(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF report reviewing recent attacks and censorship against the press in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia A State of Repression After eight weeks of bombing, Slobodan Milosevic has managed to reduce the Albanian-language press in Kosovo to nothing and to obstruct any news about the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF report reviewing recent attacks and
censorship against the press in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
A State of Repression
After eight weeks of bombing, Slobodan Milosevic has managed to reduce the
Albanian-language press in Kosovo to nothing and to obstruct any news about
the province, as well as silencing all critical voices in Serbia. As for the
media in Montenegro, they have found themselves at the heart of the power
struggle between Podgorica and Belgrade. Having already been at war with the
independent media for ten years, the government made sure all the legal
structures were in place to get rid of the critical press from the time Nato
first began threatening air strikes. Since October 1998, following a
technique that is now honed to perfection, the external threat has been used
systematically as a pretext for silencing dissenting voices.
Since the air strikes began on 24 March 1999, two western journalists have
been imprisoned by the military authorities before being released under
strong international pressure; one claims that he was beaten in prison every
day. A Croatian reporter, Antun Masle, is still being held by the Montenegro
military authorities, while Serbian journalist Nebojsa Ristic, who was taken
into custody on 23 April, is facing a year’s prison sentence for protesting
against censorship in Serbia. In Belgrade, opposition journalist Slavko
Curuvija, who had been accused of “treason” in the official media, was
murdered outside his home on 11 April 1999. Serbian journalists interpreted
the killing as a final warning, a sign that the authorities definitely plan
to get rid of the independent press.
At least 80 foreign journalists have been arrested and interrogated,
sometimes violently, by the Serbian army and police force – and the true
figure is probably higher. Most of the journalists were thrown out of the
country after being held for periods ranging from a few hours to several
days. Some were victims of ill-treatment, enduring insults and violence,
including sham executions. A number of reports concur that journalists have
also been used as human shields, particularly on the premises of Serbian
radio and television. Most Albanian journalists in Kosovo, fearing for their
lives, have left the country.
Serbia: Chronicle of repression foretold
For the past ten years most Serbs have received all their news from Serbian
radio and television. The TV channel, which has been purged of critical
journalists on several occasions, is at the beck and call of the Milosevic
government: in January 1993, 1,500 staff were sacked for saying that they
disagreed with the channel’s editorial policy. The government tolerated the
existence of independent media which had only a small circulation or
restricted broadcasting coverage. The well-known radio station B92, for
example, can be picked up in Belgrade and a few major cities controlled by
the opposition, but hardly anywhere else in Serbia. The independent
broadcasters’ network, ANEM, is very active, but most of its members are TV
channels and radio stations that put out mainly music and entertainment
programmes. The annual allocation of broadcasting licences has always
allowed the authorities to exclude the more impudent media. In June 1997,
for instance, a total of 55 radio stations and TV channels were closed down,
and in May 1998, only three of the 426 independent media that had applied
for licences from the telecommunications ministry were given the right to
broadcast to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: B92 and the regional TV
channels RTV Pancevo and F Kanal. Belgrade television channels – even those
that are privately owned – are controlled by members of the government or
the ruling party, or people close to them. Independent newspapers, which are
expensive and hard to come by in the provinces, are a privilege enjoyed
mainly by those living in big cities, particularly Belgrade. No independent
newspaper is distributed throughout the country. The independent weekly
Vreme, which is widely read in the capital, had a circulation of 20,000
before the war which has now dropped to 10,000, and the daily Nasa Borba had
a circulation of 15,000 when it was forced to file for bankruptcy in October
1998. The prestigious fortnightly Republika (circulation: 2,500), published
by the Belgrade Circle, a group of dissident intellectuals opposed to
Milosevic, is read mainly by the staff of western embassies and by foreign
journalists.
The government clamped down further on news in 1998, particularly concerning
Kosovo. In March 1998, the editors of the leading independent media were
summoned by the information minister, who reminded them about the
government’s “interpretation table” for reporting on the conflict. The new
law on information, adopted in October 1998 at the urging of the
ultranationalist Radical Party as Nato was threatening Serbia with air
strikes, in effect introduces penalties for any comments on the situation in
Kosovo that go against official ideology. It also bans the relaying of
programmes put out by international radio stations.
Huge fines, continual seizures, presumption of guilt: by these means the
government managed to silence three newspapers and two radio stations in
October 1998. The most influential independent daily, Nasa Borba, and the
rebel student radio station Indeks were closed down for good. After November
1998, trials and retaliatory measures threatened the existence of all the
independent media; many dailies, including Danas and Dnevni
Telegraf, decided to move to Montenegro to avoid reprisals from the Belgrade
authorities. Their circulation was already inadequate, and the move only
disrupted it further.
On 24 March, shortly before the Nato air strikes began, the authorities
closed down the independent radio station B92 and detained its editor, Veran
Matic, for eight hours. The stations 021, Jasenica and Info Jet, and the
privately owned television channel TV Soko were subsequently closed as well.
The director of TV Soko, Nebojsa Ristic, who has been in custody since 23
April, is facing a year’s prison sentence for waving a placard calling for
press freedom in Serbia.
Effective censorship of all the media is now in place because, for fear of
reprisals, they only publish official statements from the government and
army headquarters. Representatives of the military authorities have moved
into editorial offices. The television channels Pink, Politika, Palma and
BK, all of which are controlled by businessmen close to the government,
relay the programmes of public television, whose transmitters and premises
have been targeted by Nato. On 25 April Vuk Draskovic, deputy federal prime
minister and a former opponent of Milosevic, condemned “the incredible
degeneration of anti-Nato progaganda in the official Serbian media” in an
interview with the television channel Studio B, which is controlled by his
party, the SPO. The next day he was sacked and Studio B was forced to relay
the programmes put out by state television and news bulletins issued by the
state news agency Tanjug, the government’s other official mouthpiece.
The most brutal attack on press freedom in Serbia was the murder of Slavko
Curuvija in Belgrade on 11 April 1999. Managing editor of the independent
daily Dnevni Telegraf and founder of the magazine Evropljanin (The
European), he had been the subject of continual pressure, threats and
harassment from the authorities for criticising the Milosevic regime. Dnevni
Telegraf and then Evropljanin were officially banned in October 1998, under
the terms of the new information law.
Following a series of seizures and huge fines, Slavko Curuvija had his
publications registered in Montenegro, while still trying to have them
distributed on Serbian territory. On 8 March 1999 he was sentenced, along
with two other journalists from Dnevni Telegraf, to five months in jail for
publishing a report making allegations against a Serbian deputy prime
minister, Milovan Bojic, an influential member of the Yugoslav
Union of the Left, whose chairman, Mira Markovic, is the wife of President
Milosevic. The report implied that Bojic was behind the death of a doctor.
The journalist, who had often been accused of “treason” by the authorities,
had already received several death threats. Some even appeared in the
official press, particularly after the start of the air
strikes. Yet Slavko Curuvija stopped publishing his daily when the
hostilities began, stating that he refused to bring out “a newspaper for the
censors”.
Visas for journalists have always been delivered sparingly by Yugoslav
embassies. During 1998, at least four foreign reporters were expelled
because of their coverage of the Kosovo conflict and were subsequently
declared persona non grata in the country. Since March 1998, when military
operations in Kosovo were stepped up, the Yugoslav authorities have made an
increasing number of aggressive statements against the
international press, which they accuse of distorting the facts and siding
with the Kosovan separatists. On 1 October ultranationalist minister
Vojislav Seselj said that journalists from Radio Free Europe, the BBC, the
Voice of America, Deutsche Welle and Radio France Internationale, as well as
Yugoslav journalists working with them, would no longer be protected by the
Geneva Convention in the event of a conflict with Nato countries.
The day after the first air strike, the military authorities acknowledged
that they had expelled “37 reporters from the most hostile countries – the
United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany” – in addition to about 20
journalists expelled individually “as a result of specific measures”. A
total of at least 80 journalists are known to have been expelled since the
start of the conflict, and the true figure is probably higher because of the
difficulties in obtaining information from the Serbs. Foreign journalists in
Belgrade have been ordered not to leave the capital without authorisation
from the army, while photographers and TV crews have to ask permission to
shoot film or pictures as well as allowing the military authorities to watch
their videotapes.
Many western journalists say they were assaulted or intimidated by the
police when they were arrested or expelled. Most of them were violently
criticised for their respective countries’ attitude to the Kosovo conflict.
About ten journalists were beaten and arbitrarily detained “as an example to
others” either by the regular army or by Serbian
paramilitary groups, and Reporters Sans Frontières has received reports of
psychological harassment, and even ill-treatment (see also the “Kosovo”
section below). For example, on 16 April 1999 Lucia Annunziata, a journalist
working for Italian public television, the RAI, and the dailies Il
Messaggero and Il Foglio, was arrested by soldiers as she was
about to leave Serbia. She said she was interrogated for over eight hours,
beaten, undressed and handcuffed before being taken to an unknown
destination. She spent the night blindfolded and chained to a radiator, and
endured various threats and forms of psychological torture before being
declared persona non grata and expelled from the country, her face still
covered. On 25 March Catharina Nynke, special correspondent of the Dutch
television channel Net 5 and her Hungarian cameraman Zoltan Olah were
arrested by Serbian police near Novi Sad, north of Belgrade. Police officers
who spoke to Net 5 editorial staff on the journalist’s mobile phone said
they could not guarantee her safety and what became of her was up to the
channel. The two journalists were released 24 hours later after being
subjected to a series of interrogations and threats. On 26 March Tvrtko
Vuljity and Zoltan Gazsi, reporter and cameraman for the privately owned
Hungarian channel TV2, were arrested by Yugoslav border guards at Roeszke,
on the Hungarian border, and badly beaten. Tvrtko Vuljity suffered severe
bruising as a result of the assault and had to be taken to hospital.
Pit Schnitzler, correspondent of the German television channel SAT1, was
arrested on 16 April, accused of “spying” and held until 12 May by the
Belgrade military authorities. He had all his equipment confiscated at
gunpoint by the Serbian military police. Back in Bonn, he spoke about his
prison conditions: “Beating was part of the daily programme (…). Most of
the time, they hit me on the back or the ribs (…). They greeted me by
punching me on the chin, and they also struck me on the face (…).
Generally speaking, they beat me with truncheons, and it was always in the
cell so that there would be no witnesses.” The journalist added: “I scraped
the barrel of humanity.”
Kept in solitary confinement in a cell measuring 15 X 4 feet, Pit Schnitzler
said he was interrogated and threatened every day for seven or eight hours
by members of the secret police. He was released the day after the German
foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, intervened on his behalf with President
Milosevic.
The bombing of the Serbian public television buildings in Belgrade left at
least eight employees of the channel dead. Another incident, the bombing of
the Chinese embassy, which Nato officials described as “accidental”, killed
three Chinese journalists who were in the building at the time. Four
Romanian journalists were injured during a Nato raid targeting the motorway
bridge between Belgrade and the southern city of Nis. They were travelling
with a group of aid workers from the Romanian city of Pitesti on a mission
to Serbia. Two of the journalists had to be taken to hospital.
Kosovo: A secret war
The Albanian-language media, enjoying relative protection because of the
presence of representatives of the international community in Kosovo before
the Nato air strikes, had acquired a degree of independence from the Serbian
authorities. Nonetheless, journalists from those media were often victims of
violence and arbitrary police intervention: at least six were assaulted, two
arrested and many summoned for “informative interviews” at police stations
during 1998. The daily Rilindja was closed down in early March 1999 for
“illegal publication”, while Bujku, which is close to Ibrahim Rugova’s
Democratic League of Kosovo, was closed in January 1999. Albanian-language
dailies were often subjected to heavy fines under the Serbian information
law. On 22 March 1999, the main daily in Kosovo, Koha Ditore, which had a
circulation of 30,000 before the war, was fined 410,000 dinars (37,000
euros) and its editor, Baton Haxhiu, 110,000 dinars (10,000 euros) following
a complaint by the Serbian information minister, Alexandar Vucic. The
newspaper was accused of “spreading intolerance and hatred among nations and
national minorities in Serbia”. In the same month, two other
Albanian-language publications, the daily Kosova sot and the fortnightly
Gazeta Shqiptare, were each fined 1.6 million dinars (146,000 euros).
Kosova sot suspended publication after copies were seized by the police.
Following the closure of the radio station Kontakt, which put out programmes
in Serbian and Albanian, at the end of May 1998, the only broadcasters that
can be picked up in the province are Belgrade radio and television and
Albanian state television.
Since the start of the Nato air strikes, Albanian-language media and
journalists in Kosovo have become the prime targets for Serbian reprisals.
During the night of 24 March, police raided the offices of Koha Ditore,
killing a security guard, and the daily’s printing works were set on fire.
The newspaper’s lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, and his two sons were summarily
executed by soldiers. Most Albanian journalists, fearing for their lives,
fled to Macedonia; others, like Veton Suroi, managing editor of Koha Ditore,
are still believed to be in hiding in Kosovo. Baton Haxhiu, the daily’s
editor, who had been reported dead by Nato on 29 March, turned up in Paris
and told how he had got out of Kosovo after hiding in cellars for several
days to escape Serbian paramilitary patrols.
During the first night of bombing, armed men went to the Grand
Hotel,Pristina, where most foreign journalists were staying. A Greek
reporter, Christos Telidis, said: “The Serbs, who were armed, forced many
journalists to stand against a wall with their hands in the air, in the
dark, and searched them. Meanwhile, other people were breaking into the
rooms of those journalists who had refused to open their doors. A Bulgarian
journalist working for Associated Press was attacked in front of us, beaten
and then thrown into the corridor. The cameraman from Greek television’s
Channel 5, who was alone in his room, was also violently assaulted. The
Serbs beat him and smashed his tapes and cameras”. This account was backed
up by many other foreign journalists who were at the hotel, most of whom had
to leave the province after the first night of bombing. The police
apparently had a list of about ten names, mainly journalists working for
American or British media, who were the most likely to be victims of
reprisals. On 25 March, Brent Sadler, a reporter for CNN, just managed to
get out of Pristina after his vehicle was set on fire. He said that he and
one of his colleagues were threatened by plain-clothes policemen just as
they were broadcasting a report. One of the policeman showed him two
bullets, saying they were intended for him.
In early April, Renate Flottau, correspondent of the German weekly Der
Spiegel, also had to leave the province in a hurry, fearing she would be
killed. She had written a widely read story on the arrest of Ibrahim Rugova
by Serbian troops, and reported on the menacing atmosphere in Pristina.
Other journalists spoke of ill-treatment and violence against them. On 30
March Vili Einspieler and Tomi Lombar, journalist and photographer with the
Slovenian daily Delo, were tortured by Serbian militia. They were held for
18 hours before being expelled to Montenegro. After being arrested by about
ten members of Yugoslav paramilitary units, the two journalists were thrown
out of their vehicle, forced to lie down in the mud, handcuffed, kicked, and
struck with truncheons. The paramilitaries then threatened to kill them,
holding automatic shotguns to their foreheads and firing at the ground a few
inches away. The leader then held a butcher’s knife in front of the face of
one journalist, saying he would “have his throat cut like a dog”. The
journalists said the paramilitaries were acting in collaboration with the
regular army, using their barracks and means of transport. After enduring
hours of beating, the journalists spent the night in a military barracks
under the joint supervision of soldiers and paramilitaries. The journalists’
vehicle,
equipment and identity papers were confiscated.
Samuel Bolendorff, a freelance photographer, was arrested by paramilitaries
on 4 April, near the Morina border post on the Albanian border. He told RSF:
“I was taking a picture of refugees going past a sign saying SR Jugoslavija
at the border post when three men in civilian clothes set on me. I tried to
get away and called for help. Then one of them got out his pistol and put it
to my forehead. Dragging me by the hair, they took me to the border post
where soldiers and police officers greeted me with insults. I was thrown
against a wall and told that I would be executed if I came from a Nato
member country. One of them grabbed an automatic rifle and aimed it at me.
Standing facing the wall, I thought my last hour had come.” Samuel
Bolendorff believes his life was saved by his Luxembourg passport. He was
interrogated for over an hour and again threatened. His aggressors showed
him a pistol and a knife, and asked him how he would prefer to die. He was
even given a telephone so that he could call and say goodbye to his family.
The journalist went on: “They wanted to know how many men the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) had across the border, which media were covering the
flight by refugees, which NGOs were there… I was eventually released but
all my films were confiscated.”
On 9 May, Juha Metso, a photographer with the Finnish daily Helsingin
Sanomat, was arrested by Serbian police at the same spot and severely
beaten. He was stopped on the Albanian side of the border as he was taking
pictures of refugees crossing over. He was struck with a truncheon before
being taken to a room at the border post for interrogation. After undressing
him and beating him again, the officers threatened to kill him. They also
confiscated his films.
Almost all the correspondents of western media had to leave the province for
Macedonia or Montenegro after the first days of bombing. Summoned by the
Serbian president of the provisional government of Kosovo, Zoran
Andjelkovic, on 25 March, they were told their presence was undesirable. A
few representatives of international media, including journalists from Greek
television, were allowed to stay.
The few journalists who are still in Kosovo are confined to the Grand Hotel
in Pristina, which also serves as the headquarters of the Serbian
Information Centre. Sometimes the centre organises trips into the field. The
journalists are subject to numerous restrictions, and in addition to the
usual visas and accreditation, need the permission of the local authorities
and the centre director, who controls access to information, for all their
reports. One of the journalists is Paul Watson, correspondent of the daily
Los Angeles Times, the only reporter from a western country who has been in
Pristina for a continuous period of two months. A few other journalists,
including Rémy Ourdan of the French daily Le Monde and Nicolas Poincaré of
the radio station France-Info, have been able to slip into the province
secretly, following members of the KLA.
The daily Koha Ditore has been publishing again in Macedonia since 26 April,
with the help of the international community. The newspaper, brought out by
a small team of Kosovan journalists in exile, headed by Baton Haxhiu, is
aimed at refugees and the Kosovan diaspora.
Montenegro: The army against the press
Independence of the media has become a focal point of the power struggle
between the government of Montenegro and the Yugoslav military authorities.
Since the election of Milo Djukanovic as president in October 1997 and the
victory of his supporters in the May 1998 legislative elections, Montenegro
has had particularly liberal legislation on information – so much so that
many independent newspapers from Belgrade began moving their headquarters to
Podgorica in October 1998 to escape repression by the Serbian authorities.
After being printed in Montenegro, these newspapers were often seized at the
border with Serbia. Even the independent Montenegro weekly Monitor was
ordered to pay a heavy fine by the Belgrade authorities and banned from sale
in
Serbia.
While Serbia sinks further into a news blackout, the state of press freedom
in Montenegro is more satisfactory – which does not please the Yugoslav
military authorities stationed there. In addition to the prestigious
Monitor, a model for democrats all over the former Yugoslavia, three dailies
are published in Podgorica: Pobjeda (Victory), which is connected with
President Djukanovic’s Socialist Democratic Party, Vijesti (The News) which
claims to be independent but follows the government line fairly closely, and
Dan (The Day), launched last winter by supporters of the former president of
the republic, Momir Bulatovic, who is now the Yugoslav prime minister. Dan,
which says it aims to be
“patriotic”, often condemns the “treason” of President Djukanovic and backs
the army’s efforts against “Nato aggression”. International radio programmes
are relayed by privately owned stations such as Antena M, Free Montenegro
and Radio Cetinje. Radio Mir broadcasts in the Albanian language. The news
agency Montenafax has managed to retain its independence and journalists
from public television have avoided falling
into the trap of recycling propaganda, as their Serbian counterparts have
done.
Since the start of the Nato air strikes, high-ranking officers in the
Yugoslav army have stepped up their threats and warnings to the local media.
On 9 April, the commander of the 2nd Army stationed in Montenegro threatened
sanctions against the radio stations Free Montenegro, Antena M and Boje
because they had relayed the Serbian-language broadcasts of Voice of America
and Radio Free Europe. The stations refused to stop the
broadcasts and asked the Montenegro authorities for protection. According to
information minister Bozidar Jaredic, the government has agreed to guarantee
the independence of media working in the republic.
Even so, the editorial staff of Monitor and the daily Vijesti received a
visit from armed soldiers complaining about their “unpatriotic” coverage of
the conflict. Journalist Miodrag Perovic, who is wanted by the military
authorities, was obliged to go into hiding on 24 April before fleeing into
exile. A lecturer at the University of Podgorica and founder of Monitor,
Miodrag Perovic was accused of “ridiculing the Yugoslav army and dissuading
citizens from fighting against the enemy”, in a report published on 16 April
1999. The journalist had written: “The Yugoslav army heroically defends the
fatherland from Nato planes, but attacks with tanks and armoured vehicles
the citizens of its own country, throwing hordes of children and old people
towards the borders which it has stopped defending”. Another journalist with
Monitor, Beba Marusic, has also been sought by the military since 11 May for
criticising the work of the Yugoslav army. On the same day, police searched
the premises of the radio station Free Montenegro and the apartment of its
editor, Nebojsa Redic. Wanted for broadcasting the Serbian-language
programmes of foreign radio stations, he also decided to leave the country.
This state of “dual power” can also be seen in the way foreign journalists
are dealt with. Unlike their Serbian counterparts, the Montenegro
authorities have been granting visas to journalists arriving at the border.
The Montenegro parliament even decided unilaterally to
stop demanding visas for entering the country from 15 March. So this small
republic took in the many journalists thrown out of Serbia and Kosovo as
soon as the Nato air strikes began, and gave them all the facilities they
needed to carry on working. Meanwhile, the Yugoslav army said on 16 April
that it no longer recognised the accreditation granted
by the Montenegro government and continued to arrest and expel foreign
journalists. It can easily do this because, along with the police, who are
also loyal to the government, it controls the border posts and main roads
into the country. The daily Dan, which is close to the Belgrade government,
frequently attacks the “Nato spies” – which is how it describes western
journalists – and asks readers to denounce them to the military security
forces. A French journalist commented: “Photographers and cameramen are the
most at risk: they may be arrested at any time for filming or taking
pictures of a ‘strategic site’, which may be no more than a clump of trees.”
One French cameraman was held for more than two weeks, and a Croatian
journalist is still a prisoner of the military in Montenegro.
Eric Vaillant, a cameraman with the French television channel TF1, was
arrested along with his interpreter on 18 April near the town of Rozaje, and
his equipment was confiscated. Shortly beforehand, in the same region, the
Yugoslav army had opened fire on a group of refugees on the pretext that the
group had been infiltrated by KLA fighters. Vaillant, who was officially
being held in custody for 30 days pending a trial, was freed on 1 May as a
result of strong pressure from the French government.
Antun Masle, a journalist with the Croat weekly Globus, was arrested on 20
April and is still a prisoner of the military in Montenegro. The army has
accused him of entering Yugoslavia without a visa. He was arrested by a
military patrol near the Bozaj border post, on the Albanian border. Kept in
solitary confinement at Spuz prison, he has been charged with spying.
According to the initial findings of the investigation, announced by Colonel
Vasilije Knezevic, chairman of the Podgorica military court, he is also
suspected of “revealing military secrets”. The army claims that they have
gone through all his reports published in Globus. If found guilty, he faces
a ten-year jail sentence. Antun Masle was arrested and ill-treated by the
Yugoslav People’s Army during the siege of Dubrovnik in 1991. Some sources
say that the Yugoslav army, which has had a file on him ever since, wants to
make an example of him, sending a strong signal to the media as a whole. It
appears that the Croatian government, which is anxious to avoid tangling
with Yugoslavia in the current circumstances, does not seem to be taking
firm action on his behalf. The chairwoman of the Union of Croatian
Journalists, Jagoda Vukusic, met with the chairman of the military court
responsible for the case, but was unable to get him freed. The Montenegro
civil authorities have demanded Masle’s release, but they apparently have no
power to influence military legal procedures.
Recommendations
To the Yugoslav government
– Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) calls on the Yugoslav government to
respect its international undertakings concerning press freedom,
particularly article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (1966), which was ratified by Yugoslavia on 2 June 1971.
– RSF calls on the Yugoslav government to respect the Geneva Convention and
in particular article 79 of the First Additional Protocol (1977) which
states that journalists should be regarded as civilians and protected as
such.
– Concerning the violence and ill-treatment inflicted on journalists, RSF
calls for the immediate opening of a thorough, impartial inquiry. RSF
recalls that Yugoslavia signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on 18 April
1989. Under article 22 of that convention, Yugoslavia also recognised the
authority of the United Nations Committee Against Torture to examine
complaints from individuals.
– RSF calls on the Yugoslav government to secure the immediate release of
Nebojsa Ristic, director of TV Soko, who has been in custody since 23 April
and is facing a year’s prison sentence for waving a placard demanding
respect for press freedom in Serbia.
– RSF calls on the Yugoslav government to secure the immediate release of
Antun Masle, a journalist with the Croatian weekly Globus, who has been held
since 20 April and is suspected of “revealing military secrets”. He is
facing a ten-year prison sentence if convicted.
– RSF calls for a thorough investigation of the murder of Slavko Curuvija,
and for his killers to be found and punished. Director of the independent
daily Dnevni Telegraf and founder of the magazine Evropljanin, he was
murdered in Belgrade on 11 April 1999.
To the international community
– While welcoming the help given to Kosovan journalists in Macedonia, RSF
calls on the international community to support independent media in
Montenegro. RSF is already assisting the independent weekly Monitor, but all
the Montenegro media are in urgent need of long-term financial and political
support.
– The international community is also asked to make it easier for opposition
Serb journalists and their families to obtain visas. RSF asks that, during
future negotiations, the international community should undertake to ensure
the respect of press freedom in Serbia, while helping to rebuild the Serbian
and Kosovan media.
– RSF calls on the international community to intervene with the Belgrade
authorities to secure the release of Antun Masle and Nebojsa Ristic.
– RSF calls on the United Nations Committee Against Torture to examine cases
of ill-treatment inflicted on journalists in Yugoslavia. We also call on the
International Court of Justice to establish which media have been
responsible for increasing intolerance, which has provided fertile soil for
the acts of violence being committed today.
