The No One's Dead

In the yearly report of the New York Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Sierra Leone is on the top of the list among the countries most dangerous to life.  Ten journalists were killed there in 1999.  FR Yugoslavia comes next with six journalists killed.  The number of journalists killed in these two countries and Columbia (four) put together make more than two thirds of the total number of journalists (34) killed in 1999.   Except for Slavko Curuvija, CPJ's list for Yugoslavia has only foreign journalists on it.  Shao Yunhuan (Xinhua), Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying (The Guangming Daily) were killed when the Chinese Embassy was bombed on May 8, while Volker Kraemer, Gabriel Guener (Stern) and their translator Senol Alit were killed by snipers on June 13 in the vicinity of Duljane in Kosovo.

Committee to Protect Journalists is a non-profitable organization, which issues a yearly report on repression exerted on journalists in the world.  However, as a reference source of information on mistreatment of the journalists and repression against the media, this year's report of CPJ experienced an unexpected blow. On February 5, the British magazine "Spectator" carried an article by Charles Glass (sic) who reported on CPJ's "failure" to "recognize" as journalists the 16 employees of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) killed in the NATO bombing.  Asking himself "When is it OK to kill a hack," Charles Glass pointed out that the warning of Siddarth Varadarajan ("Times of India") against this "glaring failure" only provoked additional complications.  CPJ's public relation officer, Judy Blank, replied to Varadarajan explaining that the 16 people killed in the bombing of RTS had been deliberately omitted from the list, because although condemning the raid on RTS, CPJ "shares NATO's view of RTS as a propaganda machine, rather than a TV station dealing with information."
 
This attitude of NATO was revealed by David Willby (sic) on April 8 of last year at the regular press conference in Brussels, and reconfirmed by his superior Wesley Clark.  That is what they said, although, the "Spectator" commented, none of them has a clue about Serbo-Croatian language or has ever watched the RTS program.  Also, you cannot expect journalists whose country is being bombed until it accepts occupation, to love the bombers.

The "Spectator" underlined the fact that none of the western correspondents, producers or technicians, who had been using RTS's equipment for transmitting their war reports from Belgrade, has been even scratched, adding that the Pentagon and NATO had warned the western TV companies, but not the ones whom neither NATO nor CPJ considered journalists.  Judy Blank's letter is quite clear about this matter: "our independent analyses of the RTS program, particularly at the time preceding the NATO bombing, led us to the conclusion that under no definition could it be considered journalism."   Varadarajan thinks that it is quite dangerous for an organization like CPJ to decide what is and what is not journalism. He said:
"Many Yugoslavs think that during the war, CNN's program was a pure propaganda, but it does not give them the right to beat up or kill a journalist of CNN."  On the other hand, CPJ "recognized" the three Chinese killed in their Embassy in Belgrade, as journalists.  In reply to that the "Spectator" only suggested the CPJ employees to read the "Guangming Daily" - or maybe NATO has done that for them.

The unpleasant facts revealed by Charles Glass's article, provoked a reaction from the CPJ executive director, Anne Cooper.  In her letter to the "Spectator" she rejected the conclusion that CPJ did not consider the RTS employees journalists and that NATO was right to bomb them.  "The anti-NATO propaganda does not fall into the category of the military use of the media," Cooper said, adding that "NATO still has not proved that RTS had been integrated in the Yugoslav war apparatus."  So, what about the killed people?  Anne Cooper stressed that for years RTS had been the key instrument of ethnic repression and national hatred, by "emitting pictures of staged or fabricated massacres of the Serbian civilians, inducing Serbs to seek revenge." Cooper contended that the majority of the editors who had aired this kind of programs, are still holding the same positions, and that the regime is also in place.  She added:  "That is why CPJ made a decision not to include in its yearly list the 16 employees of RTS killed in the raid on April 23."

So I guess that now, a year after the bombing which dispersed them all over the Tasmajdan Park, the 16 employees of RTS should rest in peace, because,  Anne Cooper says: "Irrelevant of the fact whether CPJ considers them journalists or not, they are civilians protected by the international humanitarian law."  One can hardly visualize a retroactive protection from "humanitarian bombing."  This has been proven by the polemics (even on Internet) provoked by the "Spectator's article and by CPJ's official replies, which on their part, provoked stormy reactions both of the journalists and the ordinary people.  Whatever the truth might be, CPJ's cold-blooded defense of "its" list of journalists-victims can be compared with the fundamental indifference of RTS towards its workers and their families.  It is pointless to evaluate these to misuses of the dead by estimating who the "good" and who the "bad" guys are -- except if you had already made your decision beforehand.  

CPJ gave a motive to the "Spectator" to ask a question whether the new NATO doctrine of legitimate targets included galleries exhibiting propaganda posters, cinemas running propaganda films, concerts of patriotic music, street-corner orators or writers of self-published anti-NATO pamphlets?  It seems that the "No One's Dead" have not yet come to their rest after all: the message that in the NATO world only those whose freedom of information is protected by bigger bombs and "wiser" rockets, will be allowed to emit news and air their programs, has not yet been accepted.  The sixteen killed technicians, film editors, make-up workers and guards of RTS  have tested the conscience of the journalist profession during this year, and one has to admit that many of the journalists have not passed this test.