After its launch in June 1993, satirical weekly Feral Tribune, based in the Croatian coastal city of Split, quickly became the most prominent anti-establishment voice on the government-controlled media scene.
When its best-known front page, showing the Croatian and Serbian Presidents Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic half-naked in bed with each other, received acclaim around the world, the authorities quickly responded by mobilising its editor-in-chief Viktor Ivancic into the Croatian Army.
Although Ivancic was soon back after a curtailed period of military training, Feral would feel the wrath of the state for years to come.
Full-scale assault on Feral
The famous front page marked the beginning of more serious attempts by the authorities to cripple Feral.
As well as criticism from government officials and ruling Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ figures, accusing the magazine of expressing anti-Croatian sentiments at a time of war, there was everyday intimidation of neighbours and friends of Feral’s staff.
Then there were the lawsuits instigated by the state.
“There were lawsuits against us for ten, 20, 50,000 [German] marks coming in every day; those were millions of marks in claims. If someone sued Feral, of course, Croatian courts ruled in his favour,” said Boris Dezulovic, one of the founders and editors of the magazine.
In 1994, according to a decision made by Culture Minister Vesna Girardi-Jurkic, a special income tax was also slapped on Feral which was usually reserved for pornographic magazines.
“We paid this tax, almost 50,000 [German] marks a month, for ten months,” Ivancic explained, although the Constitutional Court then ruled that imposing the tax on the magazine was unconstitutional.
The logic behind the imposition of the tax was the use of semi-naked bodies on the covers, like those of Tudjman, Milosevic and others.
Feral also lost part of its revenue because Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper, which owned newspaper stands in Split, did not pay the magazine for the issues it had sold. The magazine’s editors saw the hand of the state at work in this too.
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