(New York, March 11, 1999)— The Yugoslav government's crackdown on press freedom has assumed alarming proportions Human Rights Watch charged today. Three days after a Belgrade court sentenced three journalists to five months in prison, Human Rights Watch called on the Contact Group and U.S. mediator Richard Holbrooke to raise freedom of the press with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic during their current negotiations over Kosovo.

On March 8, 1999, the owner of the daily newspaper Dnevni Telegraf, Slavko Curuvija, and two of the newspaper's journalists, Srdjan Jankovic and Zoran Lukovic, were each sentenced to five months in prison by the First Municipal Court in Belgrade for "spreading false reports with an intention to endanger public order," based on Article 218 of Serbian Penal Code. They are currently free on appeal.

The charge stemmed from a December 5, 1998, article about the murder of a Belgrade doctor. The article said that, in the weeks preceding the murder, the doctor had accused his hospital's director, Milovan Bojic, who is also a Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, of misusing hospital funds. The court ruled that the article suggested Bojic was involved in the doctor's death. Dnevni Telegraf had already been punished for the same article, in December 1998, when a misdemeanor judge ordered the publisher and editor-in-chief to pay fines to Bojic, who alleged his reputation was blackened.

Deputy Prime Minister Bojic belongs to the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), a party in Yugoslavia's ruling coalition run by Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic. According to the journalists' defense lawyers, the public prosecutor, investigating judge and president of the court dealing with the case, are all members of the party. The current Minister of Justice in the Serbian government, Dragoljub Jankovic, is also a JUL member.

"The conviction of Curuvija, Jankovic and Lukovic is a graphic illustration of the increasing state repression against the media in Serbia," said Holly Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division. "The court's reasoning — clearly following a political order — is contrary to Serbian, Yugoslav and international laws that safeguard freedom of expression."

This week's conviction was the most recent in a long series of attacks on the free press in Serbia. Since October 1998, when a restrictive Serbian Law on Public Information came into force, dozens of independent and opposition newspapers have been ordered to pay disproportionately high fines because of their writings. The government has shut down five private radio and television stations and one newspaper, and two newspapers have been forced to move their operations to Montenegro. Foreign broadcasts of the BBC, VOA, RFE/RL and Deutsche Welle are banned.

Human Rights Watch condemned the Yugoslav government's assault on the media and called on the Contact Group to remember the need for democracy in Serbia, rather than just conflict management in Kosovo, during the current negotiations over the disputed province.

"Freedom of expression for the Serbian-language media is central to any solution of the Kosovo crisis," said Holly Cartner, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division. "Government repression has silenced critical journalism, which leaves the state-run media — full of misinformation and xenophobic hate speech — as the main source of news for the majority of the population."

Newspapers, radio and television stations under the control of Milosevic, especially Radio Television Serbia (RTS), present widely distorted information about the Kosovo conflict and the role of the international community. Recent weeks have seen a virulent anti-American campaign in the state media.

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