**New cases and update to IFEX alerts of 8 December 1999** (RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Justice Minister Zoran Knezevic, RSF has protested the heavy fines imposed on three independent media in Belgrade. RSF further protested the use of the Information Law, adopted in October 1998, to muzzle the independent press in Serbia. In […]
**New cases and update to IFEX alerts of 8 December 1999**
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Justice Minister Zoran Knezevic, RSF has protested the heavy fines imposed on three independent media in Belgrade. RSF further protested the use of the Information Law, adopted in October 1998, to muzzle the independent press in Serbia. In addition, the organisation expressed its concern about the expulsion of two foreign correspondents from Belgrade. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said: “Belgrade authorities persist in not respecting European press freedom standards.”
On 8 December 1999, three independent media were sentenced to pay heavy fines further to the filing of a complaint by the Radical Party (SRS, ultranationalists) and Serbian Information Minister Aleksandar Vucic. The Studio B television station (owned by Vuk Draskovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, SPO, an opposition group) and the private dailies “Danas” and “Blic” are accused of having reproduced a 4 December SPO press release which implicated the government in the staged road accident in early October in which four SPO members were killed. Studio B was fined 300,000 dinars (approx. US$6,670; 7,500 Euros), and the dailies “Blic” and “Danas” were fined 310,000 dinars (approx. US$6,670; 8,000 Euros) and 360,000 dinars (approx. US$6,700; 9,400 Euros), respectively.
In addition, on 6 December, Miklos Gyoergy Ladanyi, a freelance journalist who works for several Hungarian newspapers, was expelled from Serbia and barred from entering the country for one year. On 25 November, Janos Dezsoe, the Hungarian National Radio correspondent in Belgrade, was also expelled from the country.
