(HRW/IFEX) – The following is an 11 March 1999 Human Rights Watch press release: **Updates IFEX alerts of 9 March and 8 March 1999** ATTACKS ON THE SERBIAN MEDIA CALLED “ALARMING”, Press Freedom Central to Kosovo Crisis (New York) The Yugoslav government’s crackdown on press freedom has assumed alarming proportions, Human Rights Watch charged today. […]
(HRW/IFEX) – The following is an 11 March 1999 Human Rights Watch press
release:
**Updates IFEX alerts of 9 March and 8 March 1999**
ATTACKS ON THE SERBIAN MEDIA CALLED “ALARMING”, Press Freedom Central to
Kosovo Crisis
(New York) The Yugoslav government’s crackdown on press freedom has
assumed
alarming proportions, Human Rights Watch charged today. Three days after
a
Belgrade court sentenced three journalists to five months in prison,
Human
Rights Watch called on the Contact Group and U.S. mediator Richard
Holbrooke
to raise freedom of the press with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
during their current negotiations over Kosovo.
On March 8, 1999, the owner of the daily newspaper Dnevni Telegraf,
Slavko
Curuvija, and two of the newspaper’s journalists, Srdjan Jankovic and
Zoran
Lukovic, were each sentenced to five months in prison by the First
Municipal
Court in Belgrade for “spreading false reports with an intention to
endanger
public order,” based on Article 218 of Serbian Penal Code. They are
currently free on appeal.
The charge stemmed from a December 5, 1998, article about the murder of
a
Belgrade doctor. The article said that, in the weeks preceding the
murder,
the doctor had accused his hospital’s director, Milovan Bojic, who is
also a
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, of misusing hospital funds. The court
ruled
that the article suggested Bojic was involved in the doctor’s death.
Dnevni
Telegraf had already been punished for the same article, in December
1998,
when a misdemeanor judge ordered the publisher and editor-in-chief to
pay
fines to Bojic, who alleged his reputation was blackened.
Deputy Prime Minister Bojic belongs to the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), a
party in Yugoslavia’s ruling coalition run by Milosevic’s wife, Mira
Markovic. According to the journalists’ defense lawyers, the public
prosecutor, investigating judge and president of the court dealing with
the
case, are all members of the party. The current Minister of Justice in
the
Serbian government, Dragoljub Jankovic, is also a JUL member.
“The conviction of Curuvija, Jankovic and Lukovic is a graphic
illustration
of the increasing state repression against the media in Serbia,” said
Holly
Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central
Asia
Division. “The court’s reasoning, clearly following a political order,
is
contrary to Serbian, Yugoslav and international laws that safeguard
freedom
of expression.”
This week’s conviction was the most recent in a long series of attacks
on
the free press in Serbia. Since October 1998, when a restrictive Serbian
Law
on Public Information came into force, dozens of independent and
opposition
newspapers have been ordered to pay disproportionately high fines
because of
their writings. The government has shut down five private radio and
television stations and one newspaper, and two newspapers have been
forced
to move their operations to Montenegro. Foreign broadcasts of the BBC,
VOA,
RFE/RL and Deutsche Welle are banned.
Human Rights Watch condemned the Yugoslav government’s assault on the
media
and called on the Contact Group to remember the need for democracy in
Serbia, rather than just conflict management in Kosovo, during the
current
negotiations over the disputed province.
“Freedom of expression for the Serbian-language media is central to any
solution of the Kosovo crisis,” said Holly Cartner, Executive Director
of
Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “Government
repression has silenced critical journalism, which leaves the state-run
media full of misinformation and xenophobic hate speech as the main
source
of news for the majority of the population.”
Newspapers, radio and television stations under the control of
Milosevic,
especially Radio Television Serbia (RTS), present widely distorted
information about the Kosovo conflict and the role of the international
community. Recent weeks have seen a virulent anti-American campaign in
the
state media.
