Security of the Journalists

THE ASSASSIN'S TARGET

AIM Banja Luka, November 22, 1999

The planting of a bomb under the car of Zeljko Kopanja, the founder, director and editor-in-chief of the "Independent Paper" on October 22 this year, made the journalists in the Republic of Srpska think so hard that they met in the mid November at a round-table in Banja Luka to talk about their own safety. The Independent Association of Journalists of the Republic of Srpska, as the organizer of this gathering, wanted to rally journalists from Croatia, Yugoslavia and B&H at the same round table. It invited renown journalistic authors who have ample experience with persecutions and attacks. Unfortunately, the only ones who attended were Senad Pecanin, editor of the Sarajevo magazine "Dani" (Days) and Borka Rudic, Secretary of the Union of Professional Journalists from Sarajevo.

The attempt on Kopanja's life and the Belgrade murder of Slavko Curuvija, owner of the "Dnevni Telegraf" (Daily Telegraph) early this year show that journalists are becoming a very interesting target in the emerging democracies. Rober Mennar, the first man of "Reporters without Frontiers", came to Banja Luka to convey a warning: "In the last ten years, some 500 journalists have been killed all over the world, and in 90 percent of the cases their murderer has not been discovered as the authorities did not want them to be identified".

The Banja Luka journalists also invited representatives of the authorities to this gathering. Ministers of Information and Justice did not respond to the invitation, but two representatives of the police did. They expressed full understanding for journalists' concern and promised to do everything so that the perpetrators and those who had ordered the attack on Kopanja would be soon identified. However, they reproached the journalists for not fully cooperating with the police and for failing to report all the threats they receive.

Many journalists thought that the police was inefficient as it did not present a single reliable fact from its investigation of the attack on Kopanja to the public. Sinisa Karan, chief of section of the Criminal Police of the RS Ministry of the Interior (MUP) said that the police had conducted over 180 informative interviews and undertaken a large number of investigatory measures. Even Zeljko Kopanja's damaged car was sent to Scotland Yard for expertise.

Unexpectedly, Zeljko Kopanja appeared in a wheelchair at the Banja Luka gathering in order to, as he put it, thank his journalistic family for the support they have given him. "I absolutely do not trust the police. I think that they are not capable of and avoid detecting my assassins", said Kopanja in his short address.

Sredoje Novic, Minister of the Police, submitted an information to the RS Parliament on Kopanja's case in which he repeated that the police "is intensively searching for perpetrators". He did not give one single fact, except that a preliminary report on the expertise performed on the damaged car has arrived from London "and that it will not be presented to the public in the interest of further investigation".

Miodrag Zivanovic, director of "Novi Prelom" (The New Layout), thought that the safety of journalists should not be the concern of the ministers of police, justice or information. "They cannot protect us, and the fact that only this year 40 attacks were made on journalists only corroborates this", said Zivanovic. Chief of the RS Criminal Police tried to prove him wrong by saying that there were only seven reported attacks on journalists and that all of them have been resolved.

However, a brief history of terrorist attacks on journalists shows that their professional safety is by no means optimistic. Two years ago in Doboj, editorial offices of a private weekly "Alternativa" were totally demolished. That happened at the time when Biljana Plavsic dissolved the RS Parliament. At that same time, explosive was planted twice under the car of the editor-in-chief of the "Srpski Glas" (The Serbian Voice) while perpetrators remained unknown in both cases to this very day.

Early this March in Zvornik explosive was thrown on the editorial offices of "Osvit" (The Daybreak). All the furniture and equipment were destroyed. That same day, in Zvornik, followers of the Serbian Radical Party were demonstrating against the decision of the High Representative on the removal of Nikola Poplasen, also President of the Serbian Radical Party, from the office of the President of the Republic of Srpska. No one was accused for this terrorist attack either. Recently, journalist Mirko Srdic from Doboj was beaten up by the local Mayor but there was no reaction to nor investigation into this case.

How can journalists protect themselves? "We cannot organize some kind of our own guard or guard our own offices. Even if we could, who could work under such conditions", asked Senad Pecanin, editor-in-chief of "Days". He thinks that "professionalism is journalists' best protection".

According to one of the participants in the work of the Banja Luka round-table on the safety of journalists, journalists all over former Yugoslavia, including the Republic of Srpska, are still considered crucial factors of political life, while the media are an exclusive tool for the propaganda of the authorities, and not some kind of business or a means of reaching the public. "Our society is illiterate in democracy and there are still those who think that they can change something by attacking journalists. That is why the best protection would be for journalists to continue to work hard and thus show that terrorism can change nothing", said Predrag Bajevic, chief of the Office of the Independent Commission for Media in Banja Luka.

Is the key to the protection of journalists in the hands of the judiciary? Sinisa Karan from the police, said that "this wouldn't be happening had the judiciary been more efficient and penalizing". Perica Vucinic, director of the Banja Luka magazine "Reporter" thought that "had our judiciary been as independent and free as our journalism, this country would have been much better off".

Borka Rudic reproached journalists for the lack of solidarity: "It is absurd that the Association of Journalists of B&H did not react to the attempt made on Kopanja's life, while the Izetbegovic's SDA, which is constantly attacking journalists, issued a statement".

From the round-table, journalists sent a message to the public: "We are affected, we are concerned. But, we are not afraid. We have no right to be because of the future of our country, as well as because of what has happened to our Zeljko".

Dejan Novakovic

(AIM)