02. 02. 2004

Newspaper protests Radical Party threats

NOVI SAD, February 2, 2004 – The staff of a Novi Sad newspaper today protested against what they describe as threats from a Serbian Radical Party official. "Like the majority of our colleagues in Serbia, we haven't forgotten what it was like when the Radicals were in the red and black coalition," said the protesting journalists, in a reference to the coalition government of the Socialist Party and the Radicals, the last government of the Milosevic regime. The protest was sparked by a statement from the Radicals' Milorad Mircic, after the paper attributed to party deputy leader Tomislav Nikolic the statement that the party wanted to abolish the autonomy of Vojvodina, Serbia's northern province. Mircic described the daily as "Ustasha", in a reference to the pro-Nazi Croat nationalist force of World War II. The Gradjanski list staff, in a written statement, called on Serbian democratic forces to stop such threats from the Radical Party, adding that during the Radicals' period of power journalists were persecuted and threatened with calls for lynching. "Some of these had bloody outcomes," warned the statement.