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NATO'S
AIR STRIKES AND RTS
I.
Research group views “television war” in
Belgrade.
Five weeks of air strikes have changed the media order in
a country where, for ten years, the state has held the
sovereign right to control television truth. Now
the struggle over television in Yugoslavia has become
synonymous with the fight for the survival of the
regime.
RTS
unavailable in most parts of Serbia
After repeated attacks against Radio Television Serbia
(RTS), the majority of Serbia’s population is unable
to watch RTS channels. The destruction of the RTS
building in the centre of Belgrade, which may have
claimed more than 20 victims with many more wounded, and
the bombing a few days earlier of the 20-plus storey
office building in New Belgrade where transmitters of
other TV channels close to the regime were situated, has
forced Belgrade to take urgent steps to ensure that the
government and its message stays on the air.
On 26th April, Minister for Information Aleksandar Vucic,
a member of the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj,
called an urgent meeting of the editors in chief of
private television stations and asked them to take over
the broadcast of RTS programmes, in particular the vital
news programmes “Dnevnik 2” and “Dnevnik
3.” Studio B, effectively owned by
Draskovic’s Serbian Renewal Movement, also had to
comply with this request.
This meeting took place only a day after Draskovic’s
controversial interview on Studio B. A central part
of these remarks were Draskovic’ s criticism of
state television for hiding the truth about the current
military situation, as well as for the viciousness of the
vocabulary used towards the West. . . . The
clampdown on all major independent media and the
imposition of war-time censorship on the rest has ensured
full state control of the flow of information. The
bulk of the Serbian population has not seen a single
picture of Albanian refugees nor any news about
atrocities in Kosovo.
Radicalization of vocabulary, control over private
channels In recent days, the vocabulary
of RTS has become even more radical, describing NATO
leaders as “bloodsuckers,”
“fascists,” “paedophiles,”
“imbeciles,” “idiots,”
“morons” or “retards.”
According to RTS news, NATO is crushed, Serbia’s
peace-loving politics have won, America will pay, and
Europe is on her knees. Serbia is defending the
planet from fascists, and has saved its people from
Western criminals—and cloned sheep (the current
epithet for US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright). Everyone must show their gratitude
towards Milosevic for taking them into the new
millennium.
To break with this propaganda is to break with the
regime. As the Draskovic interview became the key
story—Ministry of Information censors banned
‘Danas’ daily from publishing it, while Studio
B reran it five times—the regime took over the
broadcasts of private TV stations. Currently, the
information programmes of RTS are retransmitted by TV
Palma, BK TV, TV Art, TV Politika, as well as TV Studio
B. With Draskovic’s sacking, the moderate
course has firmly lost the internal war in Serbia, and it
can be expected that Studio B will be fully taken over by
the government.
RTS
staff reportedly forced to work in spite of risks
The ever-more ruthless propaganda suggests that Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic is prepared to accept
numerous civilian casualties in order to prove himself
absolute ruler of Serbia. Unofficial sources in
Belgrade suggest that the government took a decision to
make sure that lives were directly put at risk over the
struggle for the media.
Reports have circulated that workers at the RTS building
were blackmailed and threatened with sacking if they
refused to work the night-time, graveyard shifts.
In the days preceding the NATO bombing, it was evident
that the building in Aberdare Street was a NATO target,
and there seemed little doubt that it was going to be
hit. If these speculations are true, the
implication is that the regime is complicit in these
deaths.
A week before the bombing, all of its employees had
gathered on the street and formed a human chain around
it. One of the people in the chain was the Serbian
Minister of Culture Zeljko Simic. Three days before
the attack, the CNN crew moved from the building to work
from the Hyatt Hotel. Twelve hours before the
attack, members of the state media union organized a
protest in front of the building, with banners
declaring: “Long live RTS.”
The rally marked the first public demonstration in
support of Radio Television Serbia—the heart of the
regime which, for a decade, has advertised ethnic
cleansing and extreme nationalism, orchestrating hate
campaigns against Slovene, Croats, Muslims and, finally,
Albanians.
Regime’s
use of bombing of RTS building
Now, after the attack, the regime stresses that the
people in the building were mobilized at a time of war
and were doing their patriotic duty. The killings,
Belgrade argues, demonstrate the evil of NATO.
“Criminal NATO aircraft targeted the building of
Radio Television Serbia at 2.06 a.m. on . . . 23rd April,
while a news programme was being broadcast, trying to
kill the truth about their monstrous bombardments of our
country,” RTS declared several hours later, when it
returned on air via other transmitters.
“NATO is naive to think it can destroy the truth by
bombing,” the editor of ‘Vecernje
Novosti,’ Serbia’s biggest selling daily, wrote
shortly afterwards.
A special weekend edition of the pro-regime newspaper
‘Politika’ declared: “Stupidly
identifying the state TV as a source of political power,
the criminals in Brussels at the NATO headquarters
thought they could destroy our political
leadership.” Yet a central pillar of the
regime’s power has been shaken, and the battle over
public information has begun to claim many victims.
The contributors to this report are independent
journalists from Belgrade.
“The
Television War: A central pillar of the
regime’s power had been shaken, and the battle over
public information has begun to claim many victims,”
IWPR web site, London, April 29, 1999
II.
RTS broadcasting from “another
location”—official.
The bombardment of the building of Radio and Television
Serbia (RTS), in which some 150 people were working at
the time, has proven beyond any doubt that NATO is headed
by pathological killers, Zoran Zivkovic, editor in chief
of the Belgrade Programme and editor in charge of channel
2 told Tanjug.
“This is not merely the struggle between truth and
lies, justice and injustice, but the struggle between
good and evil,” Zivkovic said and stressed that the
root of all this evil lay in the United States, Bill
Clinton, Javier Solana and Wesley Clark. . . .
“With the bombardment of the RTS building the NATO
leaders did not take the truth away from the
nation. The truth is in the nation,”
Zivkovic emphasized, adding that the national television
continued to broadcast the programme from a different
location. In the first two hours after the
destruction of the building, RTS used the premises of the
municipal television Studio B and afterwards moved to
other locations, Zivkovic explained.
The journalists and other employees of this organization
have been gathering at this new location, from where RTS
has continued to broadcast since early morning.
They are horrified over the knowledge that NATO dropped
its lethal cargo on their colleagues in a deliberate and
calculated manner tonight. The murderers of the
journalists, technicians, editors and cameramen are
people who pay lip service to the freedom of the press
while carrying in their hands the bombs that are killing
this freedom.
Tanjug
news agency, Belgrade, April 23, 1999
III.
Media behaviour following NATO attack on TV, radio.
A NATO air attack on the Radio-Television Serbia (RTS)
building at Aberdare street in Belgrade caused all three
(RTS) domestic state TV channels, the RTS SAT satellite
TV service and the domestic service Radio Belgrade to
leave the air abruptly at 0006 gmt on 23rd April.
Radio Belgrade returned to the air playing light music at
0152 gmt and reported the attack in a short bulletin at
0200 gmt. Since that air attack, Radio Belgrade has
not been heard via satellite, but is on the air
domestically, via shortwave to Europe and the
Internet.
At 0431 gmt Serbian TV returned to the air via satellite,
at first an RTS caption was shown and programming resumed
at 0615 gmt. The normal RTS SAT logo of the
satellite TV service has been replaced by the domestic
RTS logo.
In a report by the Beta news agency the RTS editor in
chief Milorad Komrakov said that the RTS building was hit
during a newscast and footage showed the damaged studio
from which the programme had been broadcast. It
said that the editorial office and all equipment was
destroyed.
The Beta news agency reports that Serbian TV news is
broadcasting from a new location, at Studio B. At
times a Cyrillic “b” logo appears on the screen
which is the identification of the Studio B TV
channel. Studio B was formerly a member of ANEM,
the Association of Independent Electronic Media in
Yugoslavia. It left the association in 1998 and in
recent months ceased its independent news programming in
favour of general entertainment.
Radio Yugoslavia, the external radio service, was also
disrupted by the air attack on the RTS building, although
it is not housed in the RTS building. The studio
output ended at approximately the same time as the
domestic radio and TV. The transmitter, located in
the Bosnian Serb part of Bosnia-Hercegovina, left the air
shortly afterwards. Radio Yugoslavia would normally
starts its scheduled foreign language programmes at 1430
gmt.
The Belgrade-based radio station Studio B was observed to
be broadcasting via the Internet as usual, but Radio
Belgrade 202, a local station serving only Belgrade was
not available via the Internet. TV Pink, which was
the taken off the air by an earlier NATO attack, returned
to the air at lower signal strength on 21st April, the
Beta news agency reported. BK TV is also said to be
operational.
During the night other TV transmitter installations were
attacked in Serbia, at Gobelja and Cacak, both south of
Belgrade. Beta also reported that the TV was off
the air in the southern Serbian town of Nis. The
Yugoslav news agencies Tanjug and Beta appear to be
operating normally.
BBC
Monitoring Research, April 23, 1999
IV.
Minister calls RTS attack “monstrous crime.”
Yugoslav Minister without Portfolio Goran Matic stated
that the NATO attack this morning on the building of
Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) was “a monstrous
crime.” He also said that “there are dead
and injured” in the attack.
“We know that we are dealing with the serial killers
who do not shy away from anything. The only
important thing is that the citizens of the countries
which have such leaderships realize that these
authorities are bloodthirsty, murderous and wish to
exterminate entire nations, and that this is something
that is in store for their countries too,” Matic
told Politika Television in front of the RTS
building
Matic stressed that US President Bill Clinton, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary-General
Javier Solana “have bloodied their hands up to the
elbows.”
“The new world order is a bloody order,” Matic
said. “This is a monstrous crime without
precedent in history,” the minister without
portfolio said.
[On 23rd April further condemnations of the NATO attack
on the RTS building by Dragoljub Milanovic, RTS
director-general, and Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic
were reported by the Serbian news agency Beta.]
Beta
news agency, Belgrade, April 23, 1999
V.
EBU expresses concern about bombing of RTS.
The European Broadcasting Union [EBU] expressed concern
[on 23rd April] about the overnight bombing of the
Serbian state television centre and resulting loss of
life.
“Over and beyond the deaths involved, the EBU is
concerned about any attempts to limit the rights of
audiences to full news services, whether through
censorship, distortion of news or destruction of the
means to exchange news,” Albert Scharf, President of
the EBU, said in a statement.
The television centre in Belgrade had been used to
transmit news reports by international as well as local
media, Mr Scharf noted. “We do not see how the
suppression of news sources can serve any useful
purpose.”
The Geneva-based EBU groups 68 national broadcasters in
49 countries both in and around Europe. Its
activities include the transmission of television and
radio news via the Eurovision and Euroradio
networks.
Since bombing in Yugoslavia started last month, the
Eurovision network has provided temporary production and
transmission facilities for broadcasters at ten different
sites in the region. Traffic on the network, which
also has links beyond Europe, has more than doubled to
more than 13,000 individual transmissions over the past
month, not counting nearly 3,000 separate news items
carried to all EBU members on the regular news
exchanges.
Many unilateral transmissions from journalists in
Yugoslavia have been channelled through Serbian state
television in Belgrade.
Mr Scharf said the EBU had lost contact with Serbian
state television for a few hours following the bombings,
but this had now been restored and reception of
unilateral transmissions seemed likely to resume
soon.
At a meeting in Geneva on 9th April, the EBU Presidency
welcomed the fact that the humanitarian reaction to the
Kosovo crisis had received substantial attention in the
news bulletins and programmes of its members, many of
which had also helped to alleviate the suffering of
refugees. It committed the EBU to working with its
members to find ways to enhance the role that public
broadcasters can play in relieving the plight of those
suffering from the present conflict.
EBU
press release, Geneva, April 23, 1999
VI.
Reporters Sans Frontieres condemns RTS attack.
The organization Reporters Sans Frontieres on 23rd April
condemned NATO’s air strike against the headquarters
of state-run Serbian Radio-TV (RTS).
“We are amazed that NATO should have chosen to drop
bombs on a journalists’ place of work,” the
organization’s director for Europe, Alexandre Levy,
told France Inter radio.
“Having said that, Serbian Radio-TV is not a medium
like ours. It is both a propaganda instrument and a
war weapon for the Milosevic regime,” he
added.
“However, propaganda is not fought with bombs but
with words. It requires a painstaking labour of
explanation and information among the Serbian population
who have, over the past few years, been kept poorly
informed,” Levy said.
He added that the attack would create a “very
dangerous” climate for foreign reporters working in
Yugoslavia.
“Once again the foreign journalists working in
Belgrade will have to fear reprisals from the Serbian
regime.”
France
Inter radio, Paris, April 23, 1999
VII.
Article 19 condemns NATO bombing of RTS.
NATO’s deliberate bombing of Serbian national TV
headquarters in Belgrade last night was an unacceptable
act of censorship. Article 19 said [on 23rd April],
as it called on President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister
Tony Blair and other democratic leaders to disown the
attack.
According to Andrew Puddephatt, Article 19’s
Executive Director,
“This is a case of NATO assuming Milosevic’s
clothes. For years, Milosevic has used force and
other means of censorship to silence critical media, to
mislead the people and to retain his grasp on
power. NATO should be upholding democratic values,
not adopting the tactics of the demagogue.”
“Unquestionably, Serbian state TV is no more than a
mouthpiece for Milosevic, but that does not justify its
bombing. Censorship and the denial of media freedom
have been at the root of the Yugoslav tragedy, and
NATO’s action last night can only perpetuate
that. The best counter to propaganda is independent
and accurate information—the truth and its
dissemination, not bombing and censorship.”
Article 19 is calling on President Clinton, Prime
Minister Blair and other Western leaders to repudiate the
TV state attack and ensure that NATO carries out no
further such attacks. Andre Puddephatt added:
“Western leaders should openly admit that last
night’s attack was a grave mistake, a repudiation of
the values which their democracies uphold and an
abandonment of the many brave champions of free and
independent media whose lives are, literally, on the line
in Serbia. They should not let it happen
again.”
Article
19 Press Release, London, April 23, 1999
VIII.
Russian media chiefs condemn NATO for bombing.
The chairman of Russian state television VGTRK, Mikhail
Shvydkoy, on [23rd April] slammed NATO for bombing
Belgrade’s TV centre.
“Information
warfare” waged on Belgrade, VGTRK
“Actions like the bombardment of Belgrade’s
television are undoubtedly criminal. This is
another piece of evidence that wars that are waged
against a people on its territory cannot be just,”
Shvydkoy told TASS.
“The most horrible thing is the loss of our Yugoslav
comrades with whom we staged a Moscow-Belgrade TV bridge
three weeks ago. Unfortunately, this bombing
claimed many lives, and we deeply regret this loss,”
he said.
Information warfare was declared on Yugoslavia right
after bombings started, according to him. “We
had supposed that Belgrade TV could be destroyed by NATO
aircraft. Unfortunately, it happened that
way. But our Yugoslav colleagues will no doubt find
a way to broadcast from other places,” he
said.
It is difficult to impose justice by force, and if the
price of the justice estimated with human lives, one can
raise doubts about the end itself, he said, adding that a
peace solution to the conflict is the most important
thing to be achieved now.
Attack
concerns the whole world, FSTR
The director of the Federal Television and Radio Service
(FSTR), Mikhail Seslavinskiy, told TASS that NATO’s
destruction of the Yugoslav television headquarters
should be discussed by the media worldwide.
“The Russian Federation will launch an initiative
for the discussion of this problem with its colleagues in
European countries,” Seslavinsky said.
He said he hoped Russian TV companies would
“manifest solidarity with their Yugoslav colleagues
and provide them with maximum information
support.”
The media directors wondered why a recent appeal by the
FSTR and the Voice of Russia, denouncing the destruction
of the TV centre, to the European Broadcasting Union had
been left unnoticed.
“The European Broadcasting Union has proved weak in
the face of the aggressive aspirations of NATO’s
military,” he said.
Act
of vandalism, journalists’ union
In another development, Secretary-General of the Russian
Journalists Union Igor Yakovenko said NATO’s bombing
was an infringement of people’s right to know what
is going on in Yugoslavia.
“We regard NATO’s bombing of the Belgrade TV
centre as an attack on people’s right to know the
truth about the Balkan developments,” Yakovenko said
in a statement.
The bombing of the TV building is “an act of
vandalism,” he told TASS.
“This is further evidence of the immoral position of
those who bomb Yugoslavia and its civilians. This
is a clear attempt to conceal the truth about what is
going on in Yugoslavia.
“The strike on the TV centre is a quantitatively new
move by US leaders and NATO commanders. They have
been claiming until now that they are bombing only
military objects. Today’s strike passed the
war up to another level, when an attempt is being made to
trample on the freedom of speech,” he said.
Yakovenko called on Russian journalists to help their
Yugoslav colleagues restore the broadcasting
facilities. “I believe that will be a real
thing,” he said.
ITAR-TASS
news agency (World Service), Moscow, April 23, 1999
IX.
Air strikes force Pink, Kosava TV off air.
The Usce Business Centre was hit at around 0315 [0115
gmt] this morning in a NATO air force attack on Belgrade,
Studio B has reported, citing the Information
Centre.
A building which used to house the Central Committee of
Yugoslavia’s League of Communists was set on fire,
and black smoke can be seen over it. . . .
The centre announced that fire-fighters were heading
towards the site. . . .
The Usce Business Centre now houses the TV stations Pink
TV and Kosava TV [Milosevic’s daughter Marija is the
chief editor of Kosava], whose signals can no longer be
received in Belgrade.
Beta
news agency, Belgrade, April 21, 1999
X.
Information minister on role of RTS in the war.
[On 19th April], Federal Minister of Information Goran
Matic held a news conference in Belgrade in front of over
100 domestic and foreign journalists. The main
topic were the aggressor’s threats to bomb the Radio
and Television of Serbia (RTS).
[Matic—recording]
We are meeting here today because of the recent
statements that television, radio and journalists are
military targets and that they should be destroyed,
because they are just as dangerous as military
capabilities. Today, your and my profession is
being exposed to specific pressure and attacks not seen
in the history not only of journalism, but of wars
too.
For this very reason, the Radio and Television of Serbia
(RTS) is being threatened today. They are
threatening it because they think that the RTS has
indoctrinated the foreign press agency
correspondents. You know very well that this is not
correct. You know this very well. The RTS
reportage on a false mass grave in the Albanian village
of Ibica will show you tomorrow that this is not
true. What the Pentagon is showing as the truth,
which is meant to serve as a reason to bomb the Serbs, is
not correct. We will make it possible for you to go
to that village tomorrow and to take pictures
yourselves.
This evening, our colleagues in the RTS building are
facing the direct danger of being bombed. I would
like to ask all foreign correspondents, especially those
who will not lose their jobs because of it, to walk
together with me to the RTS building and see the building
that is making the planet shake and NATO, the Pentagon,
and the power with so many aircraft and so many organized
countries tremble. Let us walk to the RTS building
and see what frightened the mighty NATO and mighty
Pentagon.
RTS SAT
TV, Belgrade, April 19, 1999
XI. NATO hits RTS transmitter in
central Serbia.
The warplanes of the criminal alliance [NATO] tonight, 15
minutes after midnight [2215 gmt], fired a missile,
hitting the transmitter of the Radio Television of Serbia
(RTS) on Mt Ovcar near Cacak [central Serbia].
A Tanjug correspondent has reported that a fire could be
seen on top of the mountain, following a powerful
explosion.
The reception of all three RTS programmes has been
interrupted because of the damage to this facility.
From 0030 [1030 gmt] the Galaksija 32 local television
station has been broadcasting the first RTS programme in
the Cacak area.
Tanjug
news agency, Belgrade, April 14, 1999
XII.
Serbian TV staff defiant over NATO threats.
Serbian radio and TV staff have responded to a NATO
request to be given equal time to broadcast Western news
in their programmes by repeating previous accusations
that Western media have been giving a distorted picture
of the situation in and around Kosovo and have
manipulated Kosovo refugees to “stage-manage” a
humanitarian catastrophe. The following is the text
of a report by Serbian TV; subheadings added
editorially:
We journalists and all the employees of the Radio
Television Serbia [RTS], a service that employs 10,000
people, are addressing NATO and the leaders of the NATO
member-countries and, above all, our people and the
people all over the world.
We know that we are your next target. We know that
the missiles of your criminal armada—which has
attacked our country, killing our people, destroying our
towns and villages, our bridges, hospitals, and
schools—are supposed to destroy our transmitters and
relays, our facilities and our buildings, which we have
been building painstakingly for 50 years.
We have known for some time that we are a target.
We have also heard that from Gen Jean-Pierre Kelche,
Chief of Staff of the French armed forces, who stated [on
8th April] that one of the priorities within the
framework of the two-week bombing campaign is to destroy
the facilities for broadcasting the programmes of the
Yugoslav television and radio. He also mentioned
the reason why this should be done: We consider
them to be extremely dangerous means of spreading Serbian
views, we will smash the network of false information,
Kelche said at a news conference in Paris.
“CNN
virtually appealed to NATO to bomb RTS”
CNN reacted immediately to these threats and virtually
appealed to NATO to bomb RTS. A CNN correspondent
stated [on 8th] that there had been fewer people in the
television building over the past few days than before,
which means that the damage would not be so great if they
hit it, or, at least, there would be fewer deaths.
You say that we are spreading false information and that
we are responsible for the anti-NATO and anti-US
mood. RTS is not sending Tomahawks and bombs
against our children. RTS does not have B-52
bombers, Harriers, or F-16s. There is no need to
explain to anyone in our country who is sowing death and
destruction, because our citizens know very well who is
sending the bombs. We are only regularly,
conscientiously, and professionally conveying the pain
and anger of our people. We are talking about the
heroic resistance of our citizens. We are reporting
on civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian
facilities in our country. We are explaining that
the goal of this insane and destructive campaign is the
occupation of the country.
Your leaders and generals do not like it at all when we
show the pictures of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
President Slobodan Milosevic meeting Kosovo Albanian
leader Ibrahim Rugova, because you do not want an
agreement between the Serbs and Albanians, you do not
want our harmony and peace, but a war of attrition so
that your troops can take control of our country and stay
here forever.
You do not like it when your media report that 100,000
Kosovo Albanians are awaiting execution in the Pristina
stadium and we send pictures to the world proving that
the stadium is empty. You do not like it at all
when we report that our army has downed your invisible
and invincible F-117 Stealth aircraft and that we have
captured your soldiers on our territory. You say
that we are not reporting on the exodus of Albanians from
Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija] and their troubles in
Albania. Our country is at war. We are a
television station of Serbia and are reporting to our
citizens about what is happening in our country. We
do not have our crews in Albania, in the country that is
largely the cause of our troubles and the suffering our
Albanians, because it wants, with the help of the
separatists and terrorists, to expand at the expense of
our country. We know and are reporting that
thousands of Albanians from our Kosovo-Metohija have
started to flee in fear of your NATO bombs and that CNN
and Christiane Amanpour are manipulating the hundreds of
them in a big stage-managed performance of a humanitarian
catastrophe, paid for by [international financier George]
Soros, which is supposed to justify every NATO crime
against our civilians.
RTS
is not hiding anything to the world
We have broadcast many times the appeals by our state,
leadership, and people for the refugees to return.
They are already returning. There are more
Albanians who see their homeland in Serbia and Yugoslavia
than those actors appearing on CNN. We are aware of
all the shameless media manipulation in the NATO member
countries. We are also aware of the video footage
taken by an allegedly unknown Albanian, which you
launched in the world, and according to which the Serbs
massacred 100 Albanians, although even a layman can see
that they were the victims of your bombing.
Instead of the truth, you are offering us Madeleine
Albright, who, in order, as she herself thought, to court
the last Communist bastion in Europe, appeared in a red
dress, positioned a five-pointed star, and addressed us
in Serbo-Croat. When this farce failed, you sent us
leaflets, via the biggest hawk in the international
community, saying that NATO loves us and that it does not
have anything against our people. We know a lot, we
are not hiding anything from our people or the
world. This is why we, RTS, need to be shut
down. We also know that there is not a single day
that we are not mentioned at news conferences by the
NATO, Pentagon and White House spokesmen. We do not
have deadly missiles or killer-helicopters. We only
have words and the truth, which, gentlemen from NATO,
Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, and Bonn who have
embarked on an insane adventure of bombing the people of
a sovereign European state only because it does not want
to bow to you, appear to hurt most.
NATO’s
decision to shoot at RTS is a compliment
This is why you gave the authorization to your boss [NATO
Secretary-General Javier] Solana, and he to the executor
Gen [Wesley] Clark, to shoot at the truth, to shoot at
RTS. You could not have paid us a better compliment
and praise. This is the only good thing that we
have gotten from you over the past two weeks. Let
Clark shoot at us. We are waiting for him.
We are informing him that we are in 10 Takovska
Street—I am not going to say at what geographic
coordinates we are—he should find out that for
himself. There are several thousand of us working
on the programme. We are regularly providing a
service to our colleagues all over the world, even
journalists from your NATO countries. We are
spending days and nights in our editorial offices,
editing rooms, studios, and transmitters—I repeat
nights—because we know that you like most to kill
from a distance at night. Regarding your offer from
Brussels [on 8th], that you will perhaps spare us if we
give six hours a day on our programme to the so-called
Western media, our answer, without asking the state,
is: RTS is prepared to grant you the time you are
asking for if you grant us the same time on the
television stations of the NATO member countries and
France. Perhaps even only six minutes would be
enough in exchange for your six hours.
RTS SAT
TV, Belgrade, April 8, 1999
XIII.
Analysis: NATO raids black out TV across Serbia.
The 5th April air strikes by NATO aircraft on targets in
Yugoslavia were described by a NATO official in Brussels
on the 6th as “the most intensive” so
far. The targets ranged from Novi Sad in Vojvodina
in the north to Prizren in Kosovo in the south.
According to reports from international news agencies,
citing an unnamed senior NATO official, the sites hit
included Serbian military communication installations,
some of which may have also been used to broadcast the
television programmes of state-run Radio-Television
Serbia (RTS). The NATO official denied that allied
aircraft and missiles were now attacking civilian
targets. “We haven’t expanded our list of
targets, which remain military,” Agence
France-Presse quoted the official as saying.
As well as its radio services, RTS operates three
national terrestrial TV channels as well as a satellite
TV service targeted at expatriates abroad.
The Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug said on 6th April
that a cruise missile launched by what the agency called
“the criminal terrorist organization NATO” had
hit a TV transmitter on Crni Vrh mountain some 70 miles
south of Belgrade at 0435 local time [0235 gmt], setting
the site on fire. As a result, RTS transmissions
were cut off in the Pomoravlje and Sumadija regions,
south of Belgrade. The Tanjug report described the
strike as a “heartless attack on the transmitter,
and curtailing of the peoples’ right to follow
television programmes.”
RTS itself reported that one of its transmitters had been
hit on Fruska Gora mountain, south of Novi Sad, blacking
out broadcasts in the province of Vojvodina north of
Belgrade.
According to Croatian radio on the 6th, the overnight
NATO attacks on RTS transmitters interrupted reception of
all three RTS channels over a large area across the whole
of Serbia, from Vojvodina in the north, into central
Serbia including significant areas of Belgrade, and as
far as several towns in southern Serbia.
These are not the first attacks on TV transmitter
facilities since the NATO campaign started on 24th
March. In recent days the Yugoslav media reported
that radio and TV centres had been hit in Pristina and
Novi Sad, the capitals of the Serbian provinces of Kosovo
and Vojvodina respectively.
On 4th April Tanjug carried a statement by the Serbian
Ministry of Information—also featured on the
ministry’s own news site, Serbia Info
(www.serbia-info.com)—saying: “The NATO
criminals’ assaults on the media houses in
Serbia—first on the Pristina Radio and Television
and then on the Novi Sad Radio and Television
buildings—prove that the American criminals are
pursuing a dirty policy of lies, fabrications and
distortions with which they are trying to stop from
getting out the truth about their crimes against the
freedom-loving people of a sovereign European country. .
. . The followers of Adolf Hitler and Bill Clinton
are using missiles and bombs to kill true, accurate and
objective information. . . .”
And after the Novi Sad TV building was damaged on 3rd
April, RTS commented: “The criminals and
murderers would like to kill the media as well. . .
. There are no military facilities near the
television building. . . .”
Serbian
TV links NATO attacks with 1941 German air raid
anniversary
On 6th April RTS TV and Radio Belgrade broadcast news
bulletins on the hour, leading with reports on President
Slobodan Milosevic’s meeting with Yugoslav
officials, followed by his decree promoting various
officers, and then carrying reports on the NATO air
strikes. Between news bulletins, RTS broadcast
music programmes (a mixture of pop music and patriotic
songs), over which it occasionally scrolled information
about anti-NATO rallies in Europe and Belgrade, as well
as previously shown short propaganda films in English,
featuring a Belgrade maternity ward, destruction in Novi
Sad, and an air-raid shelter.
RTS also broadcast an invitation to Belgraders to attend
a ceremony marking the anniversary of the German air raid
on Belgrade on 6th April 1941. The station
broadcast extensive archive footage of the 1941
raid. One report juxtaposed pictures of the damage
caused in that attack with the damage caused by
NATO’s recent strikes. Both RTS and Radio
Belgrade made numerous references to this anniversary and
stressed the peoples’ determination to defend the
country.
Independent
media silenced for now
Yugoslavia’s former leading independent radio
station B92 was taken over by government officials on 2nd
April. “Government officials have shut down
radio B92—silencing the last independent voice in
Serbia,” the radio said in a statement posted on the
World Wide Web. On the same day, the authorities
also stopped broadcasts by Radio Jasenica, a private
local station in a town 30 miles south-west of Belgrade,
on the grounds that its programmes were “running
counter to the interests of the country’s
security.”
On 5th April, B92 journalists and editors held talks with
the station’ s new government-appointed
managers. According to the independent
Belgrade-based Beta news agency, they were given the
choice of resigning or working under a new editorial
policy, but refused to tender their resignations.
Russian
radio’s new Kosovo service
Russia’s official external radio broadcaster, the
Voice of Russia, has started a new Kosovo service, with
shortwave broadcasts in English, Russian, German, French,
Serbo-Croat and Albanian. The broadcasts in English
specifically address messages to NATO soldiers, asking
them to question their campaign. The service has an
extensive web site at www.vor.ru/Kosovo/index.html
Part of their appeal to servicemen on the site
reads: “Neither the NATO leaders nor President
Clinton are likely to be worried if this Easter happens
to be the last in your lives. They don’t care
if your missiles and bombs turn Easter into a nightmare
and spell death for men, women and children of
Yugoslavia. Use your brains.”
BBC
Monitoring Research, April 6, 1999
XIV.
RTS TV broadcasts said affected across Serbia.
[On 5th April] NATO aircraft carried out the most
extensive attacks so far on targets in the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, a high-ranking NATO official has
confirmed at a press conference in Brussels. He
said that the main Belgrade-Pristina motorway had been
raided with a view to disturbing the supplies of military
and police forces deployed in Kosovo. . . .
Radio-TV Serbia [RTS] transmitters have also been hit,
interrupting the reception of all three RTS channels in a
large part of Vojvodina, in central Serbia including a
significant part of Belgrade and in several towns in
southern Serbia.
Airports in Pristina and Nis and the Kraljevo-Kragujevac
railway line have again been targeted. Aleksinac
was exposed to the hardest pounding; there at least five
people have been killed and several dozen people wounded,
Belgrade radio reported.
Croatian
Radio, Zagreb, April 6, 1999
XV.
RTS broadcasts off air in Kragujevac after NATO strike.
NATO aircraft hit the TV tower on Mt Crni Vrh, between
the towns of Kragujevac and Jagodina [formerly
Svetozarevo], at 4:35 a.m. [0235 gmt] local time [on 6th
April].
Kragujevac
has been left without the TV and Radio Kragujevac
broadcasts [ the original Tanjug headline in English said
“Kragujevac loses RTS signal as NATO hits TV
tower” ]. A large-scale fire broke out on Mt
Crni Vrh as a result of the air assault, and firefighters
from Jagodina immediately rushed to the scene.
No information is available about possible casualties and
the extent of damage.
Tanjug
news agency, Belgrade, April 6, 1999
XVI.
RTS TV denounces “barbaric war” against
transmitters.
The fact that they have lost the media war has now become
clear to the bosses of the NATO killers. In
addition to the media war which they have been waging
against the truth and Serbia for a long time, and during
which they were not satisfied even when they used the
most heinous lies, the grossest fabrications and
imputations, the criminals have now started waging a
truly barbaric war against Radio-Television Serbia [RTS],
destroying our transmitters and relays throughout
Serbia.
The controllers of the anaesthetized Western media have
realized that the lies which they are promoting via
global television networks are not enough, so they have
started to infiltrate, in all possible ways, our media
sector because they still believe in the illusion that
the Serbian people do not know how to tell the truth from
lies. The criminals are now telling these people,
who they have been killing for 14 days with tons of
lethal loads, that they are good and smart, and
flattering them in all conceivable ways. But, to
their great misfortune, our freedom-loving and proud
people are repulsed by this nonsense served up in this
way by their sworn enemy.
RTS SAT TV, Belgrade, April 6, 1999
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