Overview of the week's top stories
since 26 October 2001

The latest in the string of incidents occurred last Monday night when police stopped the editorial board of Mladina's "Rolanja po sceni" column and demanded they show identification. When the group refused, they were arrested and released two hours later. There are numerous questions surrounding the manner in which the arrest was conducted.

“In 100 minutes, the police managed to break four constitutional rights, the Law on Police and the Regulations of Police Authority. A half a dozen violations in one hundred minutes,” Žerdin alleges.

Žerdin believes that the police excesses should lead to public debate over the police, the manner in which they execute their duties and their oversight by the Ministry of Interior. However, there has been little public outrage to date.

In regard to the manner in which police execute their duties, the 2000 annual report of the Ombudsman for Human Rights states that "the principle of proportionality is perhaps not always respected in full." The Ombudsman’s office reports that last year, 86 reports were filed concerning alleged human rights abuses by the police, 10 percent more than in 1999.

A group of 80 skinheads stormed the club armed with baseball bats, iron bars, chains and bottles screaming "where are the Serbs, motherfuckers, we’ll kill you all" Dnevnik reported. Aside from the film’s Slovene production crew, a crowd of about 200 were also in the club. Outside, more skinheads smashed up cars in the club’s parking lot.

While Dnevnik reports that it took police almost a half hour to arrive on the scene, Delo states that police showed up within ten minutes. About a dozen people were taken to the hospital with head injuries.

Žoga is about Milko Đurovski, a star soccer player in the old Yugoslavia who led the national team to victory at the 1987 World Cup. Đurovski also played for the Belgrade soccer clubs Partizan and Crvena Zvezda..

Đurovski himself is Macedonian and currently lives in Maribor.

Governor of Austrian Carinthia Joerg Haider spoke out on Tuesday against the Slovene-Austrian joint historical commission . The commission is charged with investigating the history of the relations between the two nations and will prepare a final report which will represent a jointly agreed-upon historical narrative.

Haider is criticizing the commission’s composition. Each of the two countries is represented by nine historians and three lawyers. Haider maintains that aside from "two reliable Carinthians," the Austrian members are all Slovene sympathizers.

Haider called on federal chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel to rethink the Austrian delegation, otherwise he will not respect the commission’s findings. The commission’s final report is to be approved by the two countries’ parliaments, with the intention of laying to rest outstanding controversies.

On Saturday 3 November at 11:00 Ljubljana's Kiberpipa hosted a day-long event designed to explore the possibility of establishing an Independent Media Center (IMC) in Slovenia.

Organizers are debating two choices: found an IMC for Slovenia alone, or join forces with organizers in Croatia who are in the final phases of establishing their own IMC and create a single IMC for the whole of the former Yugoslavia.

On the schedule for the Kiberpipa event were technology and reporting workshops, as well as lectures on the background and operations of the IMC, the process of starting a new IMC and the experiences of IMCs in Norway and Portland, United States.

The first IMC was formed as an alternative wire service in Seattle in 1999 to cover the WTO protests. Similar services sprung up around later protests and the IMC network took off from there.

There are now over fifty autonomous local IMCs around the world on five continents. In the Central and Eastern Europe region, there are IMCs in Prague and Moscow.

Among the other highlights are the Czech film Musíme si pomáhat (Divided We Fall, dir. Jan Hrebejk) the Iranian film Roozi keh zan shodam (The Day I Became a Woman, Marzieh Meshkini).

Today, the largest Protestant group in Slovenia is the Evangelical Church, which counts some 19,000 members, mostly in Prekmurje. Earlier this year, Geza Ernis became the Church’s first bishop.

Ernis told STA (the Slovene Press Agency) that he is pleased with his Church’s standing in the country, and that it is becoming increasingly recognized. He also said that the government’s dealings with the Church have been "correct and respectful," pointing out last year’s agreement which introduced Protestant chaplains into the armed forces, as well as the recent agreement on the Church’s legal status.

The bishop is also pleased that Reformation Day is not just a religious, but also a state holiday, as he feels this also shows an increased respect for Protestantism and its role in Slovene history on the part of the government.

Ernis did point out some problems, however. Among them are the slow rate of denationalization of his Church’s former holdings, as well as financial difficulties.

Thursday was also a holiday, the Day of Remembrance. Commemorations for the dead were held around the country, especially honoring those lost in World War II, the simultaneous civil war and the war of independence of 1991.

• Minister of Finance Tone Rop told the Strategic Council for the Economy that GDP growth rate predictions for 2001 and 2002 have been scaled back due to the global recession and lower domestic investments. For this year, the predicted rate has been cut from 4.4 to 3.7 percent and for next year, from 4.2 to 3.6. These rates, however, are still above those in EU member states, and so Rop insists that there will be no recession in Slovenia. Last year’s rate was 4.7, and in 1999 it peaked at 5.0 percent.

• The price of mail, telephone service and electricity all went up this week, effective Wednesday. Postal rates rose by 15 percent, telephone 14 percent and electricity 5 percent. The moves will affect inflation rates, which the government Statistical Office cites at 6.5 percent for the first ten months of 2001.

• Results of a study by the Ljubljana Faculty for Social Studies showed that in October 2001, some 25,000 used the internet daily. A further 450,000 used it monthly and 660,000 had used it at least once. Researchers predict that by next July, 540,000 could be regular users and half the country, some 960,000 people, will have used the internet at least once.

• On 9 November, the newly-formed Social Forum is staging a protest in the form of a street party at Ljubljana’s Argentina Park. The demonstration is being called Qatarza (Qatarsis), and will protest the war in Afghanistan and the militarization of Slovenia. The name is a nod to Qatar, the host of the World Trade Organization meeting that will run from 9 to 13 November.