ANEM'S WEEKLY REPORT ON MEDIA REPRESSION IN SERBIA

MAY 13 - 19, 2000

FRANCE PRESS CORRESPONDENT RELEASED FROM MILITARY PRISON

NIS, May 13, 2000 -- The Kraljevo correspondent for France press and Belgrade daily Danas, Miroslav Filipovic, has been released from the Nis Military Prison after an investigating judge in the Nis Military Court declined to extend a remand order. Defence lawyer Goran Draganic told Beta agency that the custody was terminated after military prosecutor Stanimir Radosavljevic told the court on Friday that he would not demand investigation within the legal deadline of 48 hours.

Radosavljevic said he did not rule out the possibility of an investigation of Filipovic in the future. "I could make a decision in a week or a month or when I find time for it," he said.

After his release from the military prison, Filipovic told media that he had "dismissed the possibility" of dealing with espionage, which was why the Kraljevo police had filed criminal charges against him. "I reject any suggestion that I have committed the criminal act of espionage: if somebody wants to do these things he doesn’t publish that information under his full name," said Filipovic. "The other criminal offence is that of disseminating false information and I assume that this refers to information about the army and police because State Security inspectors, during an interrogation, asked about my sources of information relating to the army and police," the France Press correspondent told media.

STATE MEDIA CREW BARRED FROM GERMAN KFOR SECTOR

BELGRADE, May 13, 2000 -- KFOR guards at the entrance to the Kosovo town of Orahovac confiscated the press accreditations of a Radio Television Serbia crew and ordered them to leave the German KFOR sector in the Southwest of Kosovo, the Yugoslav Committee for Cooperation with UNMIK said on Friday. A statement from the committee said that the German KFOR troops had confiscated tapes from the television crew and well as their valid documents issued by KFOR headquarters in Pristina and ordered them to leave the German sector immediately and never return.

JOURNALIST REARRESTED

NOVI SAD, May 14, 2000 -- Novi Sad police this morning arrested Radio 021 journalist Dragan Gmizic for the second time in six days.Gmizic was detained on May 9, along with four other journalists who were covering an Otpor protest, and spent several hours in Novi Sad police station without explanation.He was this morning taken by four police and held for two hours for interrogation.After his release, Gmizic said that the police inspector who interrogated him had sought information about Otpor in relation to Saturday’s murder of Vojvodina Socialist Party official Bosko Perosevic.The president of the Serbian Renewal Movement Youth Branch, Vladimir Jelic, was also detained by Novi Sad police.

Media yesterday reported that a fifty-year-old security guard at the Novi Sad Fair, Milivoj Gutovic, had been arrested in connection with the murder.Gutovic was reported to be from Ratkovo, the birthplace of the murdered Socialist official.

MOBILE TELEPHONE NETWORK "MALFUNCTION" DURING DEMONSTRATION

VALJEVO, May 14, 200 -- Mobile telephone connections in the Valjevo region were not operating from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening in the Valjevo region.Because of the breakdown, journalists covering the Serbian Renewal Movement’s Ravna Gora assembly on Saturday afternoon were unable to report directly to their newsrooms.The official cause of the breakdown was a technical malfunction.

B2-92 JOURNALIST ASSAULTED

BELGRADE, May 16, 2000 -- Radio B2-92 journalist Duska Cavic was struck a number of times by unknown assailants in the central Belgrade area of Vracar on Monday night. Cavic had stopped in the street to ask a several young men holding anti-Otpor posters whether they were removing them or putting them up. About twenty of the men began shouting insults and pushing her. After Cavic responded by pushing back, she suffered two blows to the mouth and one to the abdomen.

Posters depicting a soldier in Nazi uniform with a clenched fist on the wall behind him and the caption "Madeleine Youth" have appeared on walls and hoardings in Belgrade in the past few days. A leaflet with the same material has also been dropped in many Belgrade letter boxes.

BORBA REFUSES TO PRINT BLIC

BELGRADE, MAY 16, 2000 -- The printing firm Borba yesterday told Belgrade daily Blic that it could no longer print the newspaper because of its editorial policy. Blic Editor-in-Chief Veselin Simonovic said today that he had been told by the director of Borba, which is a federal state firm, that the company would no longer cooperate with publishers who were "working against the state". The official reason given for Borba’s failure to print today’s edition was a technical malfunction.

Blic appeared today in about half its usual print run and without colour pages after two print houses in two different cities came to the paper’s rescue.

Simonovic and Blic Director Miodrag Djuricic wrote in today’s edition that Borba’s refusal to print the paper breached a legal contract between the two companies and was a serious threat to media freedom. They added that Borba had previously been accused of attempting to prevent the publication of the country’s most widely-read daily newspaper.

REGIME SEIZES STUDIO B IN POLICE RAID

BELGRADE, May 17, 2000 -- The raid on Studio B’s premises occurred at 2.00 a.m. A large number of police completely blocked the Beogradjanka building in central Belgrade where the broadcaster is located. A recorded message was broadcast on Studio B informing the public that the Serbian Government had resolved to take over the public broadcaster Studio B which was controlled by the Belgrade Municipality. The resolution quoted a demand from the Serbian Information Ministry to take over Studio B because frequent calls for the violent overthrow of the constitutional order had been made on the station’s programs.

The Serbian Government said that the legal grounds for the resolution was that Studio B was state-owned and that the state had decided to take direct control of "its own property" and remove all proprietary rights from the hands of the Belgrade Municipality.

The Serbian Government also resolved to dismiss the management of Studio B and appoint Ljuboslav Aleksic editor-in-chief of the station. The resolution instructs Studio B to continue broadcasting as a company wholly owned and operated by the Serbian Government. The Serbian Government Decree was signed by Deputy Serbian Prime Ministers Milovan Bojic and Vojislav Seselj.

In taking over Studio B the Serbian Government has also prevented the operation of Radio B2-92 which, after three bans and a regime takeover, had leased a radio frequency from Studio B and premises in the same building.

The building also houses student broadcaster Radio Index and the influential non-government daily Blic. This raid has thus left Belgrade in complete media darkness, with almost no radio or television station not under government control.

RADIO PANCEVO TRANSMITTER CEASES OPERATION

BELGRADE, May 17, 2000 -- In the early hours of Wednesday afternoon, RTV Pancevo, an independent radio station in the Vojvodina city of Pancevo, a few kilometres from Belgrade, was subject to heavy signal disruption. Radio Pancevo is an important source of independent information in the Belgrade area. The station later announced that its main FM transmitter, broadcasting on 92.1 MHz FM had ceased to operate and that police, with no attempt at justification, had blocked station technicians from entering the transmission facility. RTV Pancevo's other programs are still being broadcast, despite difficulties. Radio Pancevo can be received from the station's back-up transmitter, which operates at a lower signal strength, as well as on medium wave on 1584 KHz AM.

JOURNALISTS AND REPORTERS ARRESTED AND BEATEN

BELGRADE, May 18, 2000 -- Photographer Aleksandar Stankovic was seriously injured in last nights clashes between protesters and police. His colleagues from the daily Novosti, Igor Marinkovic, and the daily Blic, Mikica Petrovic, were also injured but not so seriously, according to Danas. The paper also reported that their journalist Jovica Krtinic was arrested last night around 8 p.m. at Slavija square along with Glas Javnosti journalists . After routine checks lasting half an hour, they were released.

ANEM SEEKS COURT PROTECTION

BELGRADE, May 18, 2000 -- The Association of Indpendent Electronic Media today filed charges in the Third Belgrade Municipal Court against the Republic of Serbia for the usurpation of business offices leased by ANEM on the seventeenth floor of the Beogradjanka building. The charges allege that the Serbian police, with no prior explanation nor any legal decision seen by ANEM, prevented staff and associates of the association using the leased premises. ANEM has demanded a temporary order from the court to give ANEM the undisturbed use of the offices. ANEM has filed another suit in the Belgrade Commercial Court against the "new" Studio B, a firm now owned by the Serbian Government, demanding that Studio B fulfil the contract which obliges the broadcaster to collaberate with ANEM in the production and broadcast of the radio program known as "Studio B Third program - B2-92" on the 99,10 MHz FM frequency. The complaint also seeks compensation for damage occurring each day as a result of unfulfilled obligations.

ANEM LAWYERS BARRED FROM BEOGRADJANKA

BELGRADE, May 18, 2000 -- ANEM lawyers were today refused admission to the offices of Radio B2-92 in the Beogradjanka building despite having valid contracts for the lease of business premises in the building. Journalists from the Belgrade daily Blic had earlier been permitted to return to their offices in the building. Technicians, but no other staff, were permitted to return to the studios of Radio Indeks. The station is now broadcasting only music.

The deputy editor-in-chief of Blic, Momcilo Petrovic, told FoNet that there were no police in the paper's editorial offices, and that everything was in order with nothing missing.

TV LAV OFF THE AIR

BELGRADE, May 18, 2000 -- TV Lav in the Vojvodina city of Vrsac, a member of the Association of Indpendent Electronic Media, stopped broadcasting this afternoon. The station's proprietor gave technical reasons for the decision.

Staff of the television station have announced that they will continue to provide information to the citizens of Vrsac by public news sessions using video projectors and similar live media.

POLICE SEEK PUBLICATION PREMISES

BELGRADE, 19 May, 2000 -- State financial inspectors accompanied by about twenty uniformed police today attempted to enter the ABC Produkt publishing house in Opovo in order to investigate "where and how dailies Glas Javnosti and Blic have been publishing". Glas director Slavoljub Kacarevic told Beta this afternoon that there were now no problems in the Ronako company. The company, in addition to printing Glas Javnosti has produced Blic for the past three days since the state print house Borba terminated its contract to print the paper, claiming its presses were out of order.

STATE PROPERTY MUST BE PROTECTED: SERBIAN GOVERNMENT

BELGRADE, May 19, 2000 -- Deputy Serbian Information Minister Radmila Visic said yesterday that the Serbian Government believed that Studio B had been misusing state property, which was why the proprietorial rights for the station had been transferred to the state. In an interview on Radio Belgrade, the minister said that the editorial policy of the station had been directed towards the violent overthrow of the constitutional order and violation of the territorial integrity of Serbia and Yugoslavia and had called on the public to join a campaign of resistance and disobedience. Visic accused Studio B of putting itself in the service of sowing hatred and instigation civil war by reporting the statements of certain opposition leaders. In this way, she said, the broadcaster had caused and constantly invoked a state of emergency. The minister also accused opposition leaders of committing a number of serious criminal offences. "Anyone who calls for resistance, which Studio B was doing constantly, is committing a serious criminal offence," said Visic, adding that Studio B had not only abused the freedom of public property but had also misused a state property entrusted to it for broadcasting operations. It was for these reasons, said Minister Vucic, that the state had confiscated Studio B’s resources, which were state property, and taken over proprietorial rights in the station.

STUDIO B PART OF THE NATO WAR MACHINE: SOCIALIST PARTY

BELGRADE 19 May 2000 -- The Serbian Government had reacted over Studio B because the company had become part of the NATO war machinery and had carried calls for murder, Socialist Party of Serbia spokesman Nikola Sainovic said today. Sainovic, who is also a deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia, told a press conference that the Serbian Government had not reacted while Studio B reported political positions opposed to the authorities, but only when the broadcaster had become part of NATO's war machine. In this way, he said, the government had protected the property of the state and the citizens of Belgrade. Speaking about last night's brutal police intervention among Belgrade protesters, Sainovic said that the police had reacted only against a group of hooligans who were overturning rubbish bins and breaking windows, but not against political demonstrators.

TV LESKOVAC TRANSMITTER DISMANTLED

LESKOVAC, May 19, 2000 -- TV Leskovac’s transmission tower on Babicka Gora was dismantled on Wednesday night by persons unknown, leaving the entire Northwest of the Jablanica district unable to receive transmissions, station representatives said today. A statement from the station reported that hooligans had destroyed transmission equipment, and torn up coaxial cables. The city of Leskovac is governed by the Socialist Party and the Yugoslav United Left. The statement emphasised that this was the third time the transmitter had been destroyed, adding that investigating bodies were doing their job, while the station’s technicians were repairing the transmitter. TV Leskovac broadcasts have been available in six municipalities in the Jablanica district in which there were no independent electronic or print media.

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