Editors of Serbia

For weeks the contents of the new press legislation has been treated like a NATO military secret.  Once the Law was drafted, Dragan Tomic, the Chairman of the Serbian Parliament appeared on TV and, to the surprise of some MPs, called a Parliamentary session. The news left the parliamentary majority largely indifferent. The MPs were told that the proposed Law will be on their desks in the chamber; that it has to be passed urgently and that they should not waste too much time or effort over it. However, on Sunday evening, journalists managed to obtain a copy of the drafted document and gave it to a number of MPs. On Monday a debate involving journalists, lawyers and political scientists was held in the Media Center, and this was the only public discussion about the Law, apart from various programs on local radio stations. The conclusions of the debate are well known: the Law was judged to be unconstitutional, inconsistent with binding international conventions and treaties signed and ratified by Yugoslavia, and was basically deemed scandalous.

This did not prevent the anonymous authors of the Law from including in the otherwise lapidary ‘clarification’ a rather strange formulation, which Stevo Dragisic, the leader of Radical party’s MPs subsequently repeated without batting an eyelid. Namely, it says that the Law should be adapted to the ‘newly developed relations and tendencies with implications for future social relations and the activity of the press and the media ’, which is sufficient caution, just so that no one can say that they have not been warned. But, it also says that all this had been ‘confirmed during an extensive public debate held throughout Serbia’. No debate, and especially not an ‘extensive’ one, was ever held ‘throughout Serbia’ for the simple reason that the draft was guarded like a family disgrace even from MPs.

Actually, a year ago Mrs. Radmila Milentijevic also spoke of such ‘all encompassing public discussions throughout Serbia’ concerning a piece of legislation which she proposed. However, the proposal was criticized and rejected by the Radical party, and no one remembers any public discussion surrounding it.

Urgency: The Law was passed urgently. In a letter to Parliament, Dr. Milovan Bojic (JUL), the deputy prime minister claimed that the need for urgency ‘has been dealt with in the written explanation of the Law’. The explanation justifies urgency on the grounds that ‘the functioning of the press and the media needs to be covered with appropriate legislation, thus alleviating the need for resolving specific issues by means of executive decrees’. The functioning of the press and the media was already covered by the old Law, so the need for urgency must be sought in the second part of the sentence. Put simply, it says: we have introduced that unfortunate directive, then we saw that it led to an unbearable and dangerous scandal , so we decided to incorporate it into a Law, thus embarrassing ourselves once and never again. The directive itself (signed by Vojislav Seselj, SRS) was abolished on Wednesday, and the directive which canceled out that directive was signed by dr. Milovan Bojic (JUL).

Bearing in mind the current political context, the urgency is understandable. The direction in which the crisis in Kosovo is heading has become dangerous; the black-red coalition is about to lose its fourth war, Serbia is poor, confused, frustrated and therefore might get angry. Sooner or later the details of the peace settlement in Kosovo will become known (among other things its sections concerning the police), and it seems necessary to silence  all those who might ask unnecessary questions such as ‘what was the most expensive Serbian word?’, ‘what was the result of the referendum?’, ‘why did so many die in Kosovo, and what for?’ etc. It is even more important to silence those who up to now have been publishing cold factual truth about what went on. They are most dangerous for the regime because  when things really get serious no one will trust either the RTS, Tanjug, or the red ‘Borba’. There is also the view that the circulation of independent daily newspapers outnumbers that of the ‘patriotic’ dailies by such a margin that the already endangered state and party budgets must be rescued by banning their competitors.

More urgency: Constitutional lawyers claim  that the main danger for the freedom of the press lies in three aspects of the new Law. Firstly, by means of  number of confusing definitions, the Law removes a basic human right  guarantied under the Constitution which, by definition, is hierarchically the highest law.  Secondly, magistrates are given incredibly short periods of time for settling cases, and finally, the fines which they have at their disposal are astronomical.

The Law itself is a compilation of old legislation on the subject, and the better part of it is decent. Innovations are immediately apparent, the experts say: political terminology has been introduced instead of legal jargon, and the Ministry of Information is not required to issue guidelines and interpretations which could help its implementation. The term ‘political propaganda’, included in section 27, which bans broadcasting and public transmission of foreign news programs or any information contained in them, is a political term, the interpretation of which is in the hands of the Ministry whose good intentions can be questioned after all that happened. Besides, the Law introduces the presumption of guilt for the incriminated newspapers, radio or TV channels, in that the author of the text, the editor, chief editor or the proprietor must prove the genuineness and truthfulness of the published material, all within 24 hours. In addition, it is the Ministry as a ‘supervisory organ’ which presses charges  against these individuals or companies.

Therefore, the magistrate has a total of 72 hours to understand what the charge is all about, and to decide who is right and who is wrong - and why. The fines are excessive (50,000-100,000 dinars for the individual responsible, and 400,000-800,000 for the publisher or broadcaster). Besides, the urgency with which the sentence has to be reached has already been contested by last year’s ruling of the constitutional court, which saw a similar time span as undermining the right of the accused to defend himself. We thus found ourselves in a position where journalists and editors in Serbia have fewer rights than participants in a street brawl. Bringing press law under the jurisdiction of the magistrates is a legal and political scandal: if that domain is that important, why is it not dealt with by higher instances? It is simply because those higher legal authorities give greater rights to the accused. That is why everything is placed in the hands of the magistrates who are allowed to impose fines higher than those allowed by Criminal Law.
The reason behind the indecent and unbecoming rush is clear: they are ashamed. Its aim is also clear: to lead journalists into self-censorship and make them read Mr. Vucic’s mind in advance, and if that doesn’t work, then to smother them with monstrous fines.  Various associations of journalists, opposition parties and the democratic public have already called for resistance. Legally speaking, the only way is to demand of the Constitutional court to examine the constitutional nature of the Law, which has already been done. As Slobodan Vucetic, a constitutional court judge said in a TV program last week, ‘the worst is when the state starts breaking the constitution’. What is left to the population whose fundamental human and political rights are thus violated? The removal of the freedom of the press has already been interpreted as ‘the first step towards fascist dictatorship’, as ‘only the beginning: next in line are non-governmental organizations, followed by political parties, then the rest’. Freedom of the press is the foundation of political democracy, considering that without truth there is neither justice nor the democratic rule of the majority. Without freedom of the press, all that remains is manipulation and dictatorship. This manipulative, lying, and dictatorial  regime has to remove truth from the public scene now that its political program faces bankruptcy. Opposition parties reacted with a number statements and warnings; on  9 March 1991, people were getting killed on the streets of Belgrade for a far lesser matter - the editorial policy of the Serbian state radio and television.

Ten bloody years of populist demagogy, chauvinist hysteria and military defeats have taken their toll: Serbia is lethargic and apathetic, helplessly awaiting its destiny. In Belgrade, initiatives can be heard calling for the creation of ad hoc representative bodies for the preservation of the freedom of the press which would gather around this one most precious value, all those who believe that without truth there is neither democracy nor survival of Serbia. Will Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic, Vesna Pesic and Zarko Korac, Vojislav Kostunica and Nenad Canak once again sit at the same table, even if only for a photo opportunity, thus symbolizing the fight against the newly established constraint on the freedom of speech. Or will all sections of the press become a united publishing and broadcasting organization where Dr. Mira Markovic and President Slobodan Milosevic are the chief editors, and which has Dr. Vojislav Seselj as the assignment editor, Minister Alexandar Vucic as the chief political editor, and Zelko Simic as the person in charge of the art and culture column. If that turns out to be the case, we will have to economize with our resources, and will be reduced to one state run TV channel, one state run radio station, and one daily newspaper, the red ‘Borba’. Listening to foreign radio stations will be prohibited (a true patriot has no need to listen to foreign propaganda), satellite dishes will be confiscated as redundant (they spread propaganda from abroad and ruin the façade), the police will confiscate all radios which receive anything but the local FM transmission, while some JUL-run company will get the contract to produce good quality, cheap and esthetically pleasing receiver which receives the program broadcast by Radio Belgrade (in German: Volksempfaenger: people’s radio). In the meantime, the illegal and unpatriotic activity in the service of NATO, namely gossiping and spreading roomers, will develop to such an extent that more order will have to be introduced. A new directive will be adopted which will-under the threat of severe but just punishment- ban: oral dissemination of news which constitute treason, laughter when the information minister appears on TV, impersonation of the deputy prime-minister’s speech impediment, all mention of the Republic of Srpska Krajina, Kosovo, Montenegro in any context whatsoever, inquiry about missing persons, spitting at the television screen, joking about party officials, along with all other similar unpatriotic acts of treason.