The Prosecutor’s Lyrics

An attempt by independent media in Serbia to objectively inform their audience about the situation in Kosovo resulted in informative talks. Belgrade’s district public prosecutor, Miodrag Tmusic, “took appropriate measures” against the editors in chief of Nasa Borba (NB), Dnevni Telegraf (DT), Blic, Demokratija and Danas dailies and “some [?] TV stations” because of “articles which encouraged terrorists and falsely presented the police measures against terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija”. Slavko Curuvija (DT) and Ivan Mrdjen (NB) already went through “informative talks” in the police headquarters in Belgrade and the other editors can expect similar invitations.

Tmusic’s first statement was published on the late evening news on Serbian State TV (RTS) which shows that the people who launched the whole thing don’t lack a sense of drama because they counted on a reaction from the patriotic public. The dailies got threats because of their “treasonous actions”. At first it wasn’t clear just what those editors had done and what part of the law would be used against them. The mystery has been resolved: Tmusic has decided to charge the editors with “elements of the crime of spreading false reports as in article 218, paragraph 1 of the Serbian criminal code”. The way he explained this in an open letter is unprecedented. Besides its lyrical and patriotic passages about a state which “although wounded, imprisoned, devoid of its rights and reduced, has remained an ancient part of our being, the only and last refuge of the millions who rose from its seed, who carry it in their hearts with fear and longing although spread out across the world”, Tmusic’s letter includes an explicit admission that he exceeded his legal powers with the best of intentions. But, since the homeland is in danger, Tmusic has no intention of resigning but chose to blame others. The letter explained what the main sin of the editors was: “an untruthful interpretation of the Serbian MUP statement” which they published on March 6. The untruthfulness was that in several titles, boxes and subtitles those dailies replaced the word terrorist with the word Albanians.

Probably not even Tmusic will deny that the 20 or so dead mentioned in the statement were ethnic Albanians. Their nationality was mentioned in respect to elementary facts: not all the dead were police or terrorists - some civilians did die and that is not something that only those dailies claimed. Serbian Information Minister Radmila Milentijevic said so as well. The word Albanians is logical because it defines the dead (except the police) in a word. By pursuing this case, Tmusic is boldly going to war with facts, and that can’t end well because facts are stubborn.