Serbian Minsiter of Information

Introverted insight: "When Tito died, I was the only one in my fourth grade class who didn’t cry. I even laughed about it, which made my teacher very angry.” And then: “the Socialists determined by polls that I am the most popular young politician in Serbia, far ahead of Dacic, Percevic, and the rest.”

About Vojislav Seselj: "Seselj cannot be the party despot. We are like a family, where we know who the boss is if we cannot reach agreement.” Later, reacting to the beating of attorney Nikola Barovic by Vojislav seselj: “If I was in Seselj’s shoes, Barovic would have been worse off.”

Qualifications and positions: Certain media experts label Mr. Vucic, together with Zeljko Simic, the cream of the legal cadre in the Belgrade law faculty. In less than a year, he reached the position of General Secretary in the Serbian Radical Party at  age 24, whereas Josip Broz Tito did the same in the Yugoslav Communist Party at 45.

On Mira Markovic: "It is unfair to say that the radicals made vulgar insults about Mira Markovic; they simply stated the political pedigree which her family and herself bear.”

About Milosevic: In his reaction to the Dayton agreement, he remarked that “every peaceful victory Milosevic signs means further suffering for Serbia and her people.” He adds: “I must reminds you that Csauscescu was overthrown at the time he felt the strongest. That fate awaits Milosevic as well.” One must after all “support such a move to secure a stable future for Serbia.”

In the meantime: Slobodan Milosevic decides that negotiations on Kosovo are an internal Serbian matter. The now Minister Vucic says “I have not noticed that the Yugoslav president is in charge of the Kosovo crisis.”

State Security and Him: “Everyone knows that next to Vojislav Seselj, I am the foremost victim of the Socialist Party and state security forces (SDB)”.

Solution for Kosovo: “We would set up five of our divisions in the five biggest cities, who would march everyday through towns and villages in Kosovo, singing patriotic chetnik songs. Then, I would like to see those Shiptars (derrogative name for Ethnic Albanians) dare do what they do now.”

Freedom of Speech: (1) “Serbia can be proud of its free flow of information” because we “fully respect freedom of the press, speech, and expression, which in certain cases go beyond legal limits.” (2) The state-run television “may not be the perfect compilation of professionals, but it exists to safeguard our national interests” (3) The so-called independents are “independent only from the Serbian, but dependent on foreign governments.” Therefore, the censorship decree which he signed because of a misinterpretation of a single clause in a speech by Bulatovic, will not be repealed when NATO withdraws its threat of air strikes, but only when Vucic’s boss – who is not Seselj, nor Milutinovic, but Slobodan Milosevic – says so.

Case No 1: Radio INDEX
Follow the Order!

Owing to the controversial Decree of the Serbian Government, among the first victims of mass media happened to be Belgrade’s Radio INDEX. Since Radio INDEX does not re-broadcast any foreign programs, it was therefore not a target of the Decree, but rather that of other written or oral internal decisions. The editor in chief of this radio station, Nenad Cekic, talks to VREME about what was going on in their editorial offices last week:

"It began on Thursday, October 8th, when at about 7 p.m. our journalist was not allowed to enter the building of Radio Beograd in Hilandarska Street, where, as according to the contract, we have been using our premises for 27 years. I arranged with my colleagues to carry the equipment out of the building. The porter attempted to avert us, but shortly afterwards the two other State Security workers (as they presented themselves) arrived. After a long period of high tension and their threats of using force, they let us take out the equipment and transport it to our new rooms, which we have recently rented on the 17th floor of the 'Beogradjanka'.

At the same time, in the building where our studio is located, in 21 Makedonska St., a similar incident took place, although with another porter. And even from there we managed to take away the greater part of our equipment. Half an hour after midnight, they switched off our signal on 88,9 MHz, the frequency for which, I have to stress, we have made a regular contract with RTS a long time ago. However, we continued working on a different frequency (99, 8 MHz), one for which we received through public competition, offered by the Ministry of Telecommunications last Summer, and since we have not received any response within the legally determined deadline, we considerd the frequency to be our own.

Whenever flesh and blood humans feel helpless, technology comes to their aid. The Radio INDEX technicians discovered that the program was being interrupted by the RTS radio transmitter. In a while, two inspectors of the Federal Ministry of Telecommunications (Jovan Jovanovic and Dusan Kostic) entered the editorial offices in the company of two other uniformed policemen, with a warrant for appropriating pieces of our broadcasting equipment.

The Radio INDEX team  did not give up. Under the name of a firm 'INDEX Plus d. o. o.', they signed the contract for business and technical cooperation with STUDIO B. According to their contract, the INDEX team will broadcast their program on Channel Four of the STUDIO B Radio. "We survived", said Cekic for VREME, on Monday, October 11th.

Case No 2: City Radio SENTA
Arrest and Mobilisation

In the example of the electronic media, local government is really proving that all citizens and all radio stations in this country are equal according to the law: without any discrimination, independent radio stations are being banned, not only those that broadcast their programs in the Serbian language, but also those which use the languages of national minorities.

Together with Radio INDEX, last week's target of the Federal Ministry of Telecommunications, was also the City Radio SENTA, a bilingual radio station which during its short existence of only several days, has broadcast its programs both in Serbian and in Hungarian languages. The owner and the founder of this radio station, Zoran Milesevic from Kikinda claims that this was the first independent radio station of the national minorities in Vojvodina.

At the same time, Milesevic is the owner and the editor in chief of two radio stations in Kikinda - VK1 and VK2, as well as the VELIKA KIKINDA monthly. He gave testimony for VREME that during the current battle for the media, even heavier arguments were being drawn, such as those concerning arrest and mobiliasation:
"On Tuesday, October 5th, around noon, I was arrested in the offices of the City Radio SENTA, in order to be handed a warrant for mobilisation. I told them that, if they needed fast driving (my military specialisation is to be a driver), they should better take Marko Milosevic (the president's son, whose hobby is driving sports cars), as he is much more skilled and faster than me."

But this was not the end. On Friday, October 9th, only six days after the recently founded City Radio SENTA started broadcasting its program on the frequency 91,1 MHz, the inspectors of the Ministry of Telecommunications prohibited any further work and deprived the radio station of its transmitter. Milesevic says that he will not give up the attempts to continue broadcasting the program.