27. 12. 2004

SERIOUS MANIPULATION OF MEDIA

BELGRADE, December 27, 2004 - "This is not hate speech; it is a call for a lynching. It is all to do with the expertise and involvement of the institutions, because half of the people from these institutions espouse the view of the newspapers we are talking about today. The question is, why there is no critical response," Humanitarian Law Centre Director Natasa Kandic said today. Kandic was speaking at a panel discussion on recent attacks on people of Croat ethnicity and historian Branka Prpa in Belgrade tabloid Internacional. Speaking on behalf the Civil Initiative, which organised the forum, Miljenko Dereta described the daily's writing as "just one more word of warning". "There is an endless steeplechase here, whoever gets over Balkan, gets caught by Kurir and if anyone clears Kurir, they end up in Nacional. If you manage to avoid all of them, NIN blocks your way, to spice the whole thing up in a polite and Democratic Party of Serbia-like manner," said Dereta. "Everything seems like it was at the beginning of the 1990s, the wave of patriotism, a concept which obviously hasn't died in Serbia. All the similarities to what happened before the murder of Slavko Curuvija are intended. The appearance of threats and lists for execution is also intended," he added. Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco, the president of the Committee of Human Rights Lawyers, spoke about the danger of "orchestrated journalism, underground or services pamphlets which are always the same in Serbia. "It's impossible to protect Branka Prpa. Anyone who reads Internacional knows that it always ends up with a call for a lynching. The editors of newspapers prod their readers with ethnic identity, hoping they'll buy into it," said Kovacevic-Vuco. Prpa herself told the discussion that what is needed is a state in which it is not necessary to count dead friends. "We live in a country which has lost its ethical standards. In just the way the former Yugoslavia ceased to exist, Serbia and its people can fade away if the institutions responsible don't try to halt the acceleration of anarchy and chaos," said Prpa.