Committee for the Defence of Human Rights
The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (Template:Lang-sl) was a civil society organization in Slovenia, which functioned during the so-called Slovenian spring between 1988 and 1990.
It was founded in Ljubljana on 31 May, 1988, after the Counter-Intelligence Service of the Yugoslav People's Army arrested three Slovenian journalists and an officer of the Yugoslav People's Army, accusing them of revealing secret military documents. Among the arrested was also Janez Janša, a critical journalist of the popular alternative magazine Mladina. Immediatly after the news of his arrest was released in Slovenian media, the Committee for the Defence of Rights of Janez Janša was founded. After it became known that the Yugoslav People's Army arrested three other civilians, the Committee changed its name and widened its sphere of action.
During the trial against the four arrested, the Committee demanded that the trial be opened to the public, that the four be defended by a civilian lawyer and that the trial be conducted in the Slovene language rather than in Serbo-Croatian.
In the moths following the arrest, the Committee became the most powerful civil society iniciative in Slovenia, which connected a wide spectrum of individuals and organization. By spring 1990, when the Committee dissolved itself, it already counted around 100,000 individual members (around 5% of the whole Slovenian population) and more than a tousand organizations. During the so-called JBTZ-trial which followed the arrest, the Committee organized massive protests, and a kept a constant pressure on the Communist leadership of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. It also organized round table discussions and press conferences on the state of human rights in Yugoslavia and in Slovenia.
After the introduction of a multi-party system and the first free elections of 1990, the Committee dissolved itself. Many of its members became active in the Slovenian politics, especially in the DEMOS coalition and in the Liberal Democratic Party
In the first month, the Committee was led by a six-member Presidency, composed by journalists Alenka Puhar, Bojan Korsika and Mile Šetinc, and sociologists Pavle Gantar and Rastko Močnik, and presided by activist Igor Bavčar. Already in mid 1988, the Presidency was dissolved and a wide 32-member collegium was formed, which included many renowned public figures of the most various political and ideological convictions, including: Gregor Tomc, Lojze Peterle, Slavoj Žižek, Spomenka Hribar, Dušan Keber, Franc Zagožen, Ali Žerdin, Pavle Gantar, France Bučar, Matevž Krivic, Anton Stres, Boris Cavazza, Alojz Križman, Viktor Blažič, Rado Riha, Braco Rotar, Tomaž Mastnak, Veno Taufer, Igor Vidmar, and Franco Juri.
See also
- JBTZ-trial
- Contributions to the Slovenian National Program
- Breakup of Yugoslavia
- DEMOS coalition
- Ten Day War