28. 01. 2009

AN ATTACK ON THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH – BROADCAST JAMMING AND PESCANIK WEB SITE DISABLING

Belgrade, January 28, 2009 - Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) has condemned the recent attack on the Pescanik Internet site in its today’s official statement. Pescanik is an independent production house producing the radio programme with the same title, broadcasted on Radio B92, an ANEM member station, since 2000. ANEM has also demanded the immediate investigation of the relevant institutions in the case of demolishing the personal car of Svetlana Lukic on parking lot near the B92 building, along with the alleged jamming of Radio B92 signal during the Pescanik broadcast.

Pescanik Internet site has been unavailable since Saturday, January 24th, due to the synchronized attacks by hackers from different locations. At the same time, numerous listeners of Radio B92 programme from different parts of Serbia, claimed that the signal of this ANEM member station was jammed, and that the jamming was especially intensified during the Pescanik slots. During the premiere broadcast of the latest Pescanik programme, on January 23rd, the car in which one of the Pescanik authors drove to B92 building was demolished on the parking lot near the B92 building. Both the Pescanik authors have already suffered various attacks, among which was the successful attempt to physically prevent the promotional activity for this programme in the town of Arandjelovac on December 3rd, 2007.

After they had received information on the jamming of Pescanik programme and demolishing of Svetlana Lukic’s car, a detailed investigation of this case was demanded from the relevant authorities by the Serbian President, Boris Tadic.

According to ANEM sources, our member station B92 had already asked the Republic Telecommunications Agency to provide information whether their monitoring and measuring centres had registered any activity that could have caused any interference in signal reception on January 23rd and 24th.

ANEM has already warned that frequent attempts to prevent the Pescanik authors from expressing their opinions and opinions of the guests in their programmes regarding the current developments in Serbia, in an unobstructed way, constitute a serious attack on the freedom of expression. ANEM has thus joined in the demands directed to the relevant state institutions to provide unobstructed exercising of all the rights that were guaranteed in the Serbian Constitution. By expressing our support to both the Pescanik authors, ANEM defends the right of each individual to demand full and free exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

ANEM Chairman, Saša Mirković