ANEM'S WEEKLY REPORT ON MEDIA REPRESSION IN SERBIA

JUNE 24 ­ JUNE 30, 2000.

OSCE CONDEMNS ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS IN KOSOVO

BELGRADE, June 24, 2000 ­ The OSCE on Friday condemned the wounding of Serbian journalists in central Pristina, saying that the attack was another case of the intimidation of members of Kosovo’s Serbian community. "This journalist was one of those working in the multi-ethnic radio station Radio Kontakt. She and her colleagues have continued to work in Pristina, despite intimidation and harassment, showing real courage and dedication to honest journalism," said the OSCE office in Kosovo in a statement. "We cannot allow this kind of attack to happen," said OSCE ambassador Daan Everts, adding that the freedom of journalists to do their job and the freedom of media were rights that had to be respected.

The OSCE also expressed concern at the high level of intimidation of journalists of all nationalities throughout Kosovo, adding that this undermined efforts for the creation of free and democratic media and society. The organisation called on all journalists who were under threat or exposed to attack to report the incident to the nearest OSCE media official because assistance could be given in investigating such incidents and information collected would be confidential.

KOUCHNER’S MEDIA REGULATIONS "A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT"

BELGRADE, June 24, 2000 ­ The World Committee for Press Freedom on Friday expressed concern at what it described as the unilateral introduction of regulations for electronic media in Kosovo by UNMIK chief Bernard Kouchner. The Committee, describing the decree as the dictatorial regulation of media, said it was a dangerous precedent which could be used by Balkan dictatorships to justify their own censorship. "The proclamation of decrees without any sign of a legislative process is not the rule of rights, it is the imposition of personal authority," said the Committee.

Kouchner imposed the media regulations after the murder of a Serb whose alleged crimes were published in an Albanian newspaper along with his address.

SERB LEADER ADVISED TO LEAVE KOSOVO POLJE

KOSOVO POLJE, June 24, 2000 ­ The president of the Serbian National Assembly of Kosovo Polje, Svetislav Grujic, told SRNA agency on Friday that UNMIK police had advised him to leave Kosovo Polje temporarily after the Albanian-language daily Dita had prepared to print wanted posters of him.

In an issue prepared for printing, Dita presented a wanted poster with Grujic’s name, with a lengthy biography and allegations of genocide against Albanians. The newspaper published an article on April 27 under the title "When Petar becomes Peter" claiming that Topoljski had committed war crimes during the NATO attacks on Kosovo, along with a photograph and the addresses of his home and place of work. He was murdered several days later and UNMIK alleged that Dita was responsible for the murder. The author of the article and the paper’s editor-in-chief have been detained for interrogation a number of times.

Police and KFOR troops advised Grujic that plans had been prepared for his murder. When he refused to leave the town, international peacekeepers assigned an increased number of guards for his personal protection.

JOURNALISTS PROPOSE MEDIA CONVENTION

BELGRADE, June 24, 2000 ­ The Independent Association of Serbian Journalists on Friday proposed to the democratic opposition parties a convention which would oblige them to uphold the principles necessary for professional media work in Serbia. In the convention, which was distributed to opposition parties in Serbia, ten principles were laid out. These included the urgent abolition of the Public Information Act and the adoption of new legislation based on the highest democratic standards. By accepting the convention the parties would oblige themselves to fight for the openness of information sources, media pluralism and the equality of professional associations, with no kind of monopoly and without political or other pressures on the media.

Under the Association’s proposed convention, the parties would be required to fight for the transformation of state media into public services with a non-party editorial policy and civilian control, for the autonomy of journalists and media funded from public budgets and the lifting of restrictions on the establishment and activity of private media. The document demands that the parties support professional journalist associations in their demands for sanctions against those journalists who violate professional standards and ethical codes by vilification, intolerance, war and the persecution of political opponents.

The directors of the Associations and the editors of the largest private and independent media in Serbia, meeting on Friday, condemned a statement by Federal Information Minister Goran Matic accusing respected Belgrade media of being directly linked to the US intelligence agency, CIA, and working under its orders. The Association described the statement as a pogrom and a call for the lynching of journalists, adding that it was unacceptable that a federal minister, in his typical manner, with no serious arguments or evidence, should denounce NIN journalists Ljiljana Smailovic over an article she had written about the CIA and make similar allegations about the weeklies Vreme, Blic njuz and other media.

RADIO FREE EUROPE CORRESPONDENT ASSAULTED

SABAC, June 25, 2000 ­ The Radio Free Europe correspondent from Sabac, Hanibal Kovac, was assaulted on Friday at the Krsmanovaca recreation centre by security guards who regarded him as responsible for a report on the barring of Romanies from using the centre’s facilities. The guards dragged Kovac from the swimming pool and beat him severely in front of his wife and child. The recreation centre is owned by a senior official of the Serbian Radical Party and former minister without portfolio in the Serbian government, Cedomir Vasiljevic. The author of the report on the centre is not known to journalists in Sabac. It is alleged to have been published by certain foreign media.

POLICE WATCH AS JOURNALIST’S CAR VANDALISED

LESKOVAC, June 25, 2000 ­ A car belonging to two independent journalists from Nis was vandalised last night in front of the Leskovac police station. While Zorica Miladinovic and Dusica Pesic were covering a protest in front of the police station, tyres and windows on the car, which was parked on the opposite side of the road, were destroyed.

The two journalists had travelled to Leskovac to report on a protest over the arrest of ten supporters of Otpor activist Vladimir Stojkovic who was being held in the police station. About twenty protesters entered the lobby of the police station, announcing that they would stay there until those arrested had been released. Stojkovic’s mother, Stana, and people’s representative Bojana Ristic, were forcibly thrown out of the building. The remaining protesters obeyed police orders to move to the other side of the street. They were then ordered to disperse from there. The arrested protesters were released at about 2.00 a.m.

PROTEST AT SHOOTING OF JOURNALIST

BELGRADE, June 25, 2000 ­ The international organisation for the protection of journalists, Reporteurs Sans Frontieres, today protested against the recent shooting of Radio Kontakt journalist and editor, Valentina Cukic, in Pristina. Cukic was seriously wounded on Tuesday night in the central city, outside the Radio Television Kosovo building. "We demand measures to provide safety for journalists and information on the progress of the investigation," said the organisation in a letter to OSCE media representative Freimut Duve, adding that there was also concern over the deteriorating working conditions for journalists in Kosovo.

FILIPOVIC "MAY HAVE OBTAINED MILITARY SECURITY REPORTS"

PARIS, June 26, 2000 ­ Kraljevo journalist Miroslav Filipovic, on trial in the Nis Military Court for espionage, may have been arrested on the basis of articles published by the London Institute for War and Peace, say Paris daily Liberation and international journalist protection organization Reporteurs Sans Frontieres.

Liberation writes that some of the articles over which Filipovic has been charged by the Nis Military Court were based precisely on military sources. The paper claims that Filipovic obtained reports from the military security service, including testimony from Yugoslav Army officers about atrocities against Albanians during the NATO bombing.

The daily comments that the reports could not be considered as espionage because Filipovic had signed the articles and stated his sources although, as was his professional right, he protected them.

BATIC AND DJINDJIC AGAINST SUE STATE MEDIA

BELGRADE, June 26, 2000 ­ Alliance for Change leaders Zoran Djindjic and Vladan Batic on Sunday filed new charges against the editor-in-chief of state news agency Tanjug, Dusan Djordjevic and daily Politika editor-in-chief Hadzi Dragan Antic for breach of the Public Information Act.

The offending text, published in Politika on June 25 under the title "Serbian political opposition doesn’t actually exist", claimed that the reason for an alleged feud between Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic and the Alliance for Change, which had been made public in recent days, was the recent assassination of senior Socialist Party and state official Bosko Perosevic. The article claimed that the Alliance for Change was angry with Draskovic because the job had been shoddily carried out. It also alleged that Djindjic and Batic had sought the agreement of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the involvement of what it described as the NATO youth movement, Otpor, in the assassination.

PIROT BROADCASTER FINED

PIROT, June 26, 2000 ­ The public information company Slobodan and director Boban Nikolic have been fined a total of 22,000 dinars in the Pirot Municipal Court for operating a television station, TV Pirot, without a licence.

The charges, brought the federal minister for telecommunications were heard by magistrate Olivera Todorovic on April 21. Nikolic appealed saying that the court’s explanation for the ruling, that no action had been undertaken to obtain a licence, was completely unacceptable. He added that the appeal would include all the documentation of an application submitted by TV Pirot to the Ministry in 1998.

ABC PRODUKT APPEALS

BELGRADE, June 26, 2000 ­ Belgrade daily Glas javnosti in today’s edition carries an appeal from its parent company, ABC Produkt, to all legislative and executive authorities in Serbia and to the public, domestic and international, to prevent an anarchic series of proceedings against ABC Produkt and its subsidiaries in the Belgrade Commercial Court. The article describes the proceedings as being characterised by the granting of illegal temporary orders and delays in referring appeals to the Higher Commercial Court. It also notes that ABC Produkt legal representatives were being denied access to case files and that execution of court orders was being carried out illegally, sometimes with the assistance of private armed guards.

ABC Produkt notes that first bankruptcy proceedings were begun against the print firm ABC Grafika, despite an offer by company representatives to clear all debts. Then, on the demand of the official receiver for the company, in proceedings which lasted only nineteen days, ABC Produkt was evicted from its premises in Vlajkoviceva Street. Simultaneously, in another case, the Udarnik company, which had entered bankruptcy proceedings ten years ago and was saved only by significant investments from ABC Produkt, succeeded in obtaining a temporary order for a storage facility owned by ABC Produkt to be handed over to the director of Udarnik. At the time the 2,000 square metre warehouse contained equipment and materials worth tens of millions of dinars as well as machinery, spare parts and newsprint stocks belonging to ABC Produkt and the Glas javnosti printer. Udarnik also succeeded in obtaining another temporary order from the president of the Commercial Court, Milena Arezina, f!

or the freezing of ABC Produkt’s bank account, whose balance was 159 million dinars.

The article also notes that, since yesterday, Glas javnosti’s printing premises has been guarded by increased security, which has prevented the dismantling of machinery, adding that despite eight days’ notice of eviction having been given, the security guards have prevented the company from moving out of the building. Glas javnosti emphasises that the dismantling of each of its eight main presses required a week and that the moving of the whole printing operation required at least two months.

JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION IN SIXTH PROTEST

BELGRADE, June 27, 200 ­ Independent Association of Serbian Journalists official Filip Mladenovic on Monday described May and June this year as being the worst period in the history of Serbian information because assaults and blackmail had been introduced alongside the already exiting fines and arrests.

Mladenovic was speaking at the Association’s sixth monthly protest in central Belgrade, where he reminded demonstrators that during May, at the time of the Pasaz Café incident in Pozarevac, the largest number of journalists ever had been arrested.

"This month, Radio Free Europe correspondent Hanibal Kovac was beaten in front of his family in Sabac and a car belonging to Danas and Radio Free Europe journalists Zorica Miladinovic and Dusica Pesic was demolished in Nis," said Mladenovic. He also noted that during June, under the Public Information Act, the weekly NIN and daily Glas javnosti had been fined and Kikindske novine had had an earlier fine increased. The total fines imposed came to 600,000 dinars, said Mladenovic, which was why Belgrade magistrates Slavica Kajganic and Zorica Prokic and Novi Sad magistrate Cecilija Polverzan had been added to the Association’s shame list.

ABC PRODUKT EVICTION DEADLINE TODAY

BELGRADE, June 27, 2000 ­ The eviction order for ABC Produkt to quit its Vlajkoviceva Street premises in central Belgrade, which also houses the company’s Belgrade daily Glas javnosti, falls due today. Director Slavoljub Kacarevic told Beta that office furnishing were being removed from the premises but that it was impossible to move the company’s presses within the deadline, partly because security guards were preventing them being dismantled. He added that the security guards were not in uniform and that nobody knew who had hired them. Kacarevic expressed the hope that ABC Produkt would be given more time to moved. No decision has yet been made on a new location for the Glas javnosti editorial offices because, said Kacarevic, pre-bankruptcy proceedings had been launched against ABC Produkt, making the use of its alternative premises questionable. The hearing is scheduled for 10.00 a.m. today in the Belgrade Commercial Court.

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALISTS CONDEMNS KOUCHNER MEDIA POLICY

BELGRADE, June 27, 2000 -- The International Federation of Journalists today strongly condemned the United Nations administration in Kosovo for limiting the freedom of the press in the southern Serbian province. Federation secretary-general Aiden White described UN mission head Bernard Kouchner’s decree on media as an unprecedented and dangerous act of international media control in a post-conflict region. Kouchner has decided to appoint a media commissioner in Kosovo who would have the authority to punish, suspend or ban print media. Under the newly proclaimed decree it is not permitted to publish personal information identifying people where such information could a threat to security. White, in the Federation statement, describes the suspension of daily Dita, because the paper had denounced a UN employee as an enemy of Albanians a few days before he was found murdered, as a confused and dangerous response. He added that such a regulation was replacing the rule of law with a dictatorship which, he said, was a poor message for a region which was striving to adopt democratic principles, professionalism and tolerance, despite the conflicts, divisions and non-democratic regimes in the neighbourhood.

MURDERED STATE MEDIA EMPLOYEES SHOULD BE ON LIST: RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS

MOSCOW, June 27, 2000 ­ An open letter from a group of respected Russian journalists and foreign correspondents in Moscow to the New York Committee for the Protection of Journalists expresses astonishment at the organisation’s decision not to include sixteen Radio Television Serbia employees killed by NATO in its annual list of murdered journalists.

The letter quotes the Committee’s explanation for its decision as being that although the murdered employees fitted the formal definition of journalists, they had not been included because, by working for Serbian state television, they had been promoting the state’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

The Moscow journalists, describing the omission as a grave error, add "In a society as polarized as that of Serbia, all media, unfortunately, become vehicles for propaganda. Every surface appearance of objectivity is sacrificed for the promotion of political goals. This applies equally to non-government and regime media. One example of non-Milosevic propaganda is the recently closed Studio B which, as the city radio station, promoted the goals of one party, the Serbian Renewal Movement.

"The sixteen people who died in the bombing were, without exception, technical staff ­ make-up artists, lighting technicians and so on. None of them had any influence on the content of Radio Television Serbia broadcasts."

The Moscow journalists added that the deaths of the Belgrade media workers were typical of the fate of journalists in a conflict. "Journalists die because, in the worst case, both sides see them as the enemy while, in the best case, they are seen as unimportant and disposable. It is important to note that in most cases the bombing of important buildings in Belgrade did not result in human casualties because the authorities had evacuated buildings known to be on NATO’s list of targets. Everybody in Belgrade knew that the Radio Television Serbia building was on the list, but it was not evacuated because the regime believed that journalists, as opposed to army or police troops, could be easily sacrificed".

Journalists in Belgrade had known they would be sacrificed, add the Moscow journalists, saying that this could be seen on their panic-stricken faces as they reported during NATO’s attack. "The technical crew certainly felt afraid and abandoned. It is not right that they have again been abandoned in death by their colleagues," said the open letter, appealing to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists to reconsider its decision.

AWARD FOR JAILED JOURNALIST

BELGRADE, June 27, 2000 ­ Miroslav Filipovic, the Kraljevo correspondent of Belgrade daily Danas, has won Stasa Marinkovic Award, which is presented annually by Danas for outstanding journalism. The jury, chaired by Danas editor-in-chief Grujica Spasovic, presented the award to Filipovic for an extraordinary contribution to journalism with a series of articles on crimes in Kosovo. Presenting the award to Filipovic’s wife on his behalf, Spasovic noted that the journalists was currently in prison, charged with espionage over the same articles for which he had won the award.

EDITOR INTERROGATED IN ARMY BARRACKS

KIKINDA, June 27, 2000 -- The editor-in-chief of Kikinda daily Kikindske novine, Zeljko Bodrozic, yesterday spent more than three hours under interrogation in the local army barracks. Bodrozic was summoned by a Colonel Banic and questioned about the front page of an edition of the paper which carried a photograph of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and several senior army officers with the caption "Libero and the Inside Lefts". The name Slobodan in Serbian means "free". ANEM’s Kikinda correspondent reports that Banic asked whether Bodrozic hated the army as an institution. Bodrozic replied that the army was being abused and that his newspaper had no intention of insulting the army. Banic then assured the editor that the conversation should be considered a friendly chat rather than an interrogation.

COURT DISMISSES RTV PANCEVO APPLICATIONS

BELGRADE, June 28, 2000 ­ Belgrade’s First Municipal Court today dismissed an application by Radio Television Pancevo to find that its property on Milica Hill had been interfered with. The court also declined to grant an order allowing the broadcaster access to and undisturbed use of its transmitter at the location.

A statement from RTV Pancevo said that the company had asked the court to determine that the Republic of Serbia and the Serbian Interior Ministry had interfered with its property, the transmitter on Milica Hill.

Radio Pancevo’s signal transmission from Milica Hill was terminated by persons unknown on the evening of May 18. Since that day the signal of Television Pancevo has been subject to disruption. The Milica Hill transmitter was used for broadcasting to the Belgrade area on 92.1 MHz FM. The court justified its ruling by saying that the Court Council, with Judge Vesna Dimitrijevic presiding, accepted the claim of the accused that the Serbian police were operating in accordance with the Interior Affairs Act and acting on the order of Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic. However, that order was not presented as evidence in the court.

ABC PRODUKT BANKRUPTCY HEARING ADJOURNED

BELGRADE, June 28, 2000 ­ The deadline given in an eviction notice for ABC Produkt to quit its premises in Vlajkoviceva Street, which also house daily Glas javnosti and the print firm used by Blic, NIN, Vreme and several other periodicals, passed yesterday. Director Slavoljub Kacarevic told Radio B2-92 that Belgrade Commercial Court bailiffs had not attempted to use force yesterday to execute the eviction. He expressed the fear, however, that his staff and the printing firm would be forced to leave their offices during today.

Bankruptcy proceedings against ABC Produkt were adjourned in the Belgrade Commercial Court today after the company’s legal representatives sought disqualification of magistrate Svetlana Slijepcevic-Lukic. The company has been given until today to quit its Belgrade premises, along with its subsidiary, the Belgrade daily Glas javnosti and the printing firm which produces Blic, Glas, NIN, Vreme and several other publications. The company’s lawyers sought the magistrate’s disqualification because she was a member of a bench which ordered bankruptcy proceedings against the printing firm ABC Grafika, which is also a subsidiary of ABC Produkt. The case has been adjourned until the first half of July.

The editor-in-chief of Belgrade daily Glas javnosti, which has been ordered to quit its premises by today, said that the paper will continue to publish. Slavoljub Kacarevic told media that it was almost impossible to vacate the premises today because the building housed a number of presses which needed to be disassembled. "This means that they want us to move out empty-handed," he said, adding that the paper had found alternative printers and would continue to publish, although possibly in a smaller number of copies.

ARRESTS IN NIS

NIS, June 29, 2000 ­ Police in Nis last night arrested two cameramen and a photographer as they covered a protest in the city center against the arrest of seven Otpor activists. The Otpor members had been arrested while attempting to perform a street protest, dedicating a National Hero medal in the city center. Seven Otpor activists were also arrested.

Cameras were confiscated from TV5 cameraman Goran Milic TV Belami cameraman Bojan Petrovic and Narodne novine photographer Stevan Lazarevic. All were released late last night, but the seized equipment was retained, with the promise that it would be returned "when the situation calms down".

The journalists were arrested as they filmed a column of two hundred citizens attempting to march to the Nis police station. A cordon of about thirty police prevented the protesters from approaching the building.

NIN ANNOUNCES CHARGES AGAINST INFORMATION MINISTER

BELGRADE, June 29, 2000 ­ Belgrade weekly news magazine NIN today accused Federal Information Minister Goran Matic of disseminating false information and deliberately deceiving the public with his recent claim that NIN’s editorial policy was dictated by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Editor-in-Chief Stevan Niksic, in an editorial in the magazine’s latest issue, wrote that the libel charges will be pressed against Matic who, said Niksic, had made grave allegations against NIN and journalist Ljiljana Smajlovic while discussing proposed anti-terrorism legislation on YU Info Television.

Niksic dismissed Matic’s accusations, saying they were ridiculous. However, he said, there was serious reason for concern in any country where a person in such a responsible government position "deliberately spreads lies, with the obvious intention of deceiving the public and shamelessly libeling people or threatening them with imprisonment."

MONKS AND TELEVISION CREW ATTACKED

PRIZREN, June 29, 2000 ­ An Austrian KFOR soldier was wounded today when a group of Albanians threw stones at a Russian television crew and monks in the Sveta Bogorodica Monastery, fifteen kilometers from Prizren.

A KFOR spokesman told media that the assailants had asked for the monks to be handed over, saying that one of them was a war criminal. Austrian KFOR troops conducted the Russian television crew and the monks to an international police station from where they were evacuated at about 6.00 p.m. through a corridor of about six hundred people.

TELEVISION CREW ARRESTED IN KRALJEVO

KRALJEVO, June 30, 2000 ­ Kraljevo police yesterday arrested a television crew from TV Kraljevo, along with four Otpor activists and a Democratic Party official. They were arrested after an Otpor protest, Mass Repentance, in which members of the movement attempted to join the Socialist Party en masse. All arrested were released early in the afternoon, however police confiscated a video tape belonging to the television crew.

APPEAL TO MILOSEVIC TO QUASH PRISON SENTENCE

BELGRADE, June 30, 2000 ­ The World Association of Newspapers and the World Forum of Publishers have appealed to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to annul a three-month prison sentence imposed on the director of Borske novine, Dusica Radulovic.

The two associations noted in their open letter to Milosevic that Radulovic had been convicted because her newspaper had published a number of articles allegedly slandering local authorities in the town of Bor.

"We respectfully remind you that criminal law is completely inappropriate for dealing with libel and that this practice contravenes international agreement," said the letter, adding that civil proceedings for compensation were the only appropriate remedy for such libel cases.

COURT DISMISSES DISQUALIFICATION MOVE

BELGRADE, June 30, 2000 ­ The Belgrade Commercial Court and Higher Commercial Court have dismissed a motion by ABC Produkt, the parent company of Belgrade daily Glas javnosti, to disqualify the president of the Bankruptcy Council, Svetlana Slijepcevic-Lukic, the president of the Commercial Court, Milena Arezina and the president of the Higher Commercial Court, Cedomir Prostran, from proceedings against the company.

Glas javnosti wrote today that rulings from both courts received by the company on Thursday had been signed by the presidents of the courts. ABC Produkt demanded that they, and Slijepcevic-Lukic, be disqualified because they had displayed biased behaviour in previous court proceedings against the company.

A new hearing in the pre-bankruptcy proceedings against ABC Produkt has been scheduled for July 11.

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