(AMARC/IFEX) – The following is a 8 December 1998 press release by the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) distributed in its entirety by AMARC: ANEM press release Prosecution and Censorship Continue December 8, 1998 Nikola Djuric, general manager of the banned ANEM affiliate City Radio in Nis, has received a summons for a hearing […]
(AMARC/IFEX) – The following is a 8 December 1998 press release by the
Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) distributed in its
entirety by AMARC:
ANEM press release
Prosecution and Censorship Continue
December 8, 1998
Nikola Djuric, general manager of the banned ANEM affiliate City Radio in
Nis, has received a summons for a hearing on January 18, 1999 at the
Municipal Court in Nis. Mr. 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.
“This is a very dangerous precedence which shows that the government is
determined to implement a new and certainly grave form of repression against
the independent media. Persons in charge of broadcast media outlets now face
criminal charges and prison sentences, despite the fact that top state
officials, including the telecommunications minister, Dojcilo Radojevic,
have on a number of occasions announced that there will be no closures of
stations so long as their applications in the frequency allocation process
are in the examination procedure,” said Veran Matic, ANEM Chairman.
City Radio has submitted an application in the frequency allocation tender
but has had no response from the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry. Its
appeal against the banning order by that ministry is still being processed
by the Yugoslav Federal Court.
On Tuesday, a misdemeanour judge in Pancevo refused to initiate a trial
against the station RTV Pancevo under the new Serbian Law on Public
Information. In a first since the enactment of the new information law, the
judge demanded that the plaintiff prove his claims rather than the defendant
and refused to bring charges against RTV Pancevo due to a lack of evidence.
Users of the Serbian academic Internet network reported early this week that
the OpenNet web site, Radio B92’s Internet department, was being censored by
all Serbian academic Internet centres.
The academic network provides Internet services to university students,
professors, researchers and research institutes in Serbia. Users say that
the measure was carried out overnight without any warning or announcement,
but was very thoroughly applied to all of OpenNet’s mirror sites.
The event comes in the wake of the abolishment of the university’s autonomy
by the new Serbian Law on the University and statements from Serbian
officials that Internet providers would in some way be taxed for the
contents they publish.
OpenNet reacted by mirroring its site and sending information from the new
mirrors to users of the academic network.
ANEM calls on all organisations engaged in the protection of media and
information freedoms to protest the dangerous precedent set in the
prosecution of City Radio’s general manager, which could soon afflict all
other managers of banned broadcasters in Serbia. Despite the positive
decision of the Pancevo misdemeanour judge, ANEM reiterates its call for the
annulment of all disputed regulations under the new Serbian Public
Information Law. ANEM also calls for a solidarity action of mirroring the
www.b92.net site to help render the Serbian regime’s latest Internet
censorship action meaningless.
