Slobodan's List

On Thursday, April 14, two days after Federal Information Minister Slobodan Ignjatovic announced a decision to revoke accredidations from the correspondents of CNN and AFP, Lord David Owen spent a day in Pozarevac (Milosevic's hometown) as a personal guest of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Owen reportedly asked Milosevic why foreign journalists were being expelled. Milosevic was surprised at first (``I haven't been informed''), and then advised Owen to turn to the federal leadership, i.e. Yugoslav President Zoran Lilic. Owen took out his notebook and asked in naive astonishment, ``What did you say his name was and what does he do?'' Milosevic accepted the joke and promised that he would personally see to it that this disagreeable case is brought to an end. A day later, another six journalists were expelled, the number of naughty ones thus rose to thirteen.

The second wave of cleansing was carried out in a somewhat different manner, without an official announcement on the prime time news bulletin of Radio Television Serbia. Instead, the Ministry authorised one clerk to call all unacceptable journalists by telephone and inform them to come to collect a decree on the revocation of their accredidations and to return their official documents. Those journalists who happened not to be in Belgrade found the message on the answering machine or the fax, so they learned about the decision several days later. The idea was obviously aimed at creating confusion and delaying the announcement of ``Slobodan's List'' in its entirety. The goal was partially achieved: a delegation of the Association of Foreign Journalists that saw Ignjatovic the same morning was not aware of the second wave of expulsions. Huan Fernandes Eloriaga, the President of the Association, whom the Federal Information Minister received together with doyen Aleksandar Lebl (The Economist), told VREME, ``We went to find out what had angered the Minister and whether the problem could be solved. Before we were to see the Minister, his secretary had asked us to wait for a few minutes since the Minister was saying farewell to somebody. When we finally entered the office it turned out it was our colleague Sergei Grizunov, the APN correspondent, who is about to take over a high office in the Russian Information Ministry. Grizunov left and one of Ignatovic's assistants told us, `He also would have lost his accreditation if he had stayed. He wrote in ``Srpska rec'' (the editorinchief of the weekly is Danica Draskovic, the wife of Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement) that those two Russian journalists were killed by the Serbs near Kostajnica.' ''

When Elioraga and Lebl pointed out to Ignjatovic that his decision would have negative consequences, that the revocation of accredidations would be inevitably interpreted as persecution of journalists and would be linked to the developments in Bosnia, Ignjatovic waved his hand saying that pride had its price and the Serbs were prepared to pay. ``The Minister told us that these were only individual cases that had accumulated over time. He said that we had been naughty for a long time, that there was a room full of evidence, and that we were allowed to have a look if we wanted to,'' Eloriaga said. ``We were also told not to hope that our companies would give us protection since some have already submitted requests for accreditation of new people. This later proved to be incorrect. However, when we left we had an impression that the purge was over, that there would be no new expulsions, that everything would end with CNN and AFP. This also proved to be incorrect.''

Although the Ministry never took the trouble to cite reasons for this latest move because of a discretion right guaranteed by law, some of the reasons could be found in the local press with a patriotic orientation. The Belgrade dailies ``Politika ekspres'' and ``Vecernje novosti'' almost simultaneously (April 14 and 15) dedicated the whole page to what Ignjatovic called ``frenzied media war against Yugoslavia waged from its soil.'' The headlines speak for themselves: ``Thick Dossier of Lies'' (``Vecernje novosti'') and ``Right to Lie Denied'' (``Politika ekspres''). Similar examples and wording in both articles point to a common source, i.e. the room full of evidence situated in the Federal Government building. What was it that angered the Minister so much?

This is what AFP reported on January 24, when the ``superdinar'' was to appear in circulation (but didn't), ``The ambitious programme of the financial and economic reform which came into effect on Monday got off to a poor start: the new dinar is nowhere to be found, the banks are still short of old dinars, the value of the German Mark is on the rise, and chaos reigns in shops.'' The Belgrade daily ``Vecernje novosti'' wondered triumphantly, ``Is it necessary to remind you that the value of the new dinar was 2 DM at the time?'' Someone whom ``Vecernje novosti'' named Christian Science (they confused the names of the correspondent and the paper) wrote, ``The West hopes to succeed in undermining the Serbian dictator.'' The same sentence translated by ``Politika ekspres'' ran as follows, ``It will be great if the West succeeds in undermining the Serbian dictator!'' Other examples of ``disinformation and false reports'' refer to the media that do not have permanent correspondents in Yugoslavia or to the announcements of foreign government officials that were reported by the accused. Whoever went through ``evidence'' from the ``room'' failed to do his homework properly. It is true that all kinds of things were written about the war in former Yugoslavia but it seems that the criteria Ignjatovic&the lot applied were quite contrary. Those journalists who had their accreditations revoked belong to a group of most experienced and best informed about the story here. Many foreign journalists have already complained and said they were ashamed they had not found their names on ``Slobodan's list.''

Ignjatovic's broom has come to a halt for the moment (the list has not been expanded over the last six days), but this by no way means that there will be no new telephone calls. The Ministry got one thing right: it is very difficult to expect that big news organisations will be able to withhold for any significant period of time from playing an unfair game with the regime here and refuse in principle to send replacement for those who are not desirable Belgrade is still an interesting place to a certain extent. And that's where a ``cat and mouse'' game begins: the Ministry has got a discretion right to grant and revoke accreditations, the news organisations have an interest to send their correspondents here, and it's up to them to figure out how they will please the Ruler. How will all this affect the current image of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Serb Republic in Bosnia in the world?

Just as all previous undertakings of this regime, this one is also doomed to miss the target and result in numerous undesirable consequences. The mass of information sent from here will not shrink, nor will reports about the Serbs become more favourable than they were before, as long as the Serbs continue to do what they do and behave the way they do (``The best way for one to be honest is to be honest,'' a sage man said). As long as they stick to the maxim of Dobrica Cosic, the former Federal President, that ``justice is more important than honesty'' (pronounced in the Serbian town of Uzice in 1990), the prospects of things looking up are rather gloomy. If the head of state is capable of breaking so many promises (to Lord David Owen, Thorvald Stoltenberg, Andrey Kozyrev,...) within the period shorter than 24 hours it is very difficult for him to expect to be respected and let alone liked. Someone else will carry on the task of collecting and distributing information from the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Besides, politicians love seeing their faces on big television networks, even though the latter may be `genocidal': Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has already given an exclusive interview to CNN, although less than a week ago he banned all American journalist from the territory of the Serb Republic in Bosnia.

It is interesting how the purge reflected on the internal political scene in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: the parliamentary parties reacted in their peculiar ways, and according to a previously demonstrated ``degree of national conscience.'' The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) and the Civic Alliance (GS) protested, warned about the revival of Agitprop and said this only contributed to the media isolation of FRY. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) supported the purge, reminding that they had wanted to do it a long time ago, but were not able to. The Democratic Party (DS) was traditionally reserved in its official announcements, but unofficially divided. Miodrag Perisic, who is experienced in the matters having to do with informing (he is a former Information Minister in the Government of Milan Panic) complained that Ignjatovic is wrong on two scores: firstly, the order among foreign correspondents should have been installed much earlier; secondly, Perisic should have been consulted now that it was done since during his mandate he kept a record of ``foreign journalists who caused damage to Yugoslavia, to what extent and how.''

Yet, the reactions coming from the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) seem to be most interesting. The party was at first reserved, the signal from the top appears to have been late. Radoman Bozovic, the former Serbian Prime Minister currently the Speaker of the Federal Parliament, was literally chased by journalists along the corridors of the parliament building. Finally, driven into a corner, he supported the revocations. He also emphasised that the same ought to be done with ``domestic traitors,'' but did not specify whom he had in mind. (``I've heard that some write, I don't know who they are as I don't read that.'') However, since last Friday everyone knew exactly what to say. Milorad Vucelic, RTS director, who is believed to be more powerful and better informed that both Bozovic and Ignjatovic, was most explicit. In a long interview for the Novi Sad paper ``Dnevnik'' last weekend, Vucelic said that he ``absolutely supported'' the purge, and that ``it should have been done before,'' and continued, ``It was not CNN and foreign media who fabricated all lies about the Serbian people, but the journalists from Belgrade who work for (the Zagreb daily) ``Danas,'' (the Sarajevo daily) ``Oslobodjenje,'' (the Belgrade weekly) ``Vreme,'' (the Belgrade TV station) ``Studio B,'' (the Belgrade TV station) ``TV Politika,'' (the Belgrade daily) ``Borba.'' Their purpose is to write so that foreign media could quote them. The foundations for satanisation of the Serbian people have been laid in Belgrade, these papers and TV stations spread the very same propaganda, which means that they work together and play on the same team.'' On Monday Vucelic reinforced his threat in the Parliament and reminded Milica Kuburovic, one of the editors of the independent Radio B92, saying that their station broadcasts without a permanent permission of the Ministry. When asked whether he would take away their frequency, Vucelic got angry and replied, ``Don't dare me!''

Does revoking of accreditations from ``an accumulated number of individual cases'' of foreign journalists represent an overture to a largescale cleanup in the domestic media, as many tend to believe? There is a host of bad omens: the change of membership in the Association of Journalists of Serbia has already been announced, while selfdeclared patriots keep repeating in a parrotlike fashion the names of unacceptable news organisations and demand that this issue is gotten over with for once. On the other hand, Ignjatovic's Ministry has no discretion right to deny at will ``the right to collect and distribute information from the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia'' to domestic journalists, the expulsion of citizens of FRY is unconstitutional, and to ban a news organisation it has to be proved in court that all conditions stipulated in the federal law on informing have been fulfilled (e.g., that this organisation systematically fuels and encourages racial, national and religious intolerance). Ignjatovic could do the same thing to domestic journalists that he did with ease to foreign journalists only if the state of emergency is declared. What is then the real price of pride?

Aernout van Lynden of Sky News:

I think that this time the Serbs have decided to play it hard. For the first time there is a military confrontation between the Serbs and the West through NATO air strikes, however small and ineffective they may have been. I think that the Serbs are playing it hard both in Bosnia and in Belgrade. I think that we are a part of the first wave of expulsions and that there will be more in the weeks to come. By revoking accreditations to foreign journalists, the regime in Serbia has shown itself in true light, when it prevents even foreign journalists from working freely and decides who is allowed to work, instead of letting international news oranisations do it.

Slobodan's List

News Organisation Name and Family Name Citizenship

AFP Nikola Miletic French AFP Viktorija Stegic Belgian/Yugoslav AFP Elen DespicPopovic French/Canadian AFP Ruzica Gavrilovic Yugoslav CNN Mina Ivanovic Yugoslav CNN Marija Sever Slovenian CNN Josip Znidarcic Slovenian Radio Free Europe Eli Jurukova Bulgarian El Pais Mirjana Tomic Mexican/Yugoslav Le Monde Florance Hartmann French Die Presse Oliver Vujovic Yugoslav Sky News Aernout van Lynden Dutch Christian Science Jonathan Landay U.S.A.