Serbian Regime Bans Work of the Team of Correspondents of Radio Free Europe

Resurrection of the "Cold War"

AIM Podgorica, July 27, 2000 (By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

In Hungarian "social critical" films shot in the period of Kadar's "gulasch communism", as well as Polish films shot before the state of war, in their homes people were listening to the program of Radio Free Europe: that used to be one of the important elements of convincing "realism" of these films: if you wanted to present a home of a typical Eastern European citizen from the time of the Cold War, Radio Free Europe (along with Radio London, Paris, Washington...) was the inevitable part of a home inventory.

The Cold War ended with the victory of the party which did not have to keep its citizens in its "paradise" with barbed wire, and the citizens of a large majority of Eastern European nowadays have their own media which are freely doing what while they were "on the wrong side of the iron curtain" was possible to say only abroad if you were an emigrant, and listen to only secretly and in privacy of homes.

Serbian regime under leadership of Slobodan Milosevic has never gotten over the "shameful" fall of the Berlin Wall and abolishment of "bipolarity" of the world which was so dear to it, and it has never given up on its specific mutation of cold-war rhetoric: the only difference is that "class and ideological" demagogy was replaced by "patriotic". That is why it is no wonder that a bizarre precedent has happened in Serbia which is unthinkable in any other country: work of the correspondents' bureau of Radio Free Europe has been banned! This reminded certain cynics of the famous anecdote when a communist official from Kosovo, wishing to prevent leaking of information on the rebellion of the Albanians in 1981 at any cost, shouted "Stop Reuters". It took great efforts to explain to him that there was no communist party committee in Reuters which would stop the news as the prominent Comrade wished...

Although undoubtedly weird, the news on the ban of work of RFE is neither harmless nor funny. The chronology of the development is as follows: the crew of correspondents of Radio Free Europe which has for some time worked in Belgrade without a formal permit, submitted a demand to be registered by the Federal Ministry of Information; such demands are a routine matter of procedure in democratic countries, because it does not even cross the minds of the authorities to prevent or aggravate the work of media, either local or foreign. However, the demand of RFE correspondents was expressly and vehemently turned down, and federal minister of information Goran Matic sent his reply in form of a letter to Nenad Pejic, director of the program in South Slavic languages in RFE centre in Prague. In this letter - from which a careful and politically sensitive reader easily gathers that Mr. Matic has not been informed yet about the death of Leonid Brezhnev - the federal minister concludes, among other, that "correspondents of Free Europe have the sole task, as exponents of American official policy, to promote its colonial objectives, using for it the means contrary to principles of objective informing, trying to influence the public in Yugoslavia with filthy propaganda for the sake of achievement of its goals". After such a profound insight into the essence of subversive actions of RFE, Goran Matic pronounces certain warnings, not to say threats: "all possible activities of these correspondents shall be considered illegal and contrary the law, and against those who might carry out this activity for this media without the permit measures prescribed by law shall be taken".

Mr. Matic's threat is subtle in the best of JUL's style, more than explicit and clear; in view of the fact that apart from the journalists and technicians of the Belgrade staff of Radio Free Europe an impressive number of regular correspondents from almost all large and small towns of Serbia, from Subotica to Pirot carry out this activity for this station "without a permit" , one can say that Mr. Minister has addressed this threat to a large number of members of the journalistic profession. What remains vague is what measures prescribed by law Mr. Matic is writing about, and what law he drew them out of. In a country in which crooks, pickpockets, war and peace criminals of enormous dimensions are walking freely, getting rich and boasting, appearing in vulgar TV programs and half publicly keeping company with members of political establishment, it is truly eccentric to threaten with "legal measures" the people who are doing their job and whose only means for work are words spoken in public.

The empty “anti-imperialistic” rhetoric of the conceited hero of the “struggle against colonialism” – Montenegrins have a saying for such phenomena “An ox's head is too much for the cat” – serve only as a frail but pompous cover-up for real intentions and motives of the regime. A few months ago the regime launched a resolute offensive against independent media, especially the electronic ones, because it is afraid of their influence the most. What Milosevic and his associates seem to be especially keen on seems to be depriving Belgrade of information: RTV Studio B has been confiscated, Radio B2-92 was shut along with it, Radio Pancevo was without any legal foundation deprived of its transmitter which enabled it to be heard in the whole territory of Belgrade, and only Radio Index (for the time being?) has survived this campaign, at the cost of certain temporary changes in the program. Independent radio and TV stations inside Serbia, linked in the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), are still operating, but the regime is preparing their liquidation too as part of the operation of snatching away local power from the opposition – when stations controlled by municipal administrations are concerned – and by depriving them of channels and permits for broadcasting, when privately-owned stations are concerned. Under this pretext some of the stations have already been shut down.

Federal and local elections are approaching although at this moment it is extremely vague what they are going to be like considering the situation of total confusion and chaos Milosevic has created by changing the Constitution and election rules overnight. The regime has never stood worse in the electorate, and that is why not even this legal violence carefully created in order to ensure new posts and seats to Milosevic and the ruling parties with no “unpleasant surprises” – does not enable them peaceful dreams. For this reason, absolute control of influential media is very important: if necessary – and it will be – to “help” Milosevic a little, it would be best if nobody learns about it The last thing this ballot-stealing regime (as proved and confirmed by Gonzales' commission) would wish is some kind of a re-make of 1996 citizens' rebellion when only feebleness and “losers' mentality” of the opposition leaders saved him from a shameful fall.

If, therefore, the domestic media scene has mostly been “put into order” already, all the regime still has to do is ensure that nobody from abroad meddles with its property. In the past year or two, but especially since the last year's bombing when it was impossible to hear anything that made any sense in domestic media, a few foreign radio stations, primarily Radio Free Europe reached an enviable popularity among the public in Serbia, which had not shared this habits with Eastern European listeners, because their experience from the time of the Cold War is quite different. RFE has become an influential media all over Serbia, especially because in half of the country it is possible to listen to it via commercial FM waves since last year. To make things even more unpleasant, the international community is seriously considering the possibility of establishing a “media ring around Serbia”, a network of transmitters which would enable whole of Serbia to see and hear what its regime is persistently sweeping under the carpet. Of course, the simplest way to neutralise this threat was to enable normal work of all independent media, because in that case there would be no need for them; but had the regime been capable of thinking pragmatically like this, it would not have been what it is: a grotesque historical petrification, the last orphan of the Cold War.

This is a potentially dangerous problem for the regime like everything else it does not control: transmitters of these stations are outside this country so it is impossible to shut them down; their editors are somewhere in Prague, Paris and London, so they cannot be replaced or arrested; their journalists do not work for the regime, so the regime cannot sack them. So the regime resorted to the only thing it could do: ban the work of their correspondents and unambiguously threaten all those who are physically accessible. This can, of course, create big problems to certain people, but not to the media itself except to additionally increase their rating: it is an established fact in marketing that every, even “negative” advertisement is welcome therefore, there can be no “stopping of Reuters”, the only result is that the unhappy minister is another hero of malicious jokes, this favourite defensive weapon of all Eastern Europeans living under repression (remember Radio-Erevan).

In the glorious Hungarian film on Stalinism, “Key Witness” by Peter Bacso, the hero every now and then ends up in prison because of most fantastic accusations, and the prosecutor significantly tells him every time: “The international situation is intensifying” It seems that this burlesque sentence would suit Milosevic's ministers just fine: for them, too, the international, but also the domestic situation, is intensifying, and with it the quantity of repression, demagogy and all forms of political irrationality. Things have been brought to such a level of absurdity that life is actually starting to imitate the film. And this will go on until the whole structure of repressive and autocratic system does not collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. We all know how it ended in Hungary. Hopefully there is still a chance that Serbia will also go this way, which is certainly less painful than that of its eastern neighbour, for instance. In the meantime, maybe somebody in Belgrade will make a film the heroes of which will begin their day sitting by a crackling transistor radio from which it will be heard: “This is Radio Free Europe”

Teofil Pancic (AIM)