07. 09. 2005

INTIMIDATION CAMPAIGN CONTINUES

The previous day Belgrade daily Blic reported that the coordinator of Otpor in Pozarevac, Momcilo Veljkovic, and his family had been threatened with death in a letter signed by the “Serbian Death Squadron”. This was the second threatening letter received by Veljkovic within two weeks. He told Blic that the earlier letter had been written in the same handwriting as that received by another Otpor activist, Zoran Milovanovic, in 2001. At that time, Marko Milosevic, son of the former Yugoslav president, had been charged with threatening Milovanovic with a chainsaw in the Madona discotheque. The same handwriting has now appeared in a letter received this week by RTV B92 director and editor-in-chief Veran Matic. The letter, signed by the “Serbian Liberation Regiment” contains brutal threats to Matic, his family and business associates. B92 said today that it has filed a criminal complaint over the letter. ANEM notes that the identity of people making serious threats is rarely discovered and that this tends to encourage such people in their insolence and ruthlessness. The Association demands that the authorities take resolute and responsible action to show once and for all that anonymous death threats to journalists and NGO activists and their families are as unacceptable in Serbia as they are in the rest of the civilised world. Slobodan Stojsic, Chairman of the ANEM Managing Board