Fog and Darkness

Last Sunday morning, Slavko Curuvija, Dragan Bujosevic and Ivan Tadic were found guilty of breaching the constitution, undermining the country’s stability and offending the patriotic feelings of the population. They were fined and instructed to pay a total of 2.4 million dinars for the offense they committed. The new law says that they must pay the fine in 24 hours. Curuvija and his assistants were formally sued by the Patriotic League of Belgrade, a low-profile pro-government group barely numbering a hundred members.
Once the hammer fell, Slavko Curuvija held a press conference in Belgrade’s Media Center. He said he wouldn’t pay the fee even if he had the money. The next day, financial police could find only two dinars on Dnevni Telegraf’s bank account. Curuvija also said that he would continue to print the daily in spite of the ban.

The regime’s machinery was put in action on Sunday night, in rather foggy weather conditions. The confiscators and their police escort barged into the premises of Dnevni Telegraf and the weekly Everopljanin, to seize everything they could find. While doing that, they evaluated the inventory themselves. They evaluated chairs at 20 dinars apiece and the tables at 50. In their book, they confiscated about 40,000 dinars’ worth of inventory. Back in the printing department, the police confiscated about 100 copies of the daily due the next day. It is still unclear on what ground the copies were seized. Apparently, it was done because the copy contained the same letter by Curuvija and Aleksandar Tijanic to Yugoslavia’s president Slobodan Milosevic, as published by the weekly Evropljanin, which triggered the case and prompted the regime to ban and fine the two newspapers.

Once they were done at the premises and the printing department, the party activists went after private property. About thirty police officers sealed off the building in which Curuvija resides. At that time, Vuk Draskovic,the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), his wife Danica and Aleksandar Tijanic, a reporter with the weekly Evropljanin and the daily Dnevni Telegraf, happened to be Curuvija’s guests at dinner. Another unit went to Curuvija’s ex-wife in an attempt to get some private property out of her flat too, but she somehow managed to prove that he had no property of his own at her place. Ironically, Curuvija too presented evidence suggesting that he had no property of his own. The police backed off to the hall awaiting further instructions. That’s when Jiri Dinstbir arrived. The UN special envoy for human rights in the former Yugoslavia wanted to see Curuvija, having already visited the premises of Evropljanin and Dnevni Telegraf. After a brief argument with the police, Dinstbir was allowed into the building. When he left, he condemned the Serbian regime’s crackdown on free media in Serbia.

Many policemen as well as Curuvija’s friends and associates were freezing that night in the backyard. Radio B 92 covered the event live because it had a reporter in Curuvija’s flat. At 2.30 a.m., the police were told to back off. Vuk Draskovic later said that he wasn’t in Slavko Curuvija’s flat that night, which turned out to be true because the besieged apartment isn’t registered to Slavko Curuvija’s name. Draskovic couldn’t resist the temptation to deplore the “so-called independent media”, accusing them of “touching the rock bottom of immorality with their lies, slander and fabrications aimed at destroying the SPO, just like the state-controlled media”.

The police also visited the parents of Dragan Bujosevic, the editor-in-chief of the weekly Evropljanin. They were told that he had no property of his own there as he had moved out some years ago. Bujosevic’s mother said she would be happy to pay hi share of the fine as soon as the state gave her back the money she had on her foreign savings account.

The only one who did get hurt was Ivan Tadic, the executive director of Dnevni Telegraf. He had nothing to do with the weekly Evropljanin or any of the incriminated articles, as he was merely a technical director. He told the court during a short and ridiculous trial, when the sentences were passed, that he had no idea why he had been summoned to court. However, the patriotic league just wouldn’t give in and let him off the hook, although they could have.

Tadic’s fault lies in the fact that he is neither divorced, like Curuvija, nor single like Bujosevic. He is happily married and has one child with another on the way. It would be unfair to say that Tadic is less guilty than either Curuvija or Bujosevic. He is just as innocent before God and the people, if not before the patriotic league and Judge Mirko Djordjevic. It so happened that the police found him at home that night and wasted no time in confiscating his private property. He had nowhere to run. They seized his stereo, his television set, his furniture, his kitchen appliances, his paintings and a few other things. They failed to pick up the refrigerator, the beds and stove, as they came to a professional conclusion that Tadic and his family needed this to carry on with their lives.

The legal chaos that resulted from the attempt to implement the new law on media has culminated in the case of Curuvija and his associates. It will get even worse if the Constitutional Court of Serbia declares the sentence invalid and unconstitutional. In that case, the interior ministry will have to compensate material and moral damage inflicted on the accused, to return the confiscated property intact and to pay for all the damage resulting from unconstitutional actions taken. Not to mention private law suits that Curuvija’s partners will come up with, as they have lost quite a bit of money from the bans on the several Belgrade newspapers. Some of them are already demanding compensation up front.

The information ministry is laying low for now. However, Aleksandar Vucic, minister of domestic affairs, said the law would soon be implemented in Serbia’s “entire territory”, probably implying Kosovo. The editors of Koha Ditore and Bujku, dailes in ethnic Albanian, published in Pristina, weren’t too impressed. “We are outlaws already”, said one of them when asked to comment the latest course of events. Meanwhile, the regime has lashed out at Index Radio for “unauthorized use of frequency and broadcasting”, although the radio has a valid contract with Serbian radio and television!

It is apparent that the Serbian regime is working on two fronts. It has adopted the new law on media and continues to monopolize the telecommunication sector, which is just as unconstitutional. The common objective of these two initiatives is to shut out free media and freedom of speech.

Some of he banned newspapers said they would move to Montenegro. They want to keep their printers and correspondents in Belgrade, if and as long as they can. One shouldn’t be surprised if Montenegrin parliament deputies become the editors of various newspapers. They’ve got immunity and it would be hard to persuade some Montenegrin court to confiscate their property if they had no immunity at all. Vojislav Seselj said he would confiscate trucks carrying Belgrade newspapers from Montenegro to Serbia, Slavko Curuvija replied he would smuggle the newspapers through like “other people” are doping with cigarettes. The daily Danas decided to become a special edition of the Podgorica daily Vijesti and see what happens... as long as they don’t disappear in a dark and foggy night.