PRESS RELEASE

15 October 1998

Clinton Must End Serbian Government Media Crackdown

The Serbian government is mounting a massive crackdown on the independent media in Belgrade, designed to keep the truth about Kosovo from the Yugoslav public. In the night between October 13 (21:15h) and October 14 (02:30), two clerks of the Serbian Ministry of Information with heavy police assistance entered the premises of two independent Belgrade dailies - Danas and Dnevni Telegraf - and ordered them closed and sealed. That unprecedented move in the history of Yugoslav press was presented as the implementation of the Serbian Government decree on the "duties of the media" in the "state of imminent danger of war".

The irony is that the same day, October 13, at 13:00 hours, President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic announced in his address to the nation the agreement on a peaceful solution of the Kosovo crisis. Serbian Minister of Information, Mr. Aleksandar Vucic, didn’t allow even a decent interval before his President’s public address and the closing of the two most important Belgrade independent dailies. The only conclusion one can draw is that the Minister of Information of Serbia, a high-ranking official of the Serbian Radical Party, Milosevic’s coalition partner, is trying to subvert the results of the long, hard and delicate negotiations between President Milosevic and the US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke.

"It is a desperate and suicidal final attempt of the extreme right-wing Serb chauvinist Radical Party to compromise the peace process by openly and blatantly introducing censorship when the threat of military intervention is already past and irrelevant", said Milos Vasic, President of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia.

"President Clinton should make it clear to Milosevic that the protection of fundamental freedoms is non-negotiable. If Milosevic is allowed to destroy freedom of speech and the independent media, what chance is there for free and fair elections in an autonomous Kosovo? Ambassador Holbrooke’s efforts will amount to little if NATO sits back and allows creeping fascism in Serbia", said Martin Butcher of BASIC.

BASIC is also able to assist with contacts for independent journalists in Yugoslavia.

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