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SERBIA-MONTENEGRO
Federal law provides for freedom
of speech and of the press; however, the Serbian and
Federal Governments severely restricted this right in
practice. The Milosevic regime’s assault on
these freedoms during the year was the most pronounced
since Milosevic came to power over a decade ago.
In October,
after NATO threatened to intervene because of the
deteriorating humanitarian situation in Kosovo, the
Serbian Government issued a decree effectively allowing
press censorship, possibly as a response to the perceived
threat to the regime of the free flow of information and
ideas. It later passed a new information law, which
incorporated many of the decree’s strict provisions
that left the country’s independent media severely
constrained. Under the law, private citizens or
organizations can bring suit against media outlets for
printing materials not sufficiently patriotic, or
“against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and
independence of the country.” Media outlets
also can be fined for publishing items of a personal
nature without the consent of the individual concerned
(an apparent reference to political cartoons). The
rebroadcast of foreign news programs, including from the
British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of
America, was banned. Media outlets whose practices
do not conform to the new law may be subjected to
exorbitant fines, which must be paid within a
24—hour period. Two independent radio
stations, Radio Indeks and Radio Senta, were shut
down. On October 28, criminal charges were filed
against Nenad Cekic, the editor in chief of Radio
Indeks. In October independent radio stations
Radio/Television Kursumlija, Radio Globus Kraljevo, and
Radio Velika Kikinda stopped broadcasting altogether
after government pressure to stop broadcasting foreign
programs. According to its management, the
Government froze the bank accounts of Belgrade City
Television Studio B in early December, although the
station was associated with a coalition partner in the
Government. The Government annulled existing
contracts with Studio B on frequencies and offered new
contracts effective retroactively to June, which offered
fewer frequencies at a significantly increased
cost: $100,000 per month. Since Studio B
refused to sign the contracts, according to the director,
the station was already operating illegally, effectively
providing the Government with grounds for closing the
station.
The Government
shut down several other stations during the year, using
confusing regulations governing frequency allocations,
including Radio Kontact in Pristina in July, the
independent city radio in Nis in August, and STV Negotin
in September. A problem that often renders
independent electronic media outlets vulnerable is the
deliberate vagueness of the relevant laws. Radio
and television stations, depending on their political
dispositions, can be harassed bureaucratically.
Instead of obtaining long—term licenses to
broadcast, stations receive only 1—year temporary
licenses if they are approved at all. The
bureaucratic procedures are so difficult that stations
frequently cannot possibly fulfill the
requirements—leaving them at the mercy of the
regime. For example, under current law, to obtain a
license to broadcast, a station must obtain approval of a
government “construction inspector” on its
office space. But to obtain a construction
inspector’s approval, a station needs a broadcast
license. In another example, in the spring
authorities closed Feman, a newly opened television
station in Jagodina and justified their action by the
fact that the station was operating without a
license. The station editor in chief claimed that
the Federal Telecommunications Ministry had informed him
that he did not need a license prior to opening the
station and led him to believe that there was a grace
period during which to obtain proper documentation.
Two other private television stations in Jagodina operate
without licenses. The day after the station
broadcast a program critical of the Government’s
financial policies, an inspector from the
Telecommunications Ministry, escorted by five police
officers, closed the station. According to the NGO
Fund for Humanitarian Law, in the spring authorities
closed down Radio Lazarevac, Radio/Television Studio M in
Vranje, and Radio Herc in Zitoradje, much in the same
manner as the Feman television station.
In addition to
license problems, those stations that do obtain licenses
are forced to pay exorbitantly high fees, the nonpayment
of which is enforced selectively by Serbian authorities
to close down those stations that do not adhere to the
Government’s line.
Although there
are many independent television and radio stations
operating throughout the country, their broadcasts
typically cannot be received beyond the major
cities. The only network that covers the entire
country is the Serbian State Television and Radio Network
RTS. An estimated one—third of the population
of Serbia only receives RTS, the official voice of
President Milosevic.
In October
police beat an APTV cameraman in Pristina.
According to
independent journalists, most journalists started
practicing self—censorship in an effort to avoid a
violation under the media law. Journalists had been
informed that printing anything that was not
true—even an advertisement or a death
announcement—could be punished under the information
law. One independent newspaper reported that it was
publishing half as many articles as usual, in view of the
new need to check extensively the facts in every
article. The weekly Zrenjanin decided not to
publish public statements after it was sued for
publishing false statements made at a press conference,
since such comments cannot be verified easily.
The police
harassed persons connected with the distribution of the
widely circulated Belgrade independent daily Dnevni
Telegraf. Kiosk owners were approached and told
that if they sold the newspaper the financial police
would look into their operations. Days after the
repressive new Serbian information law was passed in late
October, it was used to justify the imposition of an
exorbitant fine on Slavko Curuvija, the newspaper’s
publisher. Police barged into the paper’s
offices, confiscated property, and prompted the publisher
to move his operations to Podgorica, the capital of
Montenegro. According to the newspaper’s
management, it wanted to pay the fine and return
operations to something like the conditions that
prevailed before the crackdown, but the regime was more
interested in keeping the newspaper off the
streets. As a result of the media crackdown and its
changed circumstances, the daily circulation of Dnevni
Telegraf dropped from 60,000 to 70,000 copies to 10,000
to 12,000 copies.
Dnevni
Telegraf’s experience had a chilling effect on other
independent dailies, including Danas and Nasa
Borba. Both newspapers, less financially secure
than Dnevni Telegraf, suspended operations to avoid fines
that could destroy them. By year’s end, Danas
was publishing using a printing house in
Montenegro. In November Serbian authorities
confiscated shipments of Montenegro’s only weekly
independent newsmagazine, Monitor. Although the
magazine is completely Montenegrin—owned, Serbian
authorities claimed that the law on information covered
distribution channels as well. In November the
regime attempted to levy a large fine under the Serbian
information law on the publisher of Monitor. The
Federal Government issued a decree in November that the
independent magazine Ekonomska Politika would from that
point on be part of the Borba publishing house.
Borba’s first act was to replace the director and
managing director of Ekonomska Politika with individuals
close to the Yugoslav Left Party (JUL), the
neo—Communist Party headed by Mira Markovic, wife of
FRY President Milosevic. Publication of the
magazine was stopped completely just as an issue highly
critical of the Government’s economic planning
policies was going to press in late December. Nasa
Borba and NT Plus, another independent daily, were still
shut down at year’s end.
After the
media law went into effect the Serbian Government started
prosecuting the owner and editor of the newsmagazine
Evropljanin. On December 17, Serbia’s Ministry
of Information issued threatening letters to five
Albanian—language newspapers and magazines in Kosovo
to the effect that they were in violation of the new
public information law. Shortly thereafter, the
newspaper Bujku was effectively closed down.
Editors from Koha Ditore, the leading
Albanian—language daily, Zeri, an intellectual
Albanian weekly, and Kosovo Sot, a new Albanian daily,
reported that threats against the Albanian language
media, which began with warning letters from the Serbian
Ministry of Information, were escalating.
Throughout the
year Serbian police systematically intimidated printing
houses—including in November the Forum of Novi
Sad—to prevent them from printing independent
newspapers.
Before the
Montenegrin parliamentary elections in 1998,
state—controlled RTS openly campaigned on behalf of
Momir Bulatovic’s Socialist Peoples Party (SNP),
considered to be Milosevic’s surrogate political
party in the republic of Montenegro.
In March
Belgrade public prosecutor Miodrag Tmusic called on
police to investigate five major independent newspapers
(Nasa Borba, Blic, Danas, Dnevni Telegraf, and
Demokratija) along with some unidentified television
stations to determine whether there were elements of
“biased reporting” that incited terrorist acts
or condoned terrorism
On December
10, the new government—appointed Dean of Belgrade
University’s School of Electrical Engineering Vlada
Teodosic, ordered “filters” to prevent users of
the academic Internet network from accessing the OpenNet
web site, a major source of independent news and
information. The measure also affects the
independent media and NGO’s in the country, many of
which access OpenNet through the university.
According to Human Rights Watch, the filters appeared to
have been prompted by a link on the web site to a
political cartoon that showed Teodosic in a Nazi uniform
and portrayed Milos Laban, another newly appointed
administrator, as a monkey.
Montenegrin
newspaper publishers not friendly to the Belgrade regime
frequently had their papers removed from trains and buses
entering Serbia.
The KLA kidnaped two Serbian
journalists for the state—run news agency Tanjug on
October 13. The KLA finally released the two
journalists in late November (see Section 1.d.) after a
“trial.”
In May the
Serbian Parliament passed the new Universities Law.
It severely curtails academic freedom by allowing the
Government to appoint rectors and governing boards and
hire and fire deans of faculties. Deans in turn
under the new law can hire and fire professors—in
effect taking away tenure and promoting regime loyalists
inside the universities. The law also discourages
political activism among students, who were a mainstay of
the antigovernment protests of 1996—97.
According to the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, some
22 professors were fired and 30 were suspended after the
law went into effect for refusing to sign new contracts,
as required by the law. By year’s end,
protests over the law were gathering force. In
November police arrested four students affiliated with
the Student Resistance Movement Otpor, and a court
sentenced them to 10—day prison terms in a summary
trial with no right of appeal. In one incident on
December 29, unknown thugs (allegedly special police
forces) beat a prominent student activist from the Otpor
movement, Boris Karajcic, after considerable media
exposure and his trip abroad to publicize human rights
abuses in Serbia. Serbian police detained and beat
another Otpor activist, Srdjan Popovic, in Belgrade on
December 15.
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