My appeal to Strasbourg pops up in my mind at least once and maybe even twice a week. By now, it has become no less than an obsession of mine. Each and every time this happens, I go through four points that explain why I am going to Strasbourg in the first place. My human rights are in question, to be sure. I was a victim of political repression in Croatia, where repression survives to this day after many decades of communist party rule, and my four points show that beyond any doubt. Here goes:

First, all three court cases against me appeared just before the municipal elections in 2009. Two were for libel and one for insult. One of the libel cases was lodged by Slobodan Vugrinec, the mayor of Motovun at the time, and another by the Municipality of Motovun. The second libel case was pushed through the Municipal Council by Efrem Močibob, one of the closest associates of the mayor. The insult case was lodged by the former mayor once again. As I was a staunch opponent of crooked golf at the time, the three cases are a clear sign of political repression.

Second, the two libel cases fell at the Municipal Court in Pazin, but the insult case stuck. I appealed to the regional court in Pula, but the case stuck once again, and I thus made my final appeal to the Constitutional Court in Zagreb, which is a precondition of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. However, likening the mayor to a cockroach at a public gathering was meant as a metaphor for his undemocratic behavior. At the gathering in question I actually said that the mayor did everything in the dark and behind closed doors, just like a cockroach. But the court refused to acknowledge this obvious metaphor. The insult case thus hangs on the word itself without any explanation of its origin.

Third, the mayor’s lawyer came from the office of Goran Veljović in Pula. At the time, the same office represented the mayor, the municipality, the investor in Motovun golf called Jupiter Adria, and many other investors in golf in Istria at the time. In addition, the same office drafted the golf law that was pushed through the Croatian parliament by Ivo Sanader, the prime minister at the time. Effectively a law of eminent domain, it treated golf as an activity of national interest. Land on any planned golf course could be expropriated without any legal difficulty.

Fourth, the judge who got my case at the Municipal Court in Pazin, Denis Hek, is known to be very close to the Istrian Democratic Assembly, the leading party in Istria since Croatian independence. The head of the party, Ivan Jakovčić, was also the governor of Istria at the time, and he was known to be an enthusiastic supporter of golf development across the Istrian peninsula. At the time, there were more than twenty golf courses planned in Istria alone out of more than sixty across Croatia. In short, the Istrian Democratic Assembly was doing its best to silence opponents to golf development, and the judge helped along as best he could.

These four points I can recite even in my dream. Having felt political repression on my own skin, I know precisely how it feels. Being persecuted for likening someone to a cockroach smacks of Asia or Africa rather than Europe. Even though Slobodan Vugrinec stands behind the three cases lodged against me, massive political machinery stood behind him all the while. It went from Motovun to Pula to Zagreb, and it is quite possible that it went to Austria from there. For both Sanader and Jakovčić were close to Jörg Haider, a politician at the head of the Hypo Alpe Adria Bank in Austria, which was behind many a crooked deal involving land grabs across Croatia and other countries that came into being after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, some of the land involved in the Motovun golf course was in the crafty bank’s hands.