(ANEM/IFEX) – The following is a 5 June 2000 ANEM statement: Borske Novine director jailed BELGRADE, June 5, 2000 – The Association of Independent Electronic Media expresses serious concern and protest at the Zajecar District Court’s ruling today to uphold the three months’ prison sentence earlier handed down by the Municipal Court in the same […]
(ANEM/IFEX) – The following is a 5 June 2000 ANEM statement:
Borske Novine director jailed
BELGRADE, June 5, 2000 – The Association of Independent Electronic Media expresses serious concern and protest at the Zajecar District Court’s ruling today to uphold the three months’ prison sentence earlier handed down by the Municipal Court in the same town on the director of Borske novine, Dusica Radulovic.
Radulovic has been convicted of insulting municipal officials in the town of Bor. The offending articles appeared in five issues of Borske novine between January 1997 and January 1998 and are mostly concerned with senior Socialist Party of Serbia official Nikola Sainovic. The District Court confirmed the sentence despite the fact that, in a situation when the authors of all the disputed articles are known, as well as the editor-in-chief, the procedure itself against Dusica Radulovic, director of Borske novine, is obviously contrary to the current criminal legislation in Yugoslavia.
The proceedings against Radulovic have been conducted in Zajecar rather than Bor for reasons which have never been divulged. A motion for the Zajecar Court to be excluded from the proceedings was dismissed. The District Court in Zajecar, which did not uphold an appeal from Dusica Radulovic, is the same court which last year also dismissed an appeal from Nebojsa Ristic, the editor of TV Soko in Soko Banja, who was sentenced to a year in prison for displaying a Free Press poster in his own office. The same court is currently the venue for proceedings against humorist Boban Miletic of Knjazevac who is charged with insulting Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Dusica Radulovic’s appeal was dismissed by the same Court Council which also dismissed an appeal by her husband, Miroslav Radulovic, the editor-in-chief of Borske novine, who has also been sentenced to prison for publishing a photomontage of Slobodan Milosevic.
ANEM demands the urgent annulment of this obviously illegal sentence and reminds the public that freedom is the most important basic right of every citizen under the constitutions of Serbia and Yugoslavia.
ANEM demands that Yugoslav and Serbian state bodies immediately stop the repression of the independent media, which, from Draconian fines under the Public Information Act, has obviously switched to illegal prison sentences for journalists, publishers, and their family members as well. ANEM calls on all independent media, non-government organisations and other democratically-oriented forces in the country to display solidarity with Dusica Radulovic and everyone suffering under the regime’s repression.