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BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA - Helsinki Committee:
VIOLATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO EXPRESSION AND FREE MEDIA
As of late, several cases of violation of the right to freedom of expression and of the
media have taken place in Bosnia-herzegovina.According to the Helsinki Committee in
Bosnia-herzegovina, on 25 April 1999, fire was set to the official car of the Minister of
Information of the Republic of Srpska, Rajko Vasic, in front of his building in Banja
Luka. This occurred a half-hour after Vasic had arrived home. The firemen prevented the
explosion of the empty car. For the last few months, the Serb extremists secretly and
openly issued threats to Vasic, claiming that they would kill him because certain
statements of his were not to the liking of ultranationalists: Moreover, Mirko Blagojevic
of the Serb Radical Party accused Vasic during one meeting of "committing a crime
against the Serb people" saying that action would be taken against him before the
"summary Chetnick court martial." The Chetnicks are Serb Nazi-fascists, and the
decisions of their summary courts usually mean death sentences.The journalists of
"Novi List" from Rijeka (Republic of Croatia) Robert Frank and Ronald Brrnalj
were severely beaten up in Mostar (BH Federation - central Herzegovina) on 7 May. Two
unidentified persons in civilian clothes took them from the Ero Hotel, located in the part
of the city under the control of the Croatian Democratic Union, led them to an
unidentified place and brutalized them: Further-more, the attackers smashed the right fist
of one of them "in order that he not be able to write any longer"; they were
ordered to the leave the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the course of this
torture, they were vituperated for their articles in the independent newspaper "Novi
List," which has sharply criticized the regime and the policy of the Croatian
President Franjo Tudjman and Croatian ultranationalists in Croatia and BH. This
demonstrates the political motives behind the assault. According to the information of the
International Peace Mission, it is possible that the assault was the doing of local
Croatian police officers.
The Governor of the municipality of Zenica, Ferid Alic threatened, several times,
journalists and editors of the Zenica media. The Governor Alic demanded that the Director
of RTV Zenica remove the Editor of RTV from his position because he had allowed the
broadcasting of information which he did not like. In another case, the governor ordered
journalists of RTV to disclose the source of certain information broadcast on RTV Zenica.
However, desiring to protect the source of their information, the journalists refused to
comply with Governor Alic/s demands. Consequently, he threatened the authors of the
information. These two cases incited the journalists from Zenica to react. Nineteen of
them signed an open letter, exposing Governor Alic/s coercions and threats of which they
had been victim.The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosni-Herzegovina, together
with the OHR and the Independent Union of Professional Journalists, sharply condemned the
actions undertaken by Governor Alic, qualifying them as a violation of human rights and as
an attack on the freedom of expression and of the media.
Source: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina For more
information please contacts: Srdjan Dizdareviz, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, tel. +387-71-230809 or 230811, e-mail office@bh-hchr.org
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