Opinion: The Prague Post Online

Serb media ban met with silence

By Jeremy Druker

Last anyone looked, Jiri Dienstbier, Czechoslovakia's first post-1989 foreign minister, was one of the country's great political anomalies: He always scored high in popularity polls but couldn't find a party that would carry him back into the elected elite. But over the past few months, as the Balkans slip into turmoil once more, Dienstbier has returned to the international scene as the new UN special human rights envoy to the former Yugoslavia. He has also turned out to be one of the most vocal defenders of the independent media in Serbia.

The former dissident has had his hands full lately, after the Serbian government passed the "Decree on Special Measures in the Circumstances Warranted by NATO Threats of Armed Attacks," which banned the rebroadcast of foreign programs or the reprinting of articles from foreign newspapers. Three independent newspapers and two radio stations were almost immediately shut down.

Dienstbier has also used more than words to defend the media. When he heard that police were raiding the home of journalist Slavko Curuvija, he rushed over and stayed until 2 a.m.; many think his presence prevented Curuvija's arrest. Under a draconian new media law -- a spin-off of the "Decree on Special Measures" -- Curuvija, the publisher of Evropljanin and Dnevni telegraf, was fined nearly a quarter-million dollars for writing an article critical of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. And he had refused to pay.

In the face of such repression, however, the Yugoslav media are far from helpless. In large part, that's thanks to private Radio B92 and its indefatigable editor Veran Matic. B92 is the core member of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), a group whose publicity machine barrages people all over the world with announcements detailing the latest regime crackdown. Radio B92 and ANEM launched a campaign in downtown Belgrade Nov. 4 called "Keeping silent is not the Serbian way."

In an attempt to subvert the new legislation, Curuvija re-registered his publications in Montenegro -- Yugoslavia's smaller republic, now led by an anti-Milosevic faction -- while an independent Montenegrin daily began publishing stories from one of the banned papers as a special supplement.

The counterattack is being heard. At a recent State Department briefing, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said: "During our nine-day mission to Belgrade, we were bombarded with faxes and messages, directly and indirectly, from the independent media saying don't bomb; if you bomb, the independent media will be shut down. Veran Matic was sending these faxes to my home each day...." Holbrooke's wife, in fact, happens to be the head of Free 2,000, an international support group for independent media in Serbia-Montenegro.

The courageous campaign surely gives hope to beleaguered journalists elsewhere, such as Belarus, Croatia and Turkmenistan, to name just a few counties. In the age of the Internet, quietly shutting down a newspaper anywhere is nearly impossible; even if an organization isn't as active as B92, the news instantaneously generates thousands of e-mail messages sent around the world by organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Article 19. The West can no longer use the excuse that it didn't know such things were happening.

The closures and press intimidation by Belgrade have led to the appropriate hand-wringing on the part of the West. Germany, for example, warned Belgrade that to join Europe, Yugoslavia must respect certain minimum standards of the international community. Holbrooke has also said the situation cannot continue: "You can't have democracy without free media ... . In the end, democracy in Yugoslavia is essential to stability in the region. It is as simple as that."

But will all the huffing and puffing amount to anything? Some independent journalists in Serbia think Milosevic, always a wily negotiator, launched the crackdown at the precise moment he was set to sign a deal on Kosovo. As long as he complies with removal of military and police forces from the disputed province, he's betting that the international community will let him get away with harassing the media.

In an interview with the independent Belgrade-based news agency Beta, Dimitrije Boarov, deputy editor-in-chief of Nasa borba, one of the outlawed newspapers, said, "We are just wondering whether [the media crackdown] was part of the deal with Holbrooke." He added: "the Serbian government saw an opportunity to shut up [the part of] Serbia that thinks differently once and for all." Matic has also suggested that the international community kept relatively silent about the shutdown of Studio B, a private television station, because Milosevic backed the Dayton agreement.

Dienstbier has also warned that the Kosovo deal has provided a smoke screen for the repression of the media. Hopefully, the resourcefulness of local journalists won't convince its purported defenders abroad that they can look the other way now and the next time Milosevic puts a stranglehold on another independent paper. Too many eyes are watching.

-- The writer is an associate editor at the Prague-based international monthly Transitions.

Back to Top

Letters to the Editor
Lessons hinder learning
Kosovan stability needs foundation
Home
Back to Archive Contents
Back to The Prague Post Online

The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.