ANEM WEEKLY MEDIA UPDATE

JULY 7 - JULY 13, 2001

• GLOBUS TV DEFIES COURT ORDER TO SURRENDER EQUIPMENT

KRAGUJEVAC, July 7, 2001 - The security guards of Kragujevac-based Globus Television, which is controlled by the local committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia, did not allow the Radio Television of Serbia technical crew to enter the premises to uninstall and take the equipment away. 

According to FoNet news agency, the technical crew from Belgrade brought with them all the necessary documents about the court ruling, but the journalists and editors of Globus Television locked themselves in the premises of the television.

Globus Television started broadcasting their experimental programme in the eve of the last year's elections, and nobody in Kragujevac has managed to learn who financed the purchase of the state-of-the-art equipment worth several millions German marks. 

Newspaper Nezavisna Svetlost reported that all the employees of this television station were on the payroll of Radio Television of Serbia.

• MIHAJLOVIC: PUBLISHING EXTRADITION PHOTOS "SCANDALOUS"

BELGRADE, July 7, 2001 - Serbian police minister Dusan Mihajlovic condemned the publication of photographs showing Slobodan Milosevic being extradited to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague as "scandalous." 

He added that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had already started an investigation how daily Nedeljni Telegraf managed to acquire the photographs. (B92) 

• TADIC: BROADCASTING ACT IS PREPARED

BELGRADE, July 7, 2001 - Federal Telecommunications Minister Boris Tadic told B92 he expected that the tender for frequency allocation would be invited by the end of the year. 

He said that the Broadcasting Act was prepared and the regulatory body for frequency allocation would be established.

Tadic added that the new Broadcasting Act would soon be submitted for the parliamentary procedure. 

"I am sure that this is the first European system law for Yugoslavia, and will enable the realisation of serious legal reforms in some other sectors too," Tadic said. 

• RTV PINK BUILDING BUILT WITHOUT PERMITS

BELGRADE, July 9, 2001 - The municipality of Savski venac informed RTV Pink head Zeljko Mitrovic, the investor of the RTV Pink building on Neznanog junaka street 6, by letter on July 6 that he should move out of the newly built building, because they had established that he had not acquired all the necessary documents and the permit for use within the preset time period, daily Danas reported Monday. 

According to the current Regulatory Plan for Dedinje, the owner of Radio Television Pink was issued permission to build a 1,119 square metres building, along with the clearly prescribed conditions for its appearance and function. 

However, after one year of construction work, the building grew to 3,700 square metres. 

Public interest was further provoked by the controversial decision by the Architecture Fair jury to give an award for high architectural accomplishments in the creation of this building. 

In February, the Municipality took the first concrete steps by setting the time line for Mitrovic to acquire the necessary permits.

The story about the new way to dodge the legal requirements and provisions on individual construction by means of buying pieces of land and thus by enlarging the landed property became again a common topic then, too. 

In this particular case, the path from the initial plan to its realisation was difficult, because some of Mitrovic's neighbours refused to sell their pieces of land. According to the Regulatory Plan, he needs another 13.5 acres of land for the newly built building to fit within the prescribed proportions. 

In the meantime, Mitrovic obtained only the permit from the Municipality to construct the parking lot.

Municipal critics contend this is only a public announcement of the fact that the negotiations with Mitrovic face a dead end, because during the last four months none of the municipal officials even mentioned the illegal building on Neznanog junaka street, and it was not included in the official plan for pulling down of the illegally built buildings for this summer. 

Meanwhile, the critics told press, Mitrovic tried to announce that he would build playgrounds as a kind of redemption on his side.

• NUNS MEMBERS VISIT JAGODINA

JAGODINA, July 11, 2001 - As a part of the campaign of the Independent Associaion of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS), journalists from several Belgrade print media houses visited Jagodina to learn how far the investigation on murder of Milan Pantic had come one month after his death. 

The journalists visited the branch office of Ministry of Internal Affairs in Jagodina, where the Head of the office, Bozidar Djordjevic informed them about the results of the investigation so far.

"This is a case of high priority for the police, because a large number of people have been interrogated," Djordjevic said.

"At this moment we do not know who ordered and who perpetrated the murder," he added. 

The journalists laid flowers on Milan Pantic's grave, and after that paid a visit to Radio Television of Jagodina and to weekly Novi put to discuss the situation in which journalists find themselves today. (B92) 

• HAS CURUVIJA ALREADY BEEN FORGOTTEN? BROTHER ASKS

BELGRADE, July 12, 2001 - The murderers of Slavko Curuvija have not yet been discovered, although that case should have been one of the priorities in the agenda of the new authorities, according to their promises given during the electoral campaign, the brother of the murdered journalist and owner of the newspapers Evropljanin and Dnevni telegraf told press. 

Jovo Curuvija, brother of Slavko Curuvija, appealed to the Serbian Minister of Internal Affairs, Dusan Mihajlovic, to fulfil their promise, and to make public by July 11 the information on who had commissioned, organised and perpetrated the murder of his brother. 

However, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond.

"Before they came in power, they signed the promise that the murder of Slavko Curuvija, the massacre on the highway along the Ibar River, and the disappearance of Ivan Stambolic would be the priorities within the first hundred days of their governing. For me, the statements that the police know everything, but that they do not have the evidence, mean nothing. The police and the judiciary should find out the evidence, and punish those who ordered and committed those crimes. Essentially, there is no important difference between those crimes, because those who had ordered them, the persecutors, and the murderers were within the former regime, as they are today, at large," Jovo Curuvija told the daily Blic. 

He pointed out that he did not doubt that there was a wish to solve the case of murder of Slavko Curuvija.

But on the other hand, he added, "I greatly doubt that they are competent enough to be able to do that. The question of murder of Slavko Curuvija, the massacre on the highway along the Ibar, and of the disappearance of Ivan Stambolic are not a part of some petty political game of different political parties that form the opposition, and even some from the governing majority, but one of the most important proofs for the promises given by the new authorities, and first of all by the police and by the judiciary, that they will put this society on the road to changes and healing."

He admitted that setting any kind of time limits had become absurd, and that he would find some other ways to exert pressure on the authorities. 

"Is it possible that the authorities have already forgotten the fact that Slavko paid with his life to cleanse the society in which we live of the war criminals and of the rest of that scum? Have they forgotten that one part of him is with no doubt built in the changes that happened on October 5? I think that the government would have to transfer the Minister of the Internal Affairs, Mihajlovic, to the sector of trade, where he has shown enviable results, and to entrust such an important position to a competent and responsible man," Curuvija pointed out. 

• SERBIAN PARLIAMENT ON THE SREBRENICA DOCUMENTARY

BELGRADE, July 13, 2001 - The Serbian Parliament debate yesterday consisted mainly of the discussion on the documentary film on Srebrenica that was broadcast on Wednesday evening in the peak time by the state-run television, Radio B92 reported. 

Some Serbian Radical Party deputies asked at the parliament session's beginning that a commission be established to find out who was responsible for broadcasting of this documentary, which they labelled "the prosecution against the people of Serbia".

This initiative was joined by the deputies of the Democratic Party of Serbia. 

One of the deputies of this party, Vladimir Dobrosavljevic explained the reasons for their support for the demand by the members of the Radical Party of Serbia: 

"The Democratic Party of Serbia supported the initiative for establishing of a Commission, not wanting to meddle with the editorial policy of any media organisation, and neither to meddle with the policy of the state-run television, but above all because a kind of systematic campaign started several weeks ago, concerning with finding out about the war crimes in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Our reason is exactly the same reason the Truth Commission was established by the President of our federal state, and that is before all to establish the individual responsibility," Dobrosavljevic said.

The stand of Socialist Party of Serbia is that everybody, and especially the media, has to provide the equal treatment to victims and war crimes suspects, SPS vice president and head of their deputies' Club Branislav Ivkovic told B92. 

Ivkovic called the Srebrenica documentary a propaganda material, produced, as he put it, on the demand from abroad.

"I want to say exactly that all the time, like some trump cards, the particular films and the particular crimes have been chosen, which were made with the sole intention to prepare the public opinion of Serbia in a certain way, and to produce the feeling of shame and embarrassment with the Serbian people. Both Television B92 and the national television pick out the crimes that were potentially done by Serbs, and they completely cut out all the violations perpetrated by the ethnic Albanian terrorists and by the NATO aggressors. I have never read anywhere anything about 1,300 Serbian people who are dead or are alive, but disappeared, since KFOR have come, I have never read anywhere, anything about the corpses that I have myself seen, the Serbian corpses, in the small backwater of Lake Radonja," Ivkovic added. 

The B92 journalist corrected him by saying that the lake was called Lake Radonjic, and that it was obvious that he had neither watched nor listened to the programmes he had been talking about.

Then she asked him whether he had watched the documentary on Srebrenica in question, and whether he thought that the massacre had not even taken place. Ivkovic responded to her questions by saying that he had not even wanted to watch the documentary, but that he conceded that the crime might have taken place.

The Head of the DOS Deputies' Club, Cedomir Jovanovic, was the most active deputy on the parliamentary rostrum, opposing the establishment of such a Commission, and thus was the most criticised deputy by those who supported it.

He considered the question of somebody's responsibility from Radio Television of Serbia unacceptable. "I do not think that our society has to bear some collective responsibility, but I therefore insist upon establishing of the individual accountability, and upon the responsibility for the public announcing, both of the names of those who perpetrated a war crime, and of the names of their victims. Therefore, I did not mind the broadcasting of the documentary on the same day as the massacre happened in Srebrenica, but I am also aware that the documentary did not represent a comprehensive treatment of the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina, nor did it completely point at those who will have to answer for the war crimes, because the example of Srebrenica is exactly the confirmation of the hypothesis that there are no national borders for war crimes, and I have just found the confirmation for the thesis that you need two sides both for waging the war, and for perpetrating a war crime," Jovanovic pointed out.

• OPPOSITION DEMANDS LIVE PARLIAMENT COVERAGE

BELGRADE, July 13, 2001 - The sitting of the lower chamber of the federal Parliament at which the Socialist Party of Serbia, Serbian Radical Party and the Yugoslav Left called for a Declaration for Protection of Constitutional System had to be discontinued because of the lack of quorum.

The Sitting was begun with the opposition deputies' demands that the live coverage of the meeting be provided. "When we should have voted on whether the sitting would be continued or postponed until the live television coverage would be provided, those who had proposed the Declaration withdrew from the meeting," Dragoljub Micunovic, the President of the Lower Chamber said.

Micunovic announced the possibility of agreements with the groups of deputies in order to provide live television coverage of the next parliamentary sitting.

"We were informed today that the Board of Directors of Radio Television of Serbia refused to produce live coverage of the federal Parliament session, because they were not interested in doing that. The Radio Television of Serbia Board of Directors cannot act as if they were above the Parliament and the state, they cannot be a state within the state. This is the more so because the majority in that Board of Directors consists of the members of Democratic Opposition of Serbia, too. For that reason, all the remaining groups of deputies asked that a lasting agreement be concluded for once, respecting the principle of the compulsory nature of the live coverage," Ljubomir Ilkic, the deputy of the head of the Socialist Party of Serbia deputies' Club in the Lower Chamber of the federal parliament.

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