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Alert

B92 television crew assaulted: "culmination of threats" since station broke news of Milosevic's death

(ANEM/IFEX) - The following is a 16 March 2006 ANEM statement:

B92 TELEVISION CREW ATTACKED

BELGRADE, March 16, 2006 - The Association of Independent Electronic Media protests strongly over yesterday's attack on a reporter and cameraman from ANEM member B92 television.

B92 reporter Petar Gajic and cameraman Spasa Dakic were attacked in Belgrade while reporting on an assembly outside St Sava Hospital, in the morgue of which lay the body of the late Slobodan Milosevic. Police intervened, separating the attackers and the television crew.

B92 described the assault as "the culmination of threats" received by the company and its journalists since they broke the news of Milosevic's death on Saturday.

ANEM asks the relevant authorities to investigate this assault, and calls on state bodies to invest additional effort into enabling journalists to work freely and without obstruction as they gather and publish information of interest to the public.

Serbian society must find the strength to say clearly that there is not and cannot be any place for physical assaults on journalists as they go about their work. Such assaults were typical of the Milosevic era, which has now come to a close.

Slobodan Stojsic,
Chairman of ANEM Managing Board