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Alert

Journalists released

(GHM/IFEX) - GHM is announcing the release in Macedonia of two Spanish
television correspondents and a Dutch freelance photographer previously
detained in Kosovo.





**Updates IFEX alerts of 7 April and 6 April 1999**

GHM was informed by the French News Agency that Jon Sistiaga Escudero and
Bernabe Dominguez Lopez of Telecinco, and Arie Kievit of the Rotterdam daily
"Algemeen Dagblad", were handed over on Wednesday, 7 April 1999 to the
Spanish ambassador to Bulgaria, Jose Corderch, who is currently in
Macedonia.

Spanish journalists Sistiaga and Dominguez Lopez, interviewed live on the
television station they work for, said they were in good health and had not
been physically ill-treated.

Dutch photographer Kievit was shown alongside the Spaniards in Skopje.

The three said they had come under severe psychological pressure and had
been "forced" to make certain statements carried on Serbian television.
"When we said everything was normal in Pristina and that the NATO bombing
had hit civilian zones, this was not true," Sistiaga said.

Serb police arrested the journalists as they filmed ethnic Albanians being
deported by train from Kosovo at Djeneral Jankovic, on the border with
Macedonia.

The two Spaniards said that part of the train was on Macedonian territory
and part was in Yugoslavia. They had boarded the train in Macedonia, only to
be arrested when they crossed into Kosovo. The newsmen said police handed
them over to the military, who held them in a "hard to localise" place
before being transferred to the Grand Hotel in Pristina.

Recommended Action

Send appeals to the President:

condemning the fact that the journalists were forced under psychological
pressure to speak on Yugoslav television and say things which were not true

expressing the view that the detention of the three journalists is a
gross
violation of everyone's right to "seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers," as guaranteed by
Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

asking him to order an impartial investigation on the conditions of the
arrest, harassment, and degrading treatment of the journalists, and see that
the perpetrators of such crimes be brought to justice

urging him to ensure that journalists covering events in Yugoslavia are
allowed to exercise their profession without further obstruction

Appeals To

His Excellency Slobodan Milosevic
President of Yugoslavia
Belgrade, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Fax: +381 11 367 25 48
e-mail: slobodan.milosevic@gov.yu

Please copy appeals to the source if possible.

Source:

Greek Helsinki Monitor

 

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