06. 12. 2007

CALL FOR URGENT LEGAL ACTIONS AGAINST THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INTERRUPTION OF 'PESCANIK' PROMOTION

BELGRADE, December 6, 2007 – Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) condemns the continuing campaign to suppress freedom of expression in Serbia.

After the incident of cancelling a promotion of an ANEM member station programme, Radio B92's "Pescanik", on November 18th in Arandjelovac, another incident happened on December 3rd in the same town. A group of supporters of Nova Srbija (New Serbia) political party that came from the near-by town of Topola led by the president of local government and an official of that party, Dragan Jovanovic, and aided by supporters of Serbian Radical Party and members of the "Nasi" non-governmental organization based in Arandjelovac, succeeded in breaking up a new promotion of "Pescanik" in which Mirko Djordjevic, Vesna Rakic Vodinelic, Teofil Pancic, Miljenko Dereta and Petar Lukovic should have presented their views.

New Serbia, a political party that is currently taking part in the ruling coalition and is led by Velimir Ilic, Infrastructure Minister in the Serbian government, confirmed on Tuesday that they had organized their members to obstruct the "Pescanik" programme debate, justifying that act as a protection of national interests. Minister Ilic stated that it was a "normal political fight", in which "some organize promotion, and others prevent such a promotion".

Freedom of expression is guaranteed by Constitution in Serbia, and illegitimate deprivation or limiting of the freedom to speech or freedom to public appearances is a criminal offence that is punishable by imprisonment. ANEM thus expresses special concern for the fact that one of the ruling political parties publicly glorifies lawlessness and practically announces new and similar activities to suppress freedom of expression, while their coalition partner, political party led by Vojislav Kostunica, cannot be bothered to pass any comment on this incident, which is difficult to interpret in any other way but as a tacit support to the gradually prevailing climate of intolerance in this society.

Absence of a unified reaction of the ruling coalition to such and similar incidents and government's tolerance for acts of violence has always been interpreted by the extremists' groups and individuals as a green light for even greater violence. This is corroborated in the official statement by an ANEM member station, RTV B92, in which they wrote that after the "Pescanik" promotion had been broken up this station received telephone calls and hate e-mail messages containing threats in which bombs and killings were mentioned.

ANEM is thus inviting the democratically oriented general public to express their severest condemnation of every attempt to suppress freedom of expression, and urging the relevant official institutions to immediately initiate adequate legal proceedings to protect legal order in the country.

Sasa Mirkovic,

ANEM Chairman