THEY ARE PRESSING, BUT IT WON'T GIVE IN
Serbia: The Media After Borba, it's Studio B's Turn
AIM, BEOGRAD, February 10, 1995
The popular radio and even more popular TV Studio B have come under the attack of the authorities in the offensive they have launched against the media which are independent from the state. The authorities did not waver even after they were glaringly discredited while trying to subjugate the independent daily Borba, the outcome of which are two dailies with similar names - the state Borba, called "Brcin's Borba" (after the compulsory administrator, the Federal Minister of Information, Mr.Brcin) and Our Borba, which retained most of the old editorial office (called the "Streetwalker" because during the authorities' offensive against this paper it was for some time sold exclusively "on the street").
Just like in the case of Borba, the authorities tried to present this as their exclusive endeavour to protect state property, implementing a law on the revision of privatization, which was last summer proposed by the opposition Democratic Party ("Djindjic's law" as it is called). It is indicative that the Agency for Capital Valuation has bypassed 1,400 unresolved complaints, overlooked a number of rather dubious privatization cases and decided to take on precisely the independent media. On February 6, the Republican Agency cancelled the transformation of the Kragujevac independent weekly Svetlost (The Light) into a shareholding company.
THE CONVEYOR BELT
Prior to the above law, the authorities had subjugated the independent Radio Pancevo (the record strike of the editorial staff) and the paper Pancevac (just like in the case of Borba, the consequence is the start of a paper New Pancevac), tried to stifle Radio Smederevo, this summer pressures were exerted on the weekly NIN, the Director of TV Politika has been relieved of office, etc. At one time pressure was also exerted on the Soros Foundation to stop its support to the independent media... The most precise diagnosis is that that offensive has never stopped. During 1991 and 1992 hundreds of journalists from the state media lost their jobs because they opposed the then prevailing war mongering editorial policy. A number of foreign journalists was expelled from FR Yugoslavia. On the other hand, the fight between David and Goliath has been going on since June 1990, through March 1991, the demonstrations in 1992, strikes in Radio Television Serbia, in Politika, Pancevac, etc.
THE GUARDIANS OF OLD
The latest events are only a detail of a longer story. That detail maybe points to the growing ambitions of the communist part of the Serbian political spectrum which is personified in Dr.Mirjana Markovic, to inaugurate the so called "third road", some sort of a new corporative neo-dogmatism. In her diary, which the Belgrade diplomats call a "horoscope", she recently announced that it would soon be known who financed the establishment of, as she wrote, the "so called independent media and the so called democratic parties" in eastern countries, so as to make their colonization easier. Actually, she renewed the old theories on a special war, on which the regime profited in the seventies.
Many of the ideological guardians from that period, like the RTS journalist Dusan Cukic, President of the regime Asociation of Journalists or Ratomir Vico, the Serbian Minister of Information, are doing the old job now in the same style - both have recently accused the independent media of anti-state activities, treason, assistance to those for whom Serbia is still not small enough... Apart from deleting enterprises established long ago from the Court Register, the discriminatory policy of the authorities also includes economic stifling. The government has monopoly over the production of newsprint and it determines the priorities in its distribution. In only one month printing houses informed the independent weekly Vreme three times at the last moment to have run out of newsprint for its printing. Distribution networks, which are state owned, have not yet fully agreed to distribute Nasa Borba.
THE ABUSED TIME-OUT
However, the motives of the authorities for intensifying a large scale offensive against the independent media at this moment are not quite clear. The paradox is that after Milosevic's conflict with the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadzic, the independent media in Serbia generally lowered the level of their criticism of Slobodan Milosevic, giving him a time-out to get out of the war. The regime used this respite for launching an offensive against embarassing witnesses. The authorities, known for their choice of unsubtle methods, are now trying to find a legal form, applying the worst of all possible legal means - retroactivity.
"THE FOUNDER'S RIGHTS" AND "TPD"
On February 8, the Republican Agency for Capital Valuation, invoking the Law on the Conditions and Procedure of Transforming Social Property into other Forms of Property, passed a decree annulling the decision of the Workers' Council of Studio B from 1991, i.e. three years ago, on the transformation of that enterprise into a shareholding company. In the rationale, the Agency claims that the Assembly of the City of Belgrade "never renounced the founding rights" which it had taken over in 1972. As the founder, it was supposed to give its consent to the transformation, but it claims that it was never asked to do that. The Agency also states that investments made by the founder, i.e. the Municipal Assembly, are not registered in Studio B's account books. As for the ownership structure, private capital accounts for 86.6 percent and social capital for 13.4 percent. The Agency now claims to have discovered that the figures submitted by Studio B in the last three years were incorrect, since an "inspection of the inventory of equipment" shows that it includes means of general public interest, as well as state owned resources.
As it seems, resources from the budget for Total People's Defence (TPD) are in question - vehicles and generators for broadcasting under the war conditions, which Studio B doesn't even use, nor considers its property and is willing to return. "You are welcome to it. Luckily, we did not need it" says Dragan Kojadinovic, Studio B Director. On that basis, but also on the basis of the Law on Amending the Law on the Procedure of Transformation of Social Property into other Forms of Property ("Djindic's Law", note of the author), "on the initiative of the founder, the Agency re-examined" the privatization process in Studio B and, on that occasion, discovered that Studio B did not "extract", as the explanation says, "resources of the socio-political community" on the basis of which it has the right to participate in the management and share in the profits, while "the social property has also been detracted from" by discounts on internal shares which were granted to 86 buyers.
YES, YES, YES - BUT ACTUALLY, NO
According to Dragan Kojadinovic, Director of Studio B, carried by the independent agency Beta, Studio B asked the Agency, four times so far, to assess whether the transformation had been carried out properly, but till now the Agency had no objections. "In June last year, a delegate question in the Serbian Parliament, concerning the ownership of Studio B, was answered, by that same Agency, that the ownership of Studio B was not disputable, that the transformation had been carried out according to the law in force and that there were no problems there".
Kojadinovic thinks that he was cheated by the Municipal Assembly, at whose demand the decision on the transformation of Studio B was annulled. Namely, Studio B and the Belgrade authorities recently agreed on the creation of the Belgrade Information Center. That was to be a way of satisfying the ambitions of the Belgrade Assembly to have its own medium. After that, a month and a half ago, the court bailiff suddenly decided against the sealing of Studio B equipment, till the dispute was resolved, while two months ago the Belgrade Lord Mayor publicly stated that he would stick to the agreement reached with the Studio B management. It seemed that the "conquering" of the independent Radio TV station was, at least for a while, postponed. Now, Kojadinovic has announced legal action before the Supreme Court of Serbia, although he believes that the "court will work under political pressure and pass a political decision which suits the ruling political parties".
THE SEAL OF THE TIMES
Similar action was taken in the case of the weekly Svetlost from Kragujevac, a paper which was the first among all papers in Serbia to declare in 1990 its party neutrality and consistently to stick to it. At the initiative of the Assembly of the city of Kragujevac, in a renewed process the Agency revoked a certificate, issued on January 11 this year, on the transformation of the socially owned enterprise "Svetlost" into a mixed shareholding company. The Assembly of Kragujevac requested that the procedure of issuing shares be renewed because, as it claims, the enterprise "Svetlost", created by the division of the social enterprise into the public enterprise "Radio Kragujevac" (pro-regime) and the "Svetlost" (independent) did not accept the division of assets and shares so that "social capital could not be assessed with certainty".
The editor-in-chief of Svetlost, Miroslav Jovanovic, told the agency Beta than in January the firm "Svetlost" was registered in the Economic Court in Kragujevac, and that the editorial office had, only when the decision was issued, learned that the Municipal Assembly had filed an objection. Previously, the representatives of the Assembly of the town of Kragujevac had skillfully avoided meeting with the editorial office of Svetlost. After the decision of the Supreme Court of Serbia it remains to be seen whether the "Svetlost shareholding company" will, like Borba, be struck out of the Register.
THE LAST RETREAT
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HOPS) assessed on February 9, that the decision on revoking the ownership transformation of Studio B was "another in a series of attacks on the freedoms and rights of citizens in Serbia, with far-reaching consequences". The Helsinki Committee, in a statement signed by Vladan Vasilijevic, also says that "courts are only a screen hiding the personal arbitrariness of power holders", and that they represent an "instrument of the rule of terror". The intervention of the Agency which cancels even recently brought court decisions is perhaps a sign that there are two different streams at work in the SPS, one more liberal and the other more dogmatic.
Viewed from the outside, the authorities had no reason for being so nervous and it is probably a result of internal tensions in the SPS. Studio B looks like the last retreat of the Serbian opposition which has, in the last four years, invested much energy in defending the freedom of the media and gradually lost everything it had acquired, wasting itself on inter-party conflicts. The Kragujevac leaders of the Serbian Revival Movement (SPO), the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the Democratic Party (DP), informed on January 31, that they would, if the authorities continued their attacks on the independent weekly Svetlost, react much more decisively than Belgrade parties in connection with Borba, which in the words of the new SPO President for Kragujevac, Radojica Savkovic, deserves much greater support.
If in the case of Borba the opposition protested mildly and unconvincingly, in the case of Studio B it started awakening from lethargy. The Serbian Liberal Party (SLS), stated with regret on February 8, that the Agency had, after four years, on February 2, 1995 cancelled the decision on the inscription of the shareholding company Studio B in the Court Register, which was brought on April 16, 1991. The second date is interesting - it is the time of "March 1991 of which the opposition is proud, because it is practically the only period when the authorities had to give way under its pressure". The atmosphere was again heated on the other side of the "barricade" - the SLS statement says that the "dictatorship regime of Slobodan Milosevic wishes to silence the few remaining witnesses of its forcible and arbitrary politics", and calls on all political parties, organizations, cultural and public workers, who have the cause of democracy at heart, to stand up in defence of Studio B, the only independent TV station in Serbia.
The Serbian Revival Movement (SPO) invited the parliamentary opposition parties, the United Trade Union "Nezavisnost", the Independent Trade Union of Farmers of Serbia, the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, the independent media and universities in Serbia to jointly organize a protest meeting against "one-mindedness in Serbia". SPO President, Vuk Draskovic, who, after Milosevic's turnabout in Bosnia, in sign of solidarity reduced pressure on him, sacrificing parts of his party to that support of the peace option, is now giving signs that on the domestic scene his patience has run out - he stated that democratic forces in Serbia should no longer deceive themselves that things can be won only in Parliament and that they should again revert to non-parliamentary forms of struggle also. According to Draskovic "all the freedoms we have won so far by non-parliamentary means are being, one by one, trampled on". The SPO statement says that "we are the witnesses of the efforts to turn the state into the estate of the red coalition of the League of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia (SK-PJ) and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS)" and that "SK -PJ and SPS command almost all the economic and financial levers of the state, the police, army, virtually all cultural institutions and the humanitarian aid we receive from the world".
By raising its voice the opposition is, in the case of the independent media, actually trying to measure the time remaining till "March 9". "The red coalition" is a new phrase, but reminds of the label "the red gang", used on March 9, 1991. Scepticism notwithstanding, exciting surprises in Belgrade should, nevertheless, not be ruled out.
Milan Milosevic