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Medienhilfe Ex-JugoslawienProfessionelle
Solidarität gegen Nationalismus und Chauvinismus
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ANEM WEEKLY MEDIA UPDATEJULY 14 JULY 20, 2001
BELGRADE, July 14, 2001 The demand of the opposition parties in the Serbian Parliament that a commission was established to find out the reason for broadcasting the documentary “Cry from the Grave” on the state-run television, about the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim civilians in Srebrenica, was opposed by the vice-president of the Democratic Alternative, Nada Kolundzija. “It is a bad way to defend national interests,” Kolundzija said Friday. Kolundzija criticised the Democratic Party of Serbia for joining the demands of the opposition parties. Kolundzija added on the same occasion that the party of Democratic Alternative was also striving to establish a commission that would investigate what had really happened in Srebrenica, and not to establish a commission that would establish who was responsible in Radio Television of Serbia for broadcasting of the documentary. “Every citizen has the right to make his own conclusions. Nobody has the right to impose censorship on things he watches, and to say 'This is bad for your national sentiment, and therefore I will not broadcast it for you,' although there are maybe sixty percent of people who may think that is right,” Kolundzija said.
BELGRADE, July 14, 2001 Police know the identity of the person who murdered the journalist Milan Pantic from Jagodina, daily Blic reported. According to one disappointed officer of Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who wanted to remain anonymous, the police knew the identity of the murderer, but would not arrest them for some time, because the person belonged to the special units of the police.
VALJEVO, July 14, 2001 The local branch of Otpor movement in Valjevo warned Serbian Minister of Internal Affairs Dusan Mihajlovic that “the same things as those before October 5 are happening again in the Valjevo police office, and we would not be surprised if Otpor activists were arrested again,” Radio Patak reported. The official protest the Otpor activists sent to Mihajlovic was in fact their reaction to an incident where a daily Blic reporter from Valjevo, Predrag Radojevic, was taken to the police station for an informative interrogation. “To take a journalist to the police station, and to interrogate him about his source of information, is an unprecedented incident in Valjevo,” Otpor activists said in their protest, appealing to the Minister of Internal Affairs to do everything in his power prevent journalists from being taken in for interrogation. Valjevo police took Radijevic to the police station Thursday for an informative interrogation, asking him to reveal to them the details on his work and his sources of information. Radijevic wrote a series of Blic articles during the previous months on the existence of the mafia in the town of Valjevo.
BELGRADE, July 14, 2001 The draft of Broadcast Act was completed Thursday, and during the next few days will be submitted to the Serbian Government to be taken in the regular legal procedure, Rade Veljanovski announced Friday. The Broadcast Act will be put on the agenda of the Serbian Parliament by the end of the summer, the coordinator of the group of lawyers of the Media Centre and of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) that has taken part in the preparations of the draft said. Certain changes were incorporated in the Draft Act after public debate, Veljanoviski added: “The first change is that we have reduced the minimum obligatory programmes production broadcasting for privately-run radio and television stations from 50 to 25 percent. The second change will make them happy too, because we cut out the provision according to which the private broadcasters had to reserve 10 percent of their programme for the private independent productions, and that obligation has remained only for the public service and for the local radio and television stations. The third change is that Radio Television Novi Sad ought to have one television and two radio channels, and Radio Television of Serbia two television and three radio channels, and the fourth change refers to the principal stand on collecting the viewers’ subscription fee. We think that both the viewers in Vojvodina, and the viewers in the rest of Serbia should pay the same amount of money for their subscription fee, and we should then find out the formula for the distribution of that money to the republic and provincial public service,” Veljanovski said. (B92)
KRAGUJEVAC, July 14, 2001 The Radio Television of Kragujevac President of the Board of Directors, General Milan Aksentijevic, resigned from his position on Wednesday, daily Danas reported. General Aksentijevic was the President of the Board of Directors of Radio Television of Kragujevac as the representative of Nova demokratija. Aksentijevic said at a press conference yesterday that he resigned from his position as his gesture of protest against the political pressures that were being exerted upon the journalists in Radio Television of Kragujevac. He added he disagreed with he way in which the editors of the first and the second channel of the radio and television of this media organization had been elected. He also criticised the appointment of Gorica Gligorijevic the editor of the First Channel of Radio Kragujevac, because he felt she did not have the necessary professional educational qualifications for that position. The President of the Executive Committee of the branch of Nova demokratija in Kragujevac, Dejan Ilic, yesterday pointed out the fact that the members of Nova demokratija had warned their coalition partners from Democratic Opposition of Serbia three times about the situation in Radio Television of Kragujevac. The first time they did it in the meeting of the DOS Representatives’ Club, then in the meeting of the town’s government, and recently for the third time in the press conference of that political party. “Is it necessary that besides the general director, his deputy, the deputy of the editor-in-chief, and the six of nine members of the Board of Directors, the programmes’ editors should be people from political parties?” Ilic asked yesterday, and pointed out that a continuous pressure had been exerted upon the journalists to become members of the political parties.
BELGRADE, July 15, 2001 The acting editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Politika, Milan Misic, who was appointed to this position on Friday, said that the changing the people in the leading positions in that newspaper had been on the top of the agenda for some time. The process sped up due to some misunderstandings about the idea that a single person was appointed to the positions of general director and of editor-in-chief in Politika again, and that the head of the editing committee was thus appointed as the editor of the newspaper, Misic explained. “We do not see any political reason for this change and the ensuing misunderstandings, and if they exist, they are not obvious,” Misic told Beta news agency. He added that the impression had been made by a wrong interpretation that the changes would be disastrous for Politika. “Neither the general director, Darko Ribnikar, nor I belong to any political party, nor we are under patronage of any political leader, and I do not see the way in which the two of us could affect the newly acquired independent position of Politika,” Misic said. He added that it was a pure coincidence that just before the change of the people in the leading positions the guests of Politika's television arm, TV Politika, had been Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica and the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic,. “Both of them were invited to visit us a few months ago, and it was a pure coincidence that they managed to make that visit just then,” Misic said. He pointed out that the former editor-in-chief of the daily Politika, Vojin Partonic, should be commended for stabilising the daily and its circumstances after October 5. “But there has matured a conviction in the newspaper that Politika … should make even bigger effort to win back the place of the undisputed leader in the market that it used to have, and that belongs to it, by certain editorial modernisation and by innovations in the sector of the human resources,” Misic said.
NOVI SAD, July 18, 2001 The workers’ union of the only Yugoslav daily newspaper in Hungarian language, Magyar Szo, decided that the paper's editing committee would go on strike on July 24 unless the founder raised the salaries of the employees by 100 percent. The workers’ union of the editing committee wrote in the newspaper they had complained to the founder several times already but, "Each time we did that, they asked for a little bit of patience, which has now been exhausted.” They added that they had understood the reason for the small salaries that they had been receiving during the Milosevic regime, but said that their salaries and work conditions had not improved even after the change of the regime. (ANEM)
BELGRADE, July 18, 2001 The former head of the Central Prison in Belgrade, Dragisa Blanusa, was dismissed from that position and transferred to a new position within the Ministry of Justice in the Serbian Government. Blanusa was dismissed after publishing his book “Cuvao sam Milosevica” (“I Was Guarding Milosevic”), in which he described the days of imprisonment of the former Yugoslav President. Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti has been publishing a series of articles based upon Blanusa’s book for the past week. In a conversation with the correspondent of Radio B92, Dragisa Blanusa denied the accusations that he overstepped his authority in any criminal manner: “You see, the Head of the Scheveningen Prison communicates directly with the press. I, if my disobedience can be put to question, admit, I have made a mistake, but I also think that we may pose the question of the necessity too. If a democratic society has really been instituted now, we should understand the necessity to do away with some old, well established rules, which meant to publish certain things twenty years later, like we have now a series of articles about Aleksandar Rankovic, and that, as the author of the articles wrote, when people read that, many a dead man would lose their peace. My intention was to publish such things as soon as possible, so that people would learn what happened behind those thick walls as soon as possible, and then, let some of the living lose their peace,” Blanusa said. The former Head of the Central Prison in Belgrade stressed that he hadn’t published the book for financial profit, and that he would give away the larger part of the profit from the books sold to the humanitarian purposes. Blanusa said that he could have earned a fortune for the photographs of Milosevic in prison. “Many have asked me, both the journalists and the international news agencies, to give them at least one photograph of Milosevic in prison, and offered for that more than a hundred thousand German marks. Nobody could obtain those photographs from this institution. I think that the real motive is important, the reason why I published all this. We all have had a different mental image of that couple for thirteen years, and maybe for even longer time. During those ninety days I saw that couple for what they really are. The people of our country should know that. There are some details in my book that interfere with their personal matters, they may seem indecent, but believe me, if they did not feel ashamed to do those things in front of us, then why should I be the one to keep that secret,” Blanusa pointed out. He affirmed that his book was authentic, and that he was convinced that even Milosevic himself would not have any objections regarding its text if he were to read it. |
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