I am writing to you in connection with my appeal to the decision of the Municipal Court in Pazin, which the Regional Court in Pula subsequently upheld, in the lawsuit for insult lodged against me by Slobodan Vugrinec, the mayor of Motovun. My appeal has been with you for about a year now. Although my lawyer tells me that there are no legal means to speed up your decision, I would like to appeal to you personally. I hope that you will carefully consider my situation, and that you will find my appeal reasonable.

The main reason why I am appealing with the Constitutional Court in Zagreb is the requirement of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that all legal means be previously exhausted in the country of origin. I intend to appeal to the court in Strasbourg because I believe that the mayor of Motovun has trampled my basic human rights. He lodged one lawsuit against me in 2008, and two more in 2009, the first of which ostensibly came from the municipality itself. The first two were for libel, and the third for insult. The lawsuits preceded the municipal elections in 2009, and their main objective was to remove me from the political scene.

The reason for this is straightforward. I was opposed to the mayor’s plans for golf and polo development in Motovun since late 2005, when it transpired through the local press that a large number of apartments, houses, and villas were planned along with the sport facilities. Together with a number of associates from Motovun, Istria, and Croatia, I was convinced that these plans were ecologically unsustainable. Carefully planned golf and polo courses as such were not at issue, however. Excessive development was at our focus from the very beginning.

I should add at this point that the law firm representing the mayor of Motovun in all three cases simultaneously represented the municipality of Motovun and the then investor in golf development in the municipality. At the same time, they represented the majority of golf investors in Istria, as well as several regional organizations promoting golf on the peninsula. On top of everything, golf was considered one of the top priorities by the regional government, which the law firm in question also represented. I could not imagine a person accused ever facing such a situation in any democratic country. Throughout the court proceedings, I felt that I had no reasonable chance of winning any of the lawsuits.

Now, the mayor and the municipality of Motovun eventually lost the two libel cases in the Pazin court, and the court in Pula upheld this decision upon their appeal. However, the mayor won the insult case, and my appeal with the court in Pula was unsuccessful. He claimed that I called him a cockroach, but he did not explain the context in which the remark was made. My attempts to do so in court were unsuccessful. As a matter of fact, the comment was made at a gathering of people concerned with ecological issues, where I was talking about Motovun and the mayor’s undemocratic ways. I said that he does everything behind closed doors and in the dark, like a cockroach. The metaphor would not elicit a lawsuit in any democratic country. To the best of my knowledge, a court in such a country would never consider it, either.

I would like to stress that the mayor of Motovun has not suffered in any way from my comment, which was recorded without my permission. He won the elections, too. In short, my likening him to a cockroach has done him no harm whatsoever. On the other hand, I have suffered from his persecution for years. I have long abandoned all activities concerning sustainable development. In addition, I have started thinking about leaving Motovun, Istria, and Croatia. Having spent most of my life in the United States and the United Kingdom, I have found the political repression in Croatia rather unbearable. Although both of my parents hail from Istria, the mayor of Motovun has promoted a campaign in which I have been treated as a foreigner, or furešt in the Istrian dialect.

As you can imagine, I am eager to bring the mayor’s persecution to a close. The court in Strasbourg strikes me as the right institution to consider the political repression I have encountered in Croatia. For this reason, I am appealing to you to resolve my appeal to the decision of the court in Pazin as soon as possible. If you do not acquit me, so be it. I am not concerned with your decision as such, but with its speediness. Having been forced into this legal quagmire in 2008, I hope to resolve it once and for all by 2013 or 2014 at the latest. This is why I am appealing for your personal help. Believe me, I feel utterly exhausted by everything that has come my way after my return to Croatia in 2002. In all likelihood, I will leave the country for good once my court case is resolved.