(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 9 May 2000 CPJ press release: New York, May 9, 2000 — Yugoslav authorities detained at least eight journalists overnight and early today, according to CPJ sources and local press reports. Six were released after police questioning, one was ordered to leave the city in which she was working, […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 9 May 2000 CPJ press release:
New York, May 9, 2000 — Yugoslav authorities detained at least eight journalists overnight and early today, according to CPJ sources and local press reports. Six were released after police questioning, one was ordered to leave the city in which she was working, and one is still under arrest.
The arrests followed unrest in the city of Pozarevac, home town of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, where three members of the student opposition group Otpor (“Resistance”) were beaten up on May 1 by bodyguards of the president’s son, Marko Milosevic. Heavy fines were imposed on media outlets that reported the beating, according to local press reports. Opposition plans to hold a protest rally today were called off for security reasons following the wave of arrests of student activists, opposition politicians and journalists across the country.
Gillian Sandford, a British freelancer working for the London-based daily The Guardian, was arrested today in Pozarevac along with her Yugoslav translator, according to CPJ sources in Belgrade. They were taken into police custody for an hour and a half and then ordered to leave the city. Journalists Natasa Bogovic and Bojan Toncic of the independent Belgrade daily Danas were detained and taken to the police station in Zabari, near Pozarevac, last night. They were both released today after questioning.
A correspondent from the independent Beta news agency and the independent daily Blic, Mile Veljkovic, was also detained in Pozarevac. His wife told independent radio B2-92 today that police had searched their house from midnight to 3 a.m. The police seized 80 pages of written material and the hard drive from Veljkovic’s computer, and then arrested Veljkovic himself without explanation. The journalist was released at 10 p.m. local time.
Journalist Miroslav Filipovic remains in custody after his arrest last night in the central Serbian city of Kraljevo. Filipovic is the local correspondent for Danas, and also works for Agence France-Presse and for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). According to Filipovic’s wife, Slavica, four plainclothes representatives of the Serbian State Security Service (RDB) followed her and her husband home yesterday afternoon. The officers spent three hours in Filipovic’s apartment, took three floppy discs and the hard drive from his computer, and almost 100 pages of documents. They also confiscated the journalist’s passport, address book, business cards, diary, and other personal papers.
Filipovic was taken to the police station yesterday evening, according to his son Sasa. Under Serbian law, suspects may be detained for up to 72 hours without a formal charge. Filipovic had not been released as of this writing.
So far the precise motives for Filipovic’s arrest are unclear. An IWPR alert issued today stated that the journalist’s explosive reporting, drawn from unique sources within the Yugoslav security services, had already prompted authorities to summon him for an “informative discussion.” In recent contributions to the IWPR, Filipovic had written about the Yugoslav security services, army, and police, including accounts of repression and atrocities.
Meanwhile, a total of twenty-five people, including several journalists, were also arrested in the Vojvodina capital of Novi Sad. The journalists were covering an opposition demonstration in front of a government building in the city. The opposition radio station B2-92 reported that police detained two reporters from the Novi Sad station Radio 201 and a cameraman from Television Montenegro, along with several other domestic and international journalists. All the detainees were released late in the afternoon.
The wave of arrests shows the Milosevic regime’s determination to limit the scale of popular opposition. Local journalists and international press freedom groups are particularly alarmed by the continuing detention of Filipovic, given the sensitive nature of the journalist’s reporting, and his case will be monitored closely.
CPJ executive director Ann Cooper condemned the spate of arrests. “The Yugoslav authorities’ attempts to intimidate and silence the independent press are escalating,” Cooper said. “We call on the authorities to stop their harassment of journalists.”
