20. 01. 2005

CONVICTED TWICE OVER ONE ARTICLE

KIKINDA, January 20, 2005 – The Kikinda Municipal Court has upheld a complaint by Belgrade historian Jovan Pejin against the public media company Information Centre Kikinda and Zeljko Bodrozic, editor of weekly Kikindske, and ordered payment of 120,000 dinars (about 1,250 euros) in court costs. Pejin, a former director of Serbia’s state archives, laid the complaint against Bodrozic over an article published in Kikindske on October 3, 2004, under the headline “Fascist speaking”. The article discussed a TV Novi Sad program, Unbuttoned, in which Pejin appeared as a guest to discuss his book “Autonomous Vojvodina – a nightmare for the Serbian people”. Bodrozic has already been convicted a previous time by a court in Zrenjanin for the same article. On that occasion he was ordered to pay 15,000 dinars in damages for libel and insult and 20,000 dinars in court costs. He told Belgrade daily Danas that neither of the courts had allowed him to present evidence in the form of articles by Pejin from the Kikinda newspaper “Komuna” which liberally insulted advocates of autonomy, the Otpor movement and other opponents of the Milosevic regime.