1998 World Press Freedom Reviewl

The Serbian Parliament adopted a draconian Law on Public Information this year which bans re-broadcasting of foreign programmes, levies exorbitant fees on offending media with a 24-hour deadline in which to pay and gives the authorities numerous powers to curtail and stifle media. Flaunting accepted standards of justice, the media are deemed guilty as soon as they are charged with committing a misdemeanour, until they prove the contrary.

During the parliamentary reading of the law, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj described independent editors as NATO officers and Javier Solana, "the man who decided on the bombing and destruction of Serbia and killings of its citizens," as their chief editor.

The introduction of the legislation is inteded to stifle debate, curb dissent and to present the public with only the authorities’ perspective.

Prior to the adoption of the Law, the Belgrade authorities used a government decree to close three prominent independent newspapers: Danas, Nasa Borba and Dnevni Telegraf accusing them of "inciting fear, panic and defeatism" through their reporting. Just after the new Law came into effect, the Serbian Government prosecuted the owner and editor of the news magazine Evropljanin in a Belgrade court on October 23. The court found that articles and illustrations in Evropljanin violated Article 67 of the new Public Information Law and so upheld charges filed against the publishing company, its publisher Ivan Tadic, and editors Slavco Curuvija and Dragan Bujusevic. Exorbitant fines were handed out to these first victims of the new law in what was seen as a calculated move to force the magazine to cease publishing. Slavko Curivija was fined 800,000 Dinars (US$80,000), Dragan Bujosevic and Ivan Tadic were fined 400,000 Dinars each, and DeTePress - the publishing company - was penalised to the sum of 800,000 Dinars.

The leading independent newspaper Nasa Borba has decided not to publish while the Law is in effect. To by-pass the Law, a number of media outlets have registered their subsidiaries in Montenegro.

On November 8, Dnevni Telegraf, which had only just re-opened after being closed down in October, was fined the equivalent of US$120,000 by a local court for publishing an advertisement by a Belgrade University student group that called for the abolishment of the current government. The advertisement was ruled to be "inciting destruction of the constitutional order." Under the new Law, the publisher has only 24 hours to pay the fine.

Copies of the Montenegrin weekly Monitor were seized by the police at the offices of the publisher Stampa in Belgrade on November 27.

The seizure occurred just after Monitor had been sentenced to pay a fine equivalent to US$280,000 for publishing information "calling for the violent overthrow of the constitutional order" under Article 67 of the new information law. The paper had suggested that if the province of Kosovo obtained autonomous status, Montenegro would then become the third constituent republic of Yugoslavia rather than the second. The copies were sold for pulping as payment towards the fine.

A Belgrade misdemeanour judge, acting on charges filed by Serbian vice-premier and leader of the Serbian Radical Party Vojislav Seselj, fined the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti a total of 380,000 dinars (US$38,000) on November 21. Radio Seselj filed the charges against Glas Javnosti because it had carried a statement made by judge Radomir Vujacic that the leader of the Radicals was "working against the interests of the Serbian people in Kosovo."

The Minister of Information of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, sent a warning to the Albanian language newspapers and magazines on Thursday, December 17 that they would be taken to court if they don’t change their editorial policy. The minister wrote, that the newspapers were "calling for the violent break of the constitutional order, territorial integrity and unity of the Republic of Serbia and FR of Yugoslavia" as well as violating the rights of citizens, that is inciting national, racial or religious hatred.

Afrim Maliqi, 31, the Pristina journalist for Bujku was killed in an ambush on his car around 5pm in the centre of Pristina on December 2, IFJ reported. The assailants who were masked, shot at the car and killed all three passengers.

Maliqi had told colleagues that he feared for his life because he believed he was being followed. Local journalists believe he was killed for his journalistic activity. He had been a journalist for seven years and wrote a cultural column which criticised Serbian policy towards the Albanian language community.

Bujku is one of several Albanian language daily newspapers which have been targetted by the Serb authorities. Police stopped journalists entering the building on the weekend of 19 December, effectively closing down the paper.

A public tender was announced on February 8 this year by the government for radio and television stations to obtain temporary broadcast licences. As the terms of this tender were vague and the criteria applied not clear, many broadcasters interpreted the move as a legal device to silence critical voices. The results were announced on May 16. 247 stations out of 425 applicants were granted licenses. The vast majority of independent radio and television stations that applied for licences were denied, while numerous stations with close business or political ties to the ruling Socialist Party were granted permission to broadcast.

All four members of the Milosevic family now control at least one media outlet. Initially, extremely high licensing fees were levied on those broadcasters that did receive a licence. Later, the fees were reduced but are still among the highest in Eastern Europe and considered by many observers to be too high for the Yugoslav economy. Numerous cases suggest that the tender was politically biased.

The Government maintains that licenses were denied for technical reasons and that broadcasters can re-apply. However, no new licenses have been granted since. On the contrary, a number of radio and TV stations were closed down.

Radio Kontact in Pristina, Radio City in Nis, Radio Senta, Radio Index in Belgrade and TV Pirot among others, have all been closed down. Each of them had submitted applications that fully comply with the ministry’s requirements in the frequency allocation tender.

On April 21, officials from the Yugoslav Ministry of Telecommunications ordered local independent television station TV Pirot closed and confiscated the station’s equipment, saying that the station was not properly licensed. This action came just weeks before the May 15 deadline for public disclosure of the Ministry of Telecommunications’ decision on granting licenses to independent television and radio stations throughout the country.

STV Negotin was also closed on September 17, on the grounds that they had no building permit for a new transmitter.

Radio Index received a one-month deadline in September to stop using the RTS station in Belgrade to broadcast. According to the terms of a contract signed with RTS in 1992, Radio Index could use the RTS’s relay station until Index was able to obtain its own broadcast relay and frequency.

On September 1, Radio B92 received a note from RTS’s General Manager Dragoljub Milanovic to the effect that B92 should remove its transmitter from the RTS facility before November 1. B92 held a valid ten-year contract with the RTS on business cooperation signed in 1996, which obliged RTS to broadcast B92 programmes though this transmitter, maintain the transmitter and extend any permits required for the operation of that transmitter.

On October 9, inspectors of the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry closed the multiethnic and multilingual independent Radio Senta in Vojvodina and seized a part of its transmission equipment. On the same day, Radio Senta received a request from the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry to pay fees for the use of its frequency. The authorities claimed "exclusively technical" reasons for the station’s closure.

Radio BOOM 93 in Pozarevac and TV 5 in Uzice also received requests from the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry to pay fees for the use of their frequencies.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) affiliates received a letter from Serbian Information Minister Aleksandar Vucic on October 5 informing the stations that the ministry had learned that a number of local radio and TV stations broadcast "programmes produced for the services of propaganda and psychological war by the Western forces," and that the participation in the distribution of these programming contents represented an act of espionage and a direct attack on the constitutional system and legal order. The note said that those who participated in this would be adequately punished.

The Minister said later that the, "Serbian Government shall pre-vent any attempt to undermine our defence power" by rebroadcasts
of "foreign psychological propaganda."

He insisted that "journalists taking money from the American, German, British and French media" were "spies helping these countries’ anti-Serb efforts," and added that the criterion for foreign support to local media was these media’s anti-Serb position. He named Radio B92 as one that qualified as "anti-Serb."

Nikola Djuric, general manager of the banned ANEM affiliate City Radio in Nis, received a summons for a hearing on January 18, 1999 at the Municipal Court in Nis. Djuric is charged with illegal possession and operation of a radio station. If found guilty, he faces up to one year in prison under Article 219 (1) of Serbian Criminal Law.

This is the first incidence of a person in charge of a banned station having to stand trial. Until now, all previous legal proceedings, automatically initiated in cases involving the closure of a radio station lacking a broadcasting licence, were either dropped or suspended before going to court. City Radio has submitted an application in the frequency allocation tender but has had no response from the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry.

Over 400 public and private radio and television stations broadcast throughout FRY. The only network that covers the whole country is the state-controlled RTS. The independent broadcast media is grouped around ANEM whose membership, approaching forty stations, covers about 70 percent of the country.

Access to unbiased information is particularly difficult in Serbia’s rural areas where very often the state-owned RTS, which follows a strict Milosevic line, is the only station available. RTS is seen to be among those fomenting hatred through propaganda. On October 8 it carried a programme referring to the bombing of Belgrade during World War II and to the Nato bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serb Army in 1995. The programme alleged that during the Second World War the Americans were bombing Belgrade targeting "maternity wards and kindergartens" and not Germans. "Did they really want to kill Germans, or were they actually trying to Kill Serbs," asked the presenter.

In April 1998, RTS leased a frequency to a newly established Yugoslav-wide television station headed by Ljubisa Ristic from the Yugoslav United Left party (JUL), which is run by President Milosevic’s wife. Many observers believe the station is secretly funded by taxpayers’ money and was intended to support Milosevic’s favoured candidate, Momir Bulatovic, before the May 1998 elections in Montenegro. However, Radio Television Montenegro refuses to broadcast this station’s programmes.

Radio B92’s Internet department - the OpenNet website - was censored by all Serbian academic Internet centres in December. The measure, which was carried out without any warning, also blocked all of OpenNet’s mirror sites.

Speaking on Radio Belgrade, Yugoslav Secretary of Information Goran Matic claimed that "activities of Radio B92 and ANEM, are, in fact, the activities of the British Embassy in Belgrade." Matic was referring in particular to B92’s activities in the training of journalists with the assistance of donor countries.

B92, the recipient of IPI’s 1998 Free Media Pioneer Award, was also awarded the "MTV Free Your Mind" award this year. Belgrade TV station TV Kosava – owned by President Milosevic’s daughter Marija - interrupted its live broadcast of the MTV Europe Music to prevent Belgrade audiences from seeing Radio B-92 receiving the award. Subsequently, TV Pink, TV BK and TV Politika refused to broadcast paid commercials for Radio B-92 carrying footage from the awards ceremony.

Montenegrin President Milo Djuka-novic and Zoran Djindjic, who heads the Democratic Party, announced recently that they have agreed to launch a new Yugoslav satellite TV station which will reportedly be independent. Djindjic told Radio B-92 that the Montenegrin had purchased a satellite channel and said that it was time to establish an independent television station in Yugoslavia which would crush the media monopoly of the Socialists, the Yugoslav Left and the Radicals.

The latest escalation of the government attack against the independent media was as a direct result of the fighting in Kosovo. In October, the FRY authorities basically declared war against media that tried to objectively cover the developments in Kosovo. Journalists were frequently harassed, beaten or threatened. Many foreign correspondents were denied entry visas or had their application ignored. Several who obtained visas were denied access to certain areas within Kosovo. Serbian police have even torn up the accreditation of several foreign journalists, warning them that they could "become targets" if the international community imposes sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Moreover, there were several reports of Serbian police ordering ethnic Albanian civilians, very often journalists, to negotiate with the KLA.

In October, the Serbian Ministry of Interior advised Vreme, a widely respected independent weekly magazine, to provide it with information regarding one of its journalists Dejan Anastasijevic. According to the magazine, this request was forwarded less then 24 hours after the Serbian Minister of Information denounced Vreme and Anastasijevic at the Federal Assembly session for reporting on the massacre in Gornja Obrinja in Kosovo. Vreme considered this request to be part of a witch-hunt against the independent media.

Halim Hosny, a journalist with the German television station ZDF, was refused an entry visa by Yugoslav authorities in July.

An article from the Tanjug news agency, which appeared in the newspaper Politika on August 4, is believed to be connected to Hosny’s visa application problems. The story in question strongly criticised foreign "journalists-manipulators" for their Serbian media coverage. The piece disparaged Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman for his "false reports" and charged Hosny with "deliberately overlooking real events and facts, in the aim of winning over Western public opinion in favour of the policy of violence and blackmail." These allegations were categorically denied

On August 14, reporter Friedhelm Brebeck and his two cameramen were expelled from Kosovo, RSF reported. The journalists, who work for the German public television channel ARD, were officially accused by authorities of having incited Albanians to set fire to a house in Junik in order to film footage of it. Brebeck categorically denies the accusations.

Goran Matic, FRY Secretary of Information, stated in March that "the world media had committed a massacre against the truth" in their treatment of events in Kosovo.

In October two journalists, Nebojsa Radosevic and Vladimir Dobricic from the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug went missing. The KLA later informed the public that they both have been sentenced to two months imprisonment by a ‘military court’.

According to RSF, on October 5, Sulejman Klokoqi, cameraman with the American agency APTN, was beaten by police after having been summoned to the police station in Pristina. The journalist was repeatedly slapped and beaten with a truncheon. After forbidding him to leave the town, police advised him to "work in a more professional manner." The police accused Klokoqi of having filmed in Gornje Obrinje (in the centre of Kosovo), where some twenty civilians had been shot and killed the previous week.

Serbian police confiscated video tapes belonging to Duska Jurisic, a journalist with the Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina on January 29. The IFJ reported that fifteen tapes were seized and included footage shot in Kosova and Pristina and material concerning recent protests by Albanian students. Jurisic was questioned for two hours before being released.

Ibrahim Osmani, an Albanian journalist working in the province of Kosovo for the Agence France Presse news agency, was severely beaten on March 2 by police while covering a demonstration in Pristina, RSF reported. After checking his press identification card, police apprehended Osmani as he tried to protect himself in a doorway from their assault on the demonstrators. They beat him with the butts of their rifles. On the same day, Vetton Surroi, editor of the daily Albanian paper Koha Ditore, Agron Bajrani, a journalist with the paper, and Sherif Konjufca, a contributor to Albanian radio and television, were also beaten by police. In addition, police also raided the offices of Koha Ditore. In his attempt to escape, reporter Fatos Berissahen was forced to jump from the second floor of the building and broke his leg.

On March 19, two television cameramen working for Western agencies were beaten by plainclothes policemen while attempting to film mass demonstrations in Pristina, CPJ reported. Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian camera operator working for Reuters TV, was attacked from behind as he shot footage of a weeping Albanian woman who said she had been struck by police during a mass rally. Protsyuk fell to the ground and his video camera was smashed. His assailants repeatedly punched him in the face until his producer, Glen Felgate, managed to pull him away.

Michel Rouserez, a cameraman for Belgian Radiotelevision (RTBF), was also beaten while covering an Albanian demonstration in Pristina on March 19. According to RSF, three plainclothes police officers, who had been speaking with uniformed police nearby, first told Rouserez to stop filming and leave the premises. When he had his back turned and was moving away, Rouserez was kicked in the back, thrown to the ground and beaten unconscious. His camera was broken and taken by the plainclothes officers. They then joined the uniformed police, who were present at the demonstration but did not intervene.

Six American peace activists, including Peter Lippman, a Seattle-based journalist, were jailed in March for two days by Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo, CPJ reported. They were sentenced to 10-day jail terms for failing to register with local police during their stay in the troubled province (a rarely-enforced law). They were freed two days later following protests by the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.

On June 2, Police confiscated the film of Predrag Milosavljevic, reporter and photographer for the daily Dnevni Telegraf, and of Milos Petrovic, a cameraman who works for Studio B television, RSF reported. Both journalists were covering confrontations in Belgrade between security forces and students at the time of the incident.

A vehicle belonging to the Danish television channel TV2 was the target of gunfire by Serbian police in Glogovac, in the centre of Kosovo province on June 22. Automatic gunfire struck the vehicle several times but no one was hurt. The vehicle was clearly marked identifiable as a press vehicle.

On July 6, two British correspondents - Kurt Schork, of the Reuters news agency, and Anthony Lloyd, of The Times of London - travelling with the so-called Kosovo Observer Mission were beaten by plainclothes Serbian police near the village of Prekaz.