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THE SUPPRESSION OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Manipulation of the news media and the suppression of free speech have been among the pillars of Slobodan Milosevic's rule since he came to power in Serbia in the late 1980s. The government, however, has never managed to establish full control over the electronic and print media. Prior to 1996-1997, several newspapers and radio and TV stations were oases of free expression and criticism of the government, although their audiences and impact could not match that of the government-controlled RTS (Radio Television Serbia). In 1996-97, the opposition parties won municipal elections in most of Serbia's urban centers, and the parties supporting Slobodan Milosevic consequently lost control over the newspapers, TV, and radio stations founded by the local assemblies. A network of local media opposed to the central government has since been able to cover a major portion of Serbia's territory.

Since 1998 the Serbian government has engaged in an attempt to reduce the impact of the media it does not control, chiefly by refusing to issue licenses to the electronic media and by imposing enormous fines on newspapers charged with violations of the Law on Public Information (1998). During and after the NATO intervention (March -June 1999), the government resorted to new forms of repression against the media it does not control and continued to exact fines from the "disobedient" media under the Law on Public Information. The punitive use of this media law has been accompanied by verbal threats and announcements of more repression to come.


Criminal Prosecutions of Journalists

Zoran Lukovic and Srdjan Jankovic

Zoran Lukovic and Srdjan Jankovic, former journalists at Dnevni Telegraf wrote the article that led to their and Slavko Curuvija's March 8, 1999, conviction and five-month imprisonment. The article stated that Dr. Aleksandar Popovic had been assassinated in November 1998, shortly after he had accused his hospital's director, Milovan Bojic, who is also a Serbian deputy prime minister, of misusing hospital funds. Bojic sued Lukovic, Jankovic, and Slavko Curuvija, the director of the newspaper, for insinuating that he was involved in the assassination. A municipal court in Belgrade found them guilty of violating article 218 of the Serbian penal code, which prohibits "circulating false statements aimed at causing disquietude among citizens, or at disturbing public order or peace...."137 The appeal by Lukovic and Jankovic against the verdict was rejected on May 14 by the district court in Belgrade. The final verdict was delivered to Lukovic and Jankovic on July 14, but their lawyer filed a request for a postponement of the execution of the sentence and the court granted a three-month postponement. In the meantime Lukovic and Jankovic moved to Montenegro, which did not enforce the Serbian court's judgment.

Vojkan Ristic

During the NATO intervention, Vojkan Ristic, correspondent from Vranje for several independent newspapers from Belgrade and head of the local branch of the Council for Human Rights (Leskovac), was sentenced to thirty days imprisonment because he resided out of Vranje for more than twenty-four hours without reporting his change of temporary residence to the police.138 He served his wartime sentence from April 26 to May 25. The duty to report promptly a change of residence was established by a wartime decree issued on April 1 by Serbian President Milan Milutinovic.139

Throughout the war most citizens ignored the obligation to report changes of residence, considering it nothing more than a bureaucratic measure of no significance. Very few people were charged for violation of the decree duringthe state of war,140 which indicates the arbitrary use of the law in Ristic's case, because of his activities as a journalist and human rights activist. For years he has been openly critical of Dragan Tomic, Serbian deputy prime minister and director of Simpo, an industrial giant in the south of Serbia, where Vranje is located. In February 1998, State Security agents in Vranje subjected Ristic to a fifteen-hour interrogation because of his articles.141

Nebojsa Ristic

Nebojsa Ristic, editor in chief of Soko Television, a private, independent TV station in the Serbian town of Sokobanja (near Nis), was sentenced on April 23, 1999, to one year of imprisonment for the "circulation of false statements" aimed at disturbing citizens during the state of war. His offense was to place two political posters on the outer window of the TV station. One poster had a message criticizing the Serbian Law on Public Information: "Free press - Made In Serbia." Ristic hung the poster on March 27, in protest against a recent decision of the Federal Ministry of Telecommunications that TV Soko stop broadcasting its program and re-broadcasting some foreign TV programs. The second poster, hung in November 1998, said "Resistance is the answer! It can not be done in any other way. It will be too late. When somebody close to you dies of hunger. When they start killing in the streets. And poison the last source.... It will be too late. This is not a system. This is a disease. Bite the system! Come to your senses! Live! Resistance." The text was created by the student group Otpor (Resistance) and distributed through the media, as well as in the form of posters. In the opinion of the Sokobanja court, by hanging the posters, Ristic had circulated false statements "unsuitable to the given conditions of a state of war."142 The court ruled that these "false statements" were aimed at "causing malaise or disquietude among citizens, as well as at obstructing the enforcement of decisions and measures of state organs," citing article 218 of the Serbian penal code.143

The crime of "causing malaise among citizens" was eliminated in 1991, when the Serbian Constitutional Court declared this part of article 218 unconstitutional.144 But the decision of the Sokobanja Municipal Court145 is of particular concern because it reintroduces into Yugoslav legal practice the concept of the so-called verbal crime (verbalni delikt): the punishing of the expression of views not favored by the government. By penalizing the expression of such views, the courts act as the competent authorities in establishing "truth" on contentious political issues, and-by imposing the threat of penal prosecution-prevent one side in the debate from expressing its position. The posters displayed by Nebojsa Ristic did not contain any statement of facts that could be true or false: one was a judgment that the media in Serbia is not free, and the other was an invitation to show resistance to the authorities. The prosecution extends the constraints previously imposed through the media law to non-media forms of expression.

Suppression of Free Expression through Serbia's Law on Public Information

During the war with NATO, informal but very effective censorship was imposed on all Serbian media, with strict pre-publication or pre-broadcasting control applying to all forms of journalism. At other times, the government has invoked restrictive provision of Serbia's 1998 Law On Public Information to deter independent reporting and opinion by punishing independent media with high fines.

The circumstances of the law's enactment and the record of its application have shown its primary purpose to have been the restricting of speech critical of the government and to oblige journalists to exercise self-censorship. The law was adopted on October 20, 1998, as the NATO alliance was threatening to launch air strikes against Serbia. Two weeks earlier, on October 9, the Serbian government had adopted a decree that prohibited re-broadcasting of the BBC,Voice of America, and other foreign programs in the Serbian language. As of January 2000, fifteen months after the law's enactment, Serbian and Montenegrin independent media had been punished for violations of the media law on thirty-one occasions, and the average fine had been 420,000 dinars; pro-government newspapers were fined six times, and the fine averaged 143,000 dinars.146 Apart from the fines incurred for published information, some sixty media law fines, amounting to 3.2 million dinars (U.S. $100,000) were imposed in October and November 1999 upon the ABC Grafika printing house, ostensibly because the house was printing a newsletter not registered with the Serbian Ministry of Information.147

Decisions on alleged breaches of the law are made by magistrates who, unlike judges in criminal courts, are appointed by the Serbian government and have no security of tenure-they can be dismissed at will by the executive.148 Magistrates' judicial independence in practice is therefore severely compromised.

Article 69 of the media law is the provision used most frequently against media critical of the government:

For abuse of the freedom of public information by publicizing untruths which violate the rights of the individual in the public media from Articles 4 and 11 of this law, punished for a misdemeanor will be:

1) the founder and publisher - with a fine of 100,000.00 to 300,000.00 new dinars;
2) the responsible editor and party responsible to the founder and publisher - with a fine of 50,000.00 to 150,000.00 new dinars.149

The rights of the individual spelled out in article 11,150 violation of which implies unusually high fines by Yugoslav standards, are defined as "respect of human dignity" and "honor," as well as "the right to a private life."151 These terms allow room for arbitrary application.152 The record of the law's implementation shows that its primary beneficiaries have not been ordinary citizens concerned about infringements upon their privacy and honor, but members of the ruling elite concerned with preserving their grip on power.

The acts proscribed by article 69 amount to slander/libel, which is already prohibited under Serbia's penal code,153 so a person who deems his or her reputation was hurt can press charges on that basis. The Law on Public Information enables the government to prosecute its critics by bypassing the more stringent conditions set down in penal legislation. Whereas the Serbian penal code leaves room for acquittal if the defendant shows he had a well-founded reason to believe that the published information was true,154 the Law on Public Information does not provide for such defense. Under article 72 (5) of the Law on Public Information, the only defense against the charge of falsity is proof that the published information is true.

The editor and the publisher will be exempted from responsibility for publishing a false statement by a third person only if it was taken from a parliamentary debate, from written material created by a state agency, or from an official statement by the agency.155 If the published falsity was contained in a political party's press release, spoken at a press conference, or uttered in a (live) interview, the media can be punished. Six newspapers and one TV station were fined on these grounds in the autumn of 1999.

The political weekly Cacanski Glas was fined on September 9 and September 11 for publishing a statement by the Cacak branch of the SPO about alleged misdeeds of two local commissioners of the Ministry of Finance.156 The newspaper was initially ordered to pay 350,000 dinars (U.S. $11,700 at the rate prevailing at the time of sentencing), but on October 7, the magistrate board of appeals in Kraljevo joined the two sentences and ordered Cacanski glas to pay a total of 200,000 dinars (U.S. $6,500).157 The Glas javnosti daily was fined 200,000 dinars on September 29 for publishing statements by the opposition politicians in Valjevo criticizing the president of the local Red Cross.158 Narodne Novine from Nis, the only daily newspaper south of Belgrade not controlled by the Serbian government, was fined 200,000 dinars on October 17 for publishing a statement by the Nis city government. The city authorities, opposed to the SPS-JUL-SRS coalition in power in Serbia, stated that Zoran Arandjelovic, a high SPS official and director of the state-owned Nis Tobacco Industry enterprise (DIN), was earning more than 100,000 dinars a month. Arandjelovic and DIN sued, claiming that the highest salary in DIN was 16,269 dinars.159 On December 6, two newspapers and a TV station in Belgrade were fined for publishing a statement by the opposition SPO party alleging the Serbian Radical Party's involvement in the alleged assassination attempt against Vuk Draskovic in the October 3 car accident near Lazarevac. (See above, Car accident or murder?) The Danas newspaper was fined 360,000 dinars (U.S. $10,000), Blic-310,000 dinars (U.S. $8,600), and television station Studio B another 300,000 dinars.160 On December 23, a misdemeanor judge in Vranje fined Vranjske magazine with 1,000,000 (U.S. $26,000) dinars because it published a report by the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights which, in the opinion of the judge, incited ethnic hatred with "false claims" about repression of the ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern municipalities.161

The law's procedural provisions impose such time constraints as to make impossible the preparation of any meaningful defense. The respondent has a maximum of twenty-four hours to prepare a defense-effectively, to prove the veracity of a statement-from the moment he or she was served a summons.162 A magistrate can decide a case even if the respondent was not informed about any proceedings against him: article 72 (4) of the law stipulates that summons to the respondent will be deemed served if the notice of the hearing was given through the media, and article 72 (6) authorizes the magistrate to make a decision if the respondent did not appear at the hearing. These provisions have been applied several times, most recently against the Belgrade news magazine Profil, which on August 15 was fined 150,000 dinars. The editor of the magazine told newspapers that he learned about the proceedings and the sentence only when the amount was removed from the newspaper's bank account.163

Since the NATO intervention, two main national dailies critical of the government -Danas and Glas javnosti-have been the principal targets for fines under the Law on Public Information.

Misdemeanors judges have fined Glas javnosti three times since the NATO intervention: on September 29 (200,000 dinars) (see above), October 12 (270,000 dinars), and November 10 (200,000 dinars). The October 12 conviction was based on a charge brought by Zoran Lilic, former president of Yugoslavia, now adviser to President Milosevic. Lilic sued Glas javnosti for publishing an article alleging Lilic had met on September 5 in Montenegro with Robert Gelbard, former U.S. special envoy for the Balkans.164 The November 10 conviction resulted from a charge by a married couple from Novi Sad. They sued because in January 1999 Glas javnosti wrote that their son had been the driver of a car that crashed in an accident killing him and one more person in the car. They said their son actually was sitting next to the driver. The editor of the newspaper told media that the family rejected his proposal to publish a correction of the information which was originally published by mistake.165 The case is illustrative of the misuse of the law by magistrates who directly depend on the government: a magistrate imposed a high fine on a newspaper critical of the authorities, for what appears to have been an accidental error in facts.

Danas has twice been sentenced to pay fines after charges were brought by Vojislav Seselj, president of the SRS and deputy prime minister in the Serbian government. On October 26, a misdemeanor judge in Belgrade imposed a fine of 280,000 dinars (U.S. $ 9,000) on the publisher and the director of the newspaper, because of an article attributing to Seselj a statement that ethnic Montenegrins living in Serbia would be expelled or forced to wear yellow badges should Montenegro secede from Yugoslavia.166 On December 6, Danas was sentenced to pay a fine of 360,000 dinars (U.S. $10,000) for publishing SPO allegations about the SRS. (See above). Another person from the government's circles initiated proceedings against Glas javnosti which led to a punishment of the newspaper. Dusan Djordjevic, director of the state news agency Tanjug, claimed that an article published in Danas on December 18, 1999, about the employees' working conditions in Tanjug, represented an abuse of the freedom of public information.167 On January 21, 2000, a misdemeanor judge in Belgrade ruled in Djordjevic's favor and ordered Danas to pay a 270,000-dinar fine.

In Kikinda, a northern town governed by a coalition of parties opposed to Slobodan Milosevic, a local SPS politician, between September 1999 and January 2000, sued the Kikindske weekly, edited by members of the oppositionparties, five times. SPS politician Rajo Popovic sued Zeljko Bodrozic, editor of Kikindske and member of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, and Dusan Francuski, director of the company publishing the newspaper and member of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina. In two of the five proceedings Kikindske was fined 200,000 dinars - on October 8168 and December 21.169

In spite of the draconian measures increasingly employed against the independent media, state officials and ruling parties have repeatedly stated that the Law on Public Information requires more robust implementation. In a New Year interview, Slobodan Milosevic said that those dissatisfied with the Law on Public Information are "under foreign control," and he complained that "lately the implementation [of the law] is very weak."170 A party belonging to the ruling coalition, Yugoslav Left (JUL), found in a November session presided over by Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic that "it is necessary to decontaminate the sphere of public information, and of the journalistic profession in particular," since "the fifth column within the media has been used for continued aggression against Yugoslavia."171 Another member of the ruling coalition, Serbian Radical Party (SRS), accused the "self-proclaimed independent media" of "superseding even the most notorious producers of lies, such as CNN, BBC, Sky News, and others whose information policy amounts to a crime."172

Other Forms of Pressure upon the Media

On April 2, 1999, one week after the beginning of the NATO intervention, the authorities took over the most influential independent media outlet, Radio B-92, and appointed a new editorial team. Journalists and technical staff all refused to work with the new management. After the war, the original B-92 team resumed transmitting its program, from a different studio, this time under the name "B2-92". The program is transmitted on a frequency of Studio B, a Belgrade public radio station controlled by the opposition SPO party. On August 5, then minister of telecommunications, Dojcilo Radojevic, told Studio B to stop transmitting the B2-92 program on its third frequency.173 The demand was ignored by Studio B and B2-92. On November 22, Deputy Serbian Information Minister Miljkan Karlicic warned the Radio B2-92 newsroom that the program was not registered with the ministry and warned that staff should immediately apply for registration if they wished to continue broadcasting. The director and editor-in-chief of Studio B replied that Radio B2-92 was "not a radio station but the legitimately registered third channel of Studio B radio."174 The authorities have not taken further steps in order to silence the radio station.

The authorities have increasingly resorted to frequent inspections by the so-called financial police to exert pressure on independent media. The financial police are under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Directorate of Public Revenues, and their mandate is to monitor the legality of the financial dealings of enterprises. Danas and Glas javnosti have most frequently been subjected to these inspections, and the Danas editorial team publicly complained of having to "spend more time dealing with the financial police than with our regular work."175 On September 30, inspectors closed down Glas javnosti because its three employees allegedly lacked proper social security documents. Director Slavoljub Kacarevic told Human Rights Watch that the three actually had all necessary documentation, but the financial policesimply disregarded this fact.176 The closure came during the Serbian government's campaign to suppress by all means the Alliance for Change protests in Belgrade: on September 29 and September 30, the day of the closure, the police used brutal force to disperse peaceful marches by opposition supporters. Glas javnosti was covering the events extensively, and the printing house owned by Kacarevic, ABC Grafika, was printing the newsletter of the protest movement at the time.177 On October 3, the financial police unsealed the newspaper's office and Glas javnosti resumed publication.

A number of electronic media function without formal status since, almost two years after they submitted applications at the February 1998 bid for frequencies, they have not received decisions from the Federal Ministry of Telecommunications. Only two out of fifty radio and TV stations belonging to the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) have been licenced since February 1998.178

Privately owned media have not been the only ones whose work has been hindered. Since late 1999 the Belgrade public TV station Studio B, controlled by the SPO, has accused the Serbian police of disrupting its signal when its news program is on the air in the evening. New Federal Telecommunications Minister Ivan Markovic responded that the program was disrupted from neighboring Croatia, and that the accusations made by the Studio B director Ivan Kojadinovic were part of "a campaign [designed] by NATO."179 On January 15, 2000, unknown individuals stole essential transmission equipment from the Studio B's transponder unit on Mount Kosmaj. More than two million viewers were unable to receive the station's signal thereafter. The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) blamed the authorities for the sabotage. ANEM claimed that the act occurred "after the station had taken measures to neutralize the signal disruption and began presenting the platforms of [other] opposition parties."180

137 For the wording of article 218 see above, footnote 27.

138 Bojan Toncic, "Ratni obracun vlasti na jugu Srbije" (War Countdown by the Authorities at the South of Serbia), Republika, June 1-31, 1999, p. 11-12.

139 Uredba o prebivalistu gradjana za vreme ratnog stanja (Decree On the Residence Of Citizens During A State Of War), Sluzbeni glasnik Republike Srbije (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia), no. 17/99, April 7, 1999.

140 See below, Svetozar Fisic and Slobodan Karaleic.

141 See Humanitarian Law Center, Spotlight Report no. 28: Human Rights in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1998 Report (Belgrade, 1999), p. 21.

142 Judgment of the municipal court in Sokobanja, K. No. 48/99, April 23, 1999 (on file with Human Rights Watch), p. 3.

143 Ibid. For the wording of article 218, see above, footnote 27.

144 Decision of the Constitutional Court of Serbia, IK No. 58/91, Sluzbeni glasnik Republike Srbije (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia), No. 75/91.

145 The verdict was confirmed on June 6 by the district court in Zajecar. Judgment of the district court in Zajecar, No. Kz 253/99, June 6, 1999 (on file with Human Rights Watch).

146 Kosovo Albanian newspapers were fined four times (in March 1999, just prior to the NATO intervention), with an average 1,330,000-dinar fine.

147 See above, Campaign Against the Political Opposition: Other Forms of Suppression.

148 Serbia's Misdemeanors Act stipulates: "Magistrates shall be appointed and revoked by the Government of the Republic of Serbia, on the proposal of the Minister of Justice." Zakon o prekrsajima (Misdemeanors Act), (Branislava Petrovic ed., Belgrade 1996), article 98 (1). "A magistrate shall be relieved of his duty against his will:...3. if it is established that he performs his duty unprofessionally and unconscionably." Ibid., article 108. "In carrying out of their duties, the misdemeanors organs...are responsible to the Government of the Republic of Serbia." Ibid., article 86 (2).

149 Zakon o javnom informisanju (Law On Public Information), Sluzbeni glasnik Republike Srbije (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia), No. 36/98, October 20, 1998 (English translation from the B2-92 radio station's website, located at http://www.freeb92.net/media/legal repression/index.html).

150 Law On Public Information, article 11: "Public information must respect the inviolability of human dignity and the right to a private life by the individual. A public media may not publicize or reproduce information, articles or facts which violate the honor and dignity of the individual, contain insulting expressions and rude words. If a public media publicizes untruthful information which violates the dignity or interest of the legal or physical entity to which the information pertains, or which insults the honor or integrity of the individual, brings out or transmits untruthful statements about his life, knowledge, abilities, or in another manner insults his dignity, that person has the right to file petition with the jurisdictional court for compensation for damages from the founder and/or publisher of the public media, responsible editor and author of the information."

151 The other provision referred to in article 69-article 4-in fact does not mention any individual rights, but mandates a media obligation to inform the public "truthfully, in a timely manner, and fully."

152 An analysis of the law made by the Washington D.C. law firm Covington & Burling points to this feature of the provision. See Legal Analysis of the Serbian Law on Public Information, Covington & Burling law firm, October 26, 1998, located at http://
www.freeb92.net/media/legalrepression/index.html.

153 Article 92 of the Serbian penal code.

154 "If the accused proves veracity of his statement, or if he proves that he had a well-founded reason to believe in the veracity, he shall not be punished for libel/slander, although he may be punished for insult..." Penal Code of the Republic of Serbia, article 92 (4).

155 Law on Public Information, article 63: "The author, responsible editor, publisher and founder are not responsible for damages or incomplete information loyally transmitted from a public parliamentary debate in a legislative committee or the material from a state agency or if it was issued upon a request of the jurisdictional state agency as an announcement."

156 "Cacanski glas kaznjen sa 200,000 dinara" (Cacanski glas Punished With a 200,000 Dinar Fine), Glas Javnosti, Sep 10, 1999, p. 20; A. Arsenijevic, "Povucena tuzba protiv urednika" (Charge Against Editor Withdrawn), Danas, September 11-12, 1999, p. 5; "Cacanski glas opet kaznjen" (Cacanski glas Punished Again), Glas Javnosti, September 12, 1999, p. 9.

157 "Preinacena kazna Cacanskom glasu" (Punishment of Cacanski Glas Modified), Danas, October 8, 1999, p. 24.

158 "Glas javnosti i glavni urednik kaznjeni sa 200,000 dinara" (Glas Javnosti and Its Editor Fined 200,000 Dinars), Danas, September 30, 1999, p. 24.

159 See "Zoran Arandjelovic tuzio niske Narodne novine" (Zoran Arandjelovic Sued Nis Narodne Novine), Blic, October 19, 1999, p. 8, and Z. Miladinovic, "Niske Narodne novine kaznjene sa 200,000 dinara" (Nis Narodne Novine Fined 200,000 Dinars), Danas, October 20, 1999, p. 3.

160 See I.K., "Blic i Danas platili kaznu" (Blic and Danas Paid the Fine), Danas, December 10, 1999, p. 1.

161 Decision by the misdemeanor judge in Vranje, No. II 1015/99, December 23, 1999 (on file with Human Rights Watch).

162 Under the terms of the Law on Public Information, a magistrate must hold a hearing within twenty-four hours after receipt of a charge against the alleged wrongdoer (article 72 (2)). The respondent has to present proof of the information's veracity by the end of the hearing (article 72 (5)). The proceedings have to be completed within twenty-four hours after the deliverance of the subpoena to the respondent (article 72 (7)).

163 "Profil kaznjen sa 150,000 dinara" (Profil Fined 150,000 Dinars), Danas, August 17, 1999, p. 24.

164 See "Glas Javnosti kaznjen sa 270,000 dinara" (Glas Javnosti Fined 270,000 Dinars), Danas, October 13, 1999, p. 24.

165 "Jos 1,208,000 dinara kazne" (1,208,000 Dinars More as a Fine), Danas, November 11, 1999, p. 13.

166 See "Odgovorni su i kaznjavaju se..." (The Following Are Responsible and Will Be Punished:...) (text of the October 26 ruling by the Misdemeanor Judge in Belgrade), Danas, October 28, 1999, p 13.

167 "Kazna 270,000 dinara" (270,000-Dinar Fine), Danas, January 22, 2000.

168 S. Jakonic, "Kikindske kaznjene sa 200,000 dinara" (Kikindske Fined 200,000 Dinars), Danas, October 9-10, 1999, p. 15-16.

169 S. Jakonic, "Kikindske ponovo kaznjene" (Kikindske Punished Again), Danas, December 22, 1999, p. 4.

170 H.D.A., "Verujem da ce nas narod u sledecem veku docekati spokojstvo i blagostanje koje je i zasluzio" (I Believe the New Century Will Bring to Our People Peace and Prosperity it Deserves) (interview with Slobodan Milosevic), Politika, December 31, 1999 - January 3, 2000, p. 3.

171 "Neophodna dekontaminacija novinarske profesije" (Decontamination of the Journalistic Profession Necessary) (statement by the Yugoslav Left - JUL), Danas, November 25, 1999, p. 3.

172 "Ode srpskim neprijateljima" (Odes for Serbian Enemies) (statement by the Serbian Radical Party), Danas, December 2, 1999, p. 4.

173 "Prekinuti rad B2-92" (To Terminate Operating of B2-92), Danas, August 6, 1999, p. 22.

174 See press release by the Association of Independent Electronic Media - ANEM, "Unlicenced broadcaster: Serbian Information Ministry," Belgrade, November 24, 1999, located at http://www.ifex.org/alerts/view.html?id=5698.

175 "Danajski dar" (Danean Present), Danas, November 12, 1999, p. 7.

176 Human Rights Watch interview with Slavoljub Kacarevic, Belgrade, October 1, 1999.

177 See above, Other measures to harass opposition supporters.

178 Human Rights Watch interview with Branislav Zivkovic, lawyer for ANEM, Belgrade, November 24, 1999.

179 "Deo kampanje protiv SRJ" (Part Of the Campaign Against FRY), Glas javnosti, October 9, 1999, p. 5.

180 "Studio B Transmission Sabotaged," ANEM press release, January 16, 2000.

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