(IPI/IFEX) – The following is an IPI letter to Serbian President Milan Milutinovic requesting visas for an IPI delegation to visit Serbia further to the official refusal of the delegation’s right to do so: President Milan Milutinovic President of Serbia Belgrade, Serbia Vienna, 18 November 1999 Your Excellency, The International Press Institute (IPI), the global […]
(IPI/IFEX) – The following is an IPI letter to Serbian President Milan
Milutinovic requesting visas for an IPI delegation to visit Serbia further
to the official refusal of the delegation’s right to do so:
President Milan Milutinovic
President of Serbia
Belgrade, Serbia
Vienna, 18 November 1999
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and
media executives, respectfully requested visas for a delegation to travel to
Belgrade from 12-16 November 1999. On 12 November, we were informed by the
Embassy of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in Vienna, that the IPI
delegation had been officially refused permission to visit your country.
The delegation had the following objectives:
– To conduct a fact-finding mission in order to assess the current state of
press freedom in Serbia.
– To present a recent IPI publication, “The Kosovo News and Propaganda War,”
which is a collection of over 75 articles by leading journalists and media
analysts from over 40 countries. The book examines and challenges the
media’s overall coverage of the Kosovo conflict; questions the sources of
information; outlines the obstacles that were erected to impede free
reporting; asks where and how truth got lost or distorted; and probes for
media lessons worth learning from this tragic experience.
– To visit an IPI member in prison, Nebojsa Ristic, editor-in-chief of TV
Soko in Sokobanja, eastern Serbia, who was handed down a one-year prison
sentence on 27 April for allegedly “provoking unrest among citizens and
causing them to mistrust the decisions of state agencies.”
IPI deeply regrets the refusal of our delegation’s right to travel to your
country, as it prevents us from providing an objective perspective of the
media situation in Serbia, and sends out a clear message that the Yugoslav
authorities have no intention of re-integrating their country into the
European society of states. We urge Your Excellency to ensure that members
of the International Press Institute, as well as journalists from around the
world who wish to report from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, are issued
visas without further hindrance, and that this is organised within a
reasonable timeframe. IPI fully intends to re-apply for visas and sincerely
hopes that our request will receive a positive response.
I thank you in advance for your kind co-operation and await your prompt
reply.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
Recommended Action
Similar appeals can be sent to:
Appeals To
Milan Milutinovic
President
Office of the President
Belgrade, Republic of Serbia
Yugoslavia
Fax: +381 11 658 584
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
