Drago Pilsel

Last updated

Drago Carlos Pilsel (born 21 September 1962) is an Argentine Croatian journalist and human rights activist.

Contents

Early years

Drago Pilsel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a politically engaged family. His parents were Croatian immigrants who came to Argentina as children after World War II. Pilsel's paternal grandfather was an Ustaše soldier. Pilsel's father, Adolf Pilsel was a member of the fascist organization called Croatian Liberation Movement. He was also a bodyguard to Ante Pavelić at some time.

Drago Pilsel spent his childhood in Comodoro Rivadavia where his father worked in construction. After financial troubles emerged, they moved back to Buenos Aires. His father was forced to leave him and his mother after some time and move to Paraguay.

Activism in Argentina

Pilsel spent his high school years during the National Reorganization Process. He became then introduced to humans rights and journalism. In 1979, he returned to Comodoro Rivadavia for a year and started working on a TV station called Channel 9. In Buenos Aires, he graduated from the high school specialized for mechanics and started working in construction. He was also a dedicated Croatian nationalist. He regularly sprayed graffiti against Yugoslavia and spread hate against it. Once he also broke a window of a synagogue. [1] After spending some time in São Paulo with his girlfriend in the 1980s, he became interested in the Franciscan order. He returned to Argentina and enrolled in that order. It was at that time when he rejected nationalism.

Activism in Croatia

In 1989, he came to Zagreb in Yugoslavia for the first time in his life as a Franciscan. He was sent to Dalmatia for some time to learn and in 1991 he went to Rijeka to study in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

He left the Franciscan order in September 1991 after his brother was pronounced missing during the Croatian War of Independence. Pilsel immediately enlisted in the Croatian army and served under the future Croatian minister of defense Ante Kotromanović in Dalmatia. He left the army in 1992. [1] In March 1992, he went to study philosophy and theology at the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Zagreb. He gave his final examinations there but ultimately graduated from the Evangelical theology faculty in Osijek.

When he was studying in Zagreb, he started working on a local TV station called Open Television (OTV) where he had his own TV show. The show mainly based itself on religious topics. He was also a long-time writer for the national newspaper Novi list (from 1995 to 2009). When it comes to other newspapers or magazines, the most notable are: Feral Tribune , Globus , Glas Koncila , Novi Plamen , and Slobodna Dalmacija . He also wrote and corresponded for foreign media companies, most notably El País (Spain), BBC (United Kingdom), Monitor (Montenegro), and Nezavisne novine (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

Drago Pilsel was one of the founding members of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watch organization. He gained public attention during the mid-1990s when he investigated and located Serbian victims after the end of the Croatian independence war. [2] He entered Knin shortly after Operation Storm and started working on that terrain. He also exposed Croatian war crimes in Lika and Gospić. He didn't get along with the Croatian Helsinki Committee president Ivan Zvonimir Čičak. He was expelled the Croatian Helsinki Committee in 1997. [3] Pilsel went to Sarajevo with his wife and lived there for a couple of years.

In 2002, Pilsel lead the first Zagreb Gay Pride which at the time was a great civil rights achievement. [4]

The same year, he was kicked out of the Croatian Christian journalists organisation. A few days earlier to that, Pilsel critically attacked a bishop and said that the Croatian Church was: "an inhuman, nationalist, catholic sect from which he wants to stay far away." Pilsel maintains a negative attitude against the Croatian cardinal Josip Bozanić and the institution of the Croatian Church. He believes that they are extremely right-wing oriented and want to manipulate politicians. [5]

In 2017, Drago Pilsel has signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins. [6]

Political activity

Drago Pilsel abandoned nationalism and right-wing ideology during his time with the Franciscan order in Argentina. He described his journalist work as championing "Christian humanism, human rights culture, and anti-fascism". [7] He was a friend and admirer of Vlado Gotovac, a famous Croatian poet and social-liberal politician during the 1990s. Pilsel helped run the 1997 presidential campaign of Vlado Gotovac, where Gotovac finished 3rd.

In 2009, he joined the presidential campaign of Ivo Josipović. After winning the 2009-10 elections, Pilsel joined the presidential office and became head of the analytics department. In March 2010, he resigned for reasons unknown but it is regarded that the true reason was his column in a local newspaper where he used extreme profanity. Pilsel denies that this was the reason. [8]

During the Croatian parliamentary election, 2011, Pilsel ran the campaign for the independent candidate Ivan Grubišić. Grubišić won a seat in the parliament.

In 2021, Croatian and Bosnian media published that some of the Pilsel's positive commentaries on Bosnian politician Željko Komšić, were in fact paid for by Komšić himself. Pilsel subsequently admitted having an undisclosed "analytical project" with Komšić charging 1000 EUR monthly for his services, denying that he was doing a PR disguised as journalistic commentaries. [9]

Related Research Articles

Presidential elections were held in Croatia on 15 June 1997. They were the second presidential elections held since independence in 1991. The result was a victory for incumbent president Franjo Tuđman, the leader of the Croatian Democratic Union party (HDZ), who received 61.40% of the vote and was re-elected to a second five-year term. As Tuđman received a majority of the valid votes cast on election day there was no need for a run-off. President Tuđman received a plurality of the votes in 20 of Croatia's 21 counties, while Vlado Gotovac did so in Istria County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ante Pavelić</span> Croatian fascist politician and dictator

Ante Pavelić was a Croatian politician who founded and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustaše in 1929 and was dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945. Pavelić and the Ustaše persecuted many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Romani, and anti-fascists, becoming one of the key figures of the genocide of Serbs, the Porajmos and the Holocaust in the NDH.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović</span> President of Croatia from 2015 to 2020

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović is a Croatian politician and diplomat who served as President of Croatia from 2015 to 2020. She was the first woman to be elected to the office since the first multi-party elections in 1990 and independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. At 46 years of age, she also became the youngest person to assume the presidency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catholic Church in Croatia</span>

The Catholic Church in Croatia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church that is under the spiritual leadership of the Pope. The Latin Church in Croatia is administered by the Croatian Bishops' Conference centered in Zagreb, and it comprises five archdioceses, 13 dioceses and one military ordinariate. Dražen Kutleša is the Archbishop of Zagreb.

Branimir Glavaš is a Croatian retired major general and politician. He was one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party which was in power in the 1990s and one of its key figures until a split in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milan Bandić</span> Croatian politician (1955–2021)

Milan Bandić was a Croatian politician and the longest-serving mayor of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Bandić was mayor almost continuously from 2000 to 2021, except during the time between his resignation in 2002 and the 2005 election. He was also suspended from exercising his powers and duties for several months after his 2014 arrest over a corruption scandal. Out of Bandić's multifaceted engagement in politics, the most noted part was his mayoralty of Zagreb, which followed the Croatian Democratic Union's (HDZ) first post-socialist period of government (1990–2000), and exacerbated many existing transitional problems in the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vjekoslav Vrančić</span> Croatian Ustaše official

Vjekoslav Vrančić was a high-ranked Croatian Ustaše official who held different positions in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II in Yugoslavia. After the proclamation, he served as the Under Secretary of the Ustaše Foreign Affairs Ministry. In 1942, he was Pavelić's envoy to the Italian Second Army. In this role he entered into negotiations with Chetnik representatives Jevđeviċ, Grđiċ and Kraljeviċ. Then he served as Under Secretary in the Ustaše Interior Ministry, the "body directly responsible for concentration camps and repressive political apparatus". Vrančić was "decorated by Hitler in honor of his planning skills at the work of mass deportation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2009–10 Croatian presidential election</span>

Presidential elections were held in Croatia on 27 December 2009 and 10 January 2010. Twelve candidates participated in the first round, prior to a run-off between first-round winner Ivo Josipović and runner-up Milan Bandić. In the run-off, Josipović won a landslide victory, receiving 60.3% of the vote becoming the first elected president nominated by the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP). The incumbent president Stjepan Mesić, who was first elected in 2000 as the candidate of the Croatian People's Party and re-elected in 2005 as an independent, was ineligible to seek re-election to a third term due to term limits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Croatian Argentines</span> Ethnic group

Croatian Argentines are Argentine citizens of Croatian descent or Croatian-born people who reside in Argentina. Croats and their descendants settled in Buenos Aires, the homonymous province, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Chaco, and Patagonia. Argentines of Croatian descent number over 300,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stjepan Horvat</span> Croatian geodesist and professor

Stjepan Horvat was a Croatian geodesist and professor, dean of the Technical Faculty in Zagreb, head of the University of Zagreb, editor of the journals Geodetski list and Hrvatska državna izmjera, manager of the Department for State Survey in the Croatian Headquarters for Public Affairs, member of the State Land Consolidation Commission, Air Force officer in the time of the Nazi-puppet state Independent State of Croatia, adviser at the Military-Geography Institute in Argentina for 40 years and an honorary member of the Argentine Association of Geophysicists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivo Josipović</span> President of Croatia from 2010 to 2015

Ivo Josipović is a Croatian academic, jurist, composer, and politician who served as President of Croatia from 2010 to 2015.

Music Biennale Zagreb is an international festival of contemporary music in Zagreb, Croatia, organized by the Croatian Composers' Society. The Biennale, founded by Milko Kelemen and held every spring of the odd years since 1961, has become one of the most important festivals of contemporary music in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Broken Relationships</span> Specialized museum in Zagreb, Croatia

The Museum of Broken Relationships is a museum in Zagreb, Croatia, founded by artists Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić. It grew from a traveling exhibition revolving around the concept of failed relationships and their ruins. The museum features a diverse collection of objects, each representing a personal story of a past relationship, contributing to a broader narrative of human emotional experiences.

Božo Skoko is a professor of public relations at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. He is Head of the Public Relations postgraduate specialist programme at the University of Zagreb. The areas of his scientific research include: public relations, communication, international relations, national identity and image and branding destination. He is a guest professor at the University of Osijek (Croatia), University of Mostar and Edward Bernays University College, Zagreb. He has published seven books pertaining to public relations, to branding countries, and to the identity and image of Croatia. He is one of the founders and partner in Millenium promocija, leading communications management agency in Croatia. Skoko has a doctor's degree from the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. As a consultant he was worked with numerous Croatian and international corporations, political institutions and non-governmental organizations.

The Open Letter on the Position and Status of Serbs in Croatia was sent to the addresses of prominent Croatians and Serbians in September 2008. The letter spoke about the adverse social and economic circumstances in which Croatian Serbs had lived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davor Ivo Stier</span> Croatian-Argentine politician (born 1972)

Davor Ivo Stier is a Croatian-Argentine politician and diplomat serving as member of the European Parliament since July 2024, having previously served from 2013 to 2016. He was a member of the Croatian Parliament in multiple terms, as well as the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia from 2016 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vlado Košić</span> Croatian bishop (born 1959)

Vlado Košić is a Croatian bishop and leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sisak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2014–15 Croatian presidential election</span>

Presidential elections were held in Croatia on 28 December 2014 and 11 January 2015, the sixth such elections since independence in 1991. Only four candidates contested the elections, the lowest number since 1997. Incumbent president Ivo Josipović, who had been elected as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party in 2009–2010, was eligible to seek reelection for a second and final five-year term and ran as an independent. As no candidate received 50% of the vote in the first round in December 2014, a run-off took place in January 2015 between the two candidates with the most votes, Josipović and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. Grabar-Kitarović went on to win the elections by a slim margin of 32,509 votes or 1.48%, making her Croatia's first female president.

Vladimiro Nevistic, was a Croatian journalist and essayist.

Andrea Feldman is a Croatian historian and liberal politician.

References

  1. 1 2 "Moderna vremena :: Argentinski roman". Mvinfo.hr. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
  2. ↑ "Drago Pilsel: Hitler se s Pavelićem družio u Argentini". April 18, 2009. Archived from the original on June 9, 2015. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
  3. ↑ "HHO iskoristio "slučaj Magaš" da sakrije svoje probleme i zatvori se od javnosti?". Vjesnik (in Croatian). 23 December 1998. Archived from the original on November 14, 2005. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
  4. ↑ "Stanje seksualnih i rodnih manjina 2002". Archived from the original on February 24, 2014. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Pilsel: Glas Koncila ima fašističku interpretaciju morala - Vijesti". Index.hr. 2007-01-07. Retrieved 2016-04-03.
  6. ↑ Derk, Denis (28 March 2017). "Donosi se Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku Hrvata, Srba, Bošnjaka i Crnogoraca" [A Declaration on the Common Language of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins is About to Appear]. Večernji List (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: Večernji list. pp. 6–7. ISSN   0350-5006. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  7. ↑ "Drago Pilsel: Od ustaše do antifašiste". slobodnaevropa.org (in Croatian). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 3 February 2014. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
  8. ↑ "Drago Pilsel: Otišao sam. Josipović ne uspijeva ukrotiti tajne službe i nema partnere u vlasti". Jutarnji.hr. 2010-03-13. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
  9. ↑ "Drago Pilsel dobivao 1000 eura kako bi "peglao" imidž Željka Komšića". dnevnik.ba. 2021-08-10. Retrieved 2020-09-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.