Committee for the Defence of Human Rights
The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (Odbor za varstvo človekovih pravic) was a Slovene civil group during the late 1980s, part of the Slovenian Spring. It started in Ljubljana on May 31, 1988, after the Yugoslav army’s Counter-Intelligence Service arrested three Slovene journalists and an army officer for allegedly sharing secret documents. One of those arrested was Janez Janša, a journalist from the magazine Mladina. After his arrest, a committee to defend Janša was formed. When more civilians were arrested, the group grew bigger and changed its name.
During the JBTZ trial of four prisoners, the committee demanded the trial be public, that a civilian lawyer defend them, and that the trial be held in Slovene rather than Serbo-Croatian. In the following months the committee became the strongest civil society movement in Slovenia, connecting many people and groups. By spring 1990 it had about 100,000 individual members (around 5% of Slovenia’s population) and more than 1,000 organizations. It led large protests, pressed the Communist leadership, and held round-table talks and press conferences about human rights in Yugoslavia and Slovenia.
When multiparty politics and free elections arrived in 1990, the committee dissolved. Many former members moved into politics, especially in the DEMOS coalition and the Liberal Democracy Party. In its first month, the committee was led by a six-member Presidency: Alenka Puhar, Bojan Korsika, Mile Šetinc, Pavel Gantar, Rastko Močnik, with Igor Bavčar as president. By mid-1988 the Presidency was replaced by a 32-member collegium, including many well-known people from different backgrounds, such as journalists Ali Žerdin, Viktor Blažič, and Franco Juri; lawyers France Bučar and Matevž Krivic; philosopher Slavoj Žižek; Spomenka Hribar; theologian Anton Stres; political thinker Tomaž Mastnak; sociologists Rado Riha and Braco Rotar; musicians Gregor Tomc and Igor Vidmar; doctor Dušan Keber; actor Boris Cavazza; poet Veno Taufer; and future politicians Lojze Peterle, Franc Zagožen, and Alojz Križman.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:42 (CET).