J.B. on Tue, 6 Apr 1999 23:59:59 -0800 |
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Re: Syndicate: RADIO B92 CLOSED DOWN AND SEALED OFF |
Dear v and all: It's very interesting to read of Nikacevic's background (the new court-appointed "Director" of Radio B92.) This type of hollow opportunist always seems to be lurking and ready to exploit situations where people wish to accept a diet of lies. I've just checked, and evidently the official B92 site has been shut down. The following article is from the HELPB92 site http://helpb92.xs4all.nl which also has a statement and interview with Sasa Mirkovic, the authentic Director of B92. --J. Sound of B92 Banned Friday April 2, 09.00 CET Government officials have shut down radio B92 - silencing the last independent voice in Serbia. In the early hours of Friday morning, April 2, police officers sealed the station's offices, and ordered all staff to cease work and leave the premises immediately. A court official accompanied the police. He delivered a decision from the government-controlled Council of Youth to the station's manager of 6 years - Sasa Mirkovic - that he had been dismissed. The Council of Youth replaced Sasa Mirkovic with Aleksandar Nikacevic, thus changing the independent management of the station. B92 has been the only source of alternative information in and from Serbia since the start of NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia 10 days ago. Although a ban on the station's transmitter in the morning of the first day of airstrikes - Wednesday March 24 - took the station off the air, B92 has continued to broadcast news and information via the Internet and satellite. On the same day as Federal Telecommunications' officials seized the station's transmitter police officers also detained the station's chief editor - Veran Matic. He was released unharmed and without explanation eight hours later. Since the transmission ban on B92 the station has been policed and has been operating under severe restrictions. The ban on B92 is the latest in a series of crackdowns on free media in the past week. The wave of media repression has resulted in the closure of a large number of members of the B92-led independent broadcasting network - ANEM, and restrictions on the independent press. The prominent Albanian-language newspaper and radio station Koha ditore was also closed down last week, as were all other independent media in Kosovo, including Radio 21. Since the launch of B92 news broadcasts on the web last Wednesday its site has had some 15 million visitors. Support sites such as http://helpb92.xs4all.nl report 16,000 visitors per day. Local radio stations across Europe have been re-broadcasting b92's audio signal from the Internet. B92 is the leading independent broadcaster in Yugoslavia, and established the national re-broadcasting network of 35 radio and 18 television stations - ANEM - in 1996. The station was due to celebrate its 10th anniversary this May. ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- information: http://www.v2.nl/east/ mail archive: http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/current/ to unsubscribe send a message to <syndicate-request@aec.at> with the message in the body: unsubscribe your@email.adress