHO), once a respected human rights organisation, faces its final fall. With the withdrawal of the deeply compromised president Ivo Banac, as of last week the association has once again come under the leadership of the equally compromised Ivan Zvonimir Cicak. By his side, in the prefabricated cabin the HHO was recently forced to move to, are his brother and sister Marica, and two students working part time in the association.

Since the HHO has for some time now faced considerable financial difficulties, and a great number of prominent members have left its ranks over the past year, the HHO is after 16 years of activity facing its complete collapse and closure. After having played a significant role in the protection of human rights, and managing to survive in the process, during the ten-year reign of Franjo Tudjman, the organisation looks finally to be done in by the duo that have succeeded in completely destroying it - the former and new presidents Ivo Banac and Ivan Zvonimir Cicak. Since Ivo Banac left the leadership to the hands of one time president Ivan Zvonimir Cicak at last weekends annual plenum, it appears that he has himself grasped that the HHO is beyond salvaging, and he peacefully handed the leadership over to Cicak, who has for years dreamed of getting back into the top post of what was once a respectable organisation.

The Croatian Helsinki Committee's agony is in its third year now, during which time Cicak and Banac have succeeded in losing everything they could: membership, projects, funding and good standing. Besides through the HHO, the duo have succeeded in seriously compromising themselves before the Croatian public through a number of statements and actions, a public that sees them more and more as two pathetic and overbearing poseurs. The downfall of the HHO started in November of 2007 when Ivo Banac was elected to the helm of the association instead of Danijel Ivin. Banac, previously a university professor and Member of Parliament, quickly, with the help of his right hand man Cicak, put a stop to the association's existing projects and assumed an unfriendly attitude towards the association's employees and membership.

At the same time, instead of concrete projects related to the protection of human rights, the Banac-Cicak duo made ever more frequent and controversial statements concerning the Ustashe and the Partisans to friendly members of the press, which caused many of the association's donators, and members, to distance themselves from the new HHO leadership. Ivo Banac's career has also been seriously compromised by the findings of the State Audit Office concerning money Banac received from the national budget as an independent Member of Parliament. Banac embezzled 39,600 kuna by renting his own flat out to himself as office space, and spent vast sums of money on bogus travel orders. He spent 17,000 kuna on taxis, 28,691 kuna on airfare and 17,539 kuna on trips abroad. Banac's most bizarre peculation was the 140,000 kuna he allegedly spent on wooden bookshelves for his office. During his term as president of the HHO Banac succeeded by his domineering demeanour and intolerance to scare away many of its now former members.

THE MIRJANA PUKANIC CASE most seriously compromised Banac because he used her for his own promotion at the suggestion of Sanja Sarnavka of the B.a.b.e. associationAnd so, since Ivo Banac took the reins of the organisation, it has been left by Zarko Puhovski, Ranko Helebrant, Tin Gazivoda, Zdravko Bazdan, Veljko Miljevic, Srdan Dvornik, Ante Klaric, Ivan Grubisic, Vili Matula, Rajko Grlic, Zvonko Makovic, Cedo Prodanovic, Igor Mandic and Sanda Langerholz-Miladinov. Ivo Banac was most seriously compromised by his involvement last year in the Mirjana Pukanic case. Banac got involved at the suggestion of Sanja Sarnavka, who organised a short telephone conversation with Mirjana Pukanic. Soon, with the help of Sarnavka, Banac de facto kidnapped the seriously infirm drug addict from Vrapce hospital and then used her for days for his personal promotion. With absolutely no evidence, aside from the unsubstantiated statements of Mirjana Pukanic, Banac publicly labelled her husband Ivo Pukanic as a wife beater. When he grasped the extent of Mirjana Pukanic's illness, and the fact that Sanja Sarnavka had glossed over the fact that Mirjana Pukanic was a drug addict, Banac first suffered a heart attack during a radio show, and then quickly extracted himself from the case and distanced himself from the entire affair.

Once he had become aware that he had naively become entangled in the tragedy of the Pukanic family, Banac during one television appearance said that he would publicly apologise to Ivo Pukanic if it were shown that he had not abused his wife. It is now clear that all of the accusations levelled by Mirjana Pukanic against her husband were unfounded, and it would be in good order if Ivo Banac were to apologise at least to Pukanic's daughter, against whose father he spent months making false allegations about. Besides, Banac's claims influenced the police, which recalled Pukanic's protective police escort, and last year's tragic events probably lead to Banac's decision to, ashamed, withdraw from public life. In early June of last year Banac's career as a lecturer on history at Yale University in the USA ended, and there was word more and more that the HHO was in fact being run by Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, and Banac was, allegedly with his allies in the press in Europapress Holding, preparing to run in the presidential elections. In the meantime his activities in the HHO scared away the remaining membership and employees, he came into conflict with numerous partner organisations and donors and it appears that he, finally, grasped that his reputation in Croatia was so serious undermined that he has not for months made any public appearances.

In the meantime his buddy Ivan Zvonimir Cicak has taken over the management of the HHO, which has daily lost support, friends and sponsors. The former champion of human rights compromised himself most seriously before the Croatian public when he, on the pages of the Jutarnji list daily, where he is a columnist, slandered most viciously the innocently imprisoned merchant marine captain from Dubrovnik, Krsto Laptalo. While Laptalo was confined in a Greek prison, Cicak ran an article in which he accused Laptalo, without presenting any evidence, of being a criminal. Afterwards Cicak tried in various ways to extract himself from the embarrassing situation, but the awkward episode with Laptalo definitely compromised Cicak in the eyes of the Croatian public, as this alleged human rights champion - instead of defending him - joined the ranks of those who accused the innocent Croatian seaman. The public began despising Ivan Zvonimir Cicak in April of this year, when he, by his incoherent propositions and tales of Partisan crimes, likely tried to goad Croatian President Stjepan Mesic into an argument and, probably, attempted to sound out people of like mind and donors to the HHO, although the endeavour did not pan out for him.

In the meantime the summer saw some more departures from HHO membership, and some of the organisation's employees have also left over unpaid wages and the organisation's financial problems. The evident beginning of the definite end of the HHO took place in June, when Banac and Cicak had to find new premises for the association, as the owner of the flat the organisation was renting out in downtown Zagreb, and which had been its base for years, kicked them out over unpaid rent. For a time the organisation lacked its own premises, and it was only recently that Banac, Cicak and the remaining employees moved to a dingy prefabricated barrack which perhaps best illustrates the condition the duo have reduced this once respected organisation to. The nominal change at the top maybe perhaps only in Ivan Zvonimir Cicak's head appears to be the happy conclusion of a many-year aspiration - most other people anyways do not see the HHO as a respectable organisation and, as it appears, the only question is how much longer the Croatian Helsinki Committee will even continue to exist.