‘Fur Coat Brigade’ Maintains Order

The press law works weekends, and in the dark. This is a behavioral pattern which has been established in the case of ‘Evropljanin’, and illustrates the way of thinking and the psychological and moral constitution of those behind-the-scene forces which are directing this gloomy theater of the absurd. They work weekends, at night, and fast. Darkness and fog are their favorite working conditions. They always find someone else to grass on future victims. First they found that wretched Patriotic Union and got it to sue the ‘Evropljanin’, now they got something called the Union of Women of Yugoslavia to do the dirty work; in the meantime, on Friday, some resourceful local SPO official from Kragujevac sued, under the new press legislation (which, by the way, had been strongly condemned by his party), the independent weekly ‘Svetlost’. Fortunately for him and his party, he withdrew the accusation on time. Bratislava Buba Morina, Serbia’s commissioner for refugees and president of something called the Union of Women of Yugoslavia had no dilemmas or a change of mind. She alleged that by publishing the advertisement for the student resistance movement, the ‘Telegraf’ tried ‘to bring down  the constitution in a violent manner’ thus endangering the lives of ‘women, children and citizens’. The advertisement, which was published elsewhere both before and since the complaint, has as its symbol a closed fist and calls for civil resistance.

The horrified commissioner and president immediately got hold of a pen and sued the ‘Dnevni Telegraf’, thus standing in defense of women, children and the constitution. There is, by the way, something obscene in the idea that the implementation of the unconstitutional, undemocratic, and reactionary press law is being tested by entities such as the Patriotic Union, the Union of Women of Yugoslavia and others which are likely to emerge in the future. The real authors of this idea are still hiding behind people like Mica Radicevic or Bratislava Morina.

Naturally, the first consequence of Buba Morina’s writ was a joint cry by those in Belgrade who still haven’t suffered a complete memory loss: ‘The fur coat brigade again!’, alluding to a nickname by which Mrs. Morina and her lady friends were known in March 1991, when, dressed in fur-coats, they defended  Yugoslavia from the ‘forces of darkness and mindlessness’. At the time, that was known as the Women’s movement for Yugoslavia. It seems that in the meantime, those very same ladies - by the process of transubstantiation - took over what was once known as the Women’s anti-Fascist front, i.e.  the same thing that children later called the Great Popular Movement for the social activity of women.

Therefore, last Saturday, the city’s magistrate, Vesna Dabetic-Trogrlic, invited Slavko Curuvija, the publishing director of the Montenegrin company ‘DT Ltd.,’ and Dragan Novakovic, editor in chief of the Montenegrin daily newspaper ‘Dnevni Telegraf’, to a public hearing. Slavko Curuvija, a man with prior experience in this sort of thing with the case of ‘Patriots vs. Europeans’, brought his lawyers along who immediately questioned the legitimacy of the Union of Women of Yugoslavia. The validity of the lawsuit was also brought into doubt by Anka Zugic, president of the Union of Women of Montenegro - a division of the Union of Women of Yugoslavia, who argued that her organization had not been consulted on the matter, and that the writ is therefore null and void. However, the Union of Women of Yugoslavia replied that the women’s organization from Montenegro led by Anka Zugic had been expelled from the Union on 3 May 1997, but that, at the time, this terrible political crisis among Yugoslavia’s women passed unnoticed. Unconcerned about such details, the magistrate, Vesna Dabetic-Trogrlic began the hearing. Lawyers representing the ‘Dnevni Telegraf’ left the hearing after the magistrate rejected their request that the plaintiff must prove the legitimacy of the Union of Women of Yugoslavia.

The ruling was soon to follow: 1.2 million. 24 hours later, the financial police, tax inspectors and a few plain clothes police officers were ready. Slavko Curuvija opted for an ‘all or nothing strategy’- he decided to print the Montenegrin newspaper ‘Dnevni Telegraf’ in Serbia.

On Monday evening, in front of a hundred or so journalists, the tax inspectors confiscated the whole edition of ‘Dnevni Telegraf”, which, according to Slavko Curuvija was ‘around 100,000 copies, but I didn’t wait for the end of the count’. When ‘Vreme’ asked Slavko Curuvija why he risked such a huge loss-considering that he has to cover the cost of printing of the confiscated issue, he said: ‘I wanted to disclose the repressive methods and the brutal nature of this state. I have to bring them into the open, so that everyone can see that they were not bored to wait until the early hours of the morning to confiscate everything to the last copy. I suppose they intend to sell it all as paper for recycling. I asked them nicely to allow me to repay the 1.2 million within a reasonable period of time, providing they allow me to print and sell newspapers and earn that money. This morning (Tuesday, 10 November) they told me at 11 o’clock that they would answer me in half an hour; at 16:30 they told me that they do not agree, but that I should continue to print the newspaper and they will confiscate and sell it as waste paper until they collect the 1.2 million. To the question ‘What next?’ Slavko Curuvija replied: ‘ if nothing else succeeds, tomorrow we will go for the partisan option: we will print the newspaper in neighboring countries, smuggle it across the border and sell it here. The magazine has not been banned, but only confiscated as my property. Whose property is the copy of the newspaper at the kiosk? Mine, the distributor’s or the retailer’s who paid for it in advance?  The Montenegrin authorities reacted angrily: the jurisdiction of the Belgrade’s magistrates court has been questioned while Bozidar Jaredic, Montenegro’s information minister had a go at Serbia’s government and its laws and - in the light of the incident when the truck carrying copies of the daily ‘Danas’ was held at the border with Serbia - threatened with reciprocal measures (prevention of the distribution of newspapers controlled by the regime in Belgrade). Besides the above mentioned confiscation of the whole edition of ‘Dnevni Telegraf’, and its sale as paper for recycling, the only thing left to the authorities in Belgrade is to try and confiscate the property of the company and its editor-in-chief, Dragan Novakovic, which is located in Podgorica. “Let them try,” said Dragan Novakovic...

Things seem to be developing fast. ‘Danas’ is being published as a Montenegrin daily, so far without any problems, while ‘Nezavisna Svetlost’ from Kragujevac got away this time.

That is why Dr. Vojislav Seselj triumphantly proclaimed that the Belgrade’s University Council sacked the chief editor of the ‘non-existent’ radio station Radio Index, Nenad Cekic. ‘Vreme’ has discovered that something similar is likely to happen to the leadership of RTV Pancevo in the near future. It appears that, according to some local politicians, this influential radio broadcaster “has not been reporting in a sufficiently affirmative fashion”. Namely, according to local officials, RTV Pancevo “focuses too much on reporting the opinion of the central offices of opposition parties”, thus ignoring the interests of local politicians in the city.

The regime is therefore attacking from three directions: via the Federal Ministry for Telecommunication which is gradually suffocating local TV and radio stations; via the new press law which is smothering and impoverishing independent newspapers; and by working with representatives of opposition parties which are in power in cities across Serbia. In Kragujevac, SPO was saved when its councilor dropped the case against ‘Nezavisna Svetlost’; we will see what will happen in Pancevo, where local officials from the Democratic party are likely to witness the smothering of RTV Pancevo.

On Tuesday, 10 November, Zoran Djindjic filed a complaint before the Magistrate Court in Belgrade against ‘Politika’ and Hadzi Dragan Antic. According to Zoran Djindjic, ‘Politika’ published untruths thus violating the new press law. The outcome of the complaint will be known by the time this issue of ‘Vreme’ reaches the news-agents.