Hundreds gathered in Split on Tuesday morning to protest the third attempt of court-ordered taking away of nine-year-old boy Cesare Avenati from his mother Nina Kuluz. Amid heavy police presence, the boy was separated from his mother to re-join his Italian father who holds custody.

In what was a widely publicised case in Croatia, Kuluz and her ex partner, the Italian Alessandro Avenati, had shared joint custody over the boy, with the boy supposed to live with his father in Italy, with Kuluz allowed daily visits.

However, in 2011 Kuluz took the boy and fled the country, first to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then back to Croatia to her home town of Split. The boy’s father then tried returning his son to Italy twice.

In June 2017 a large protest was organised in front of her home in Split in which protesters demanded that the Croatian court postpones its decision to seize the child and return the boy to Italy. Opponents of Cesare’s return to Italy say the boy has gotten used to living in Croatia, and that the legal system is inhumane for treating a child as property.

The seizure of the boy was postponed back then, and then again in February this year over security concerns.

“I’m shocked, there are more than 20 police vans in front of the building, as if this is a war zone. There are more than 80 police officers who came here because of a nine-year-old- boy. We haven’t slept all night, I don’t know what would happen around 9 o’clock when court-appointed seizure (of the child) is scheduled for, and whether they really intend to pull away a boy out of his mother’s embrace,” said Vanja Kuluz, the boy’s aunt.

Meanwhile, Kuluz was stripped of her custody rights in an Italian court, and was even sentenced to three years and four months in prison for child abduction. She was also ordered to pay her former partner €50,000 in damages, and obliged to report to police in Turin every 20 days.

The drama surrounding the case seems to have had a toll on the boy, as he was hospitalised on Sunday due to stomach pain, and was released on Monday with doctors recommending rest.

“The seizure was completed. The child is on its way to Italy. Unfortunately, we are not up to the task of protecting children’s – and therefore human – rights in Croatia. We do not have good laws… Children are not suitcases, or any kind of movable property like that, but in our legal system they are treated that way. We accepted the EU, but we kept the laws dating from the (medieval) Republic of Venice. We are all ashamed today over a boy who did not want to go where they are taking him now, but nobody had the time to listen to him,” Miso Zivaljic, lawyer representing Cesare’s mother, told N1.

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.