Zarana Papic on Fri, 30 Apr 1999 06:34:40 +0200 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Syndicate: [Fwd: [Fwd: IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 26]] |
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Fwd: IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 26] Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 14:43:53 +0200 From: Zarana Papic <zpapic@EUnet.yu> To: Zarana PAPIC <zpapic@f.bg.ac.yu> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 26 Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 10:11:22 +0100 From: "Tony Borden" <tony@iwpr.net> Reply-To: listmanagers@iwpr.net To: info@iwpr.net WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 26, 29 April 1999 SESELJ'S REVENGE. Draskovic was a PR figure for the West, to try to soften the most radical aspects of the Belgrade regime. Now the fig leaf is off. THE TELEVISION WAR. A central pillar of the regime's power had been shaken, and the battle over public information has begun to claim many victims. BCR ARCHIVE. IWPR's Website <www.iwpr.net> now hosts a search engine to access the entire archive of 100 recent articles covering all aspects of the Balkan crisis, written by leading independent journalists and analysts from the region. ***************************************************** IWPR's network of leading correspondents in the region provide inside analysis of the events and issues driving crises in the Balkans. The reports are available on the Web in English, Serbian and Albanian; English-language reports are also available via e-mail. For syndication information, contact Anthony Borden <tony@iwpr.net>. The project is supported by the European Commission, Press Now and the Carnegie Corporation. *** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *** To subscribe to this service, send an e-mail to <majordomo@iwpr.org.uk>; in the body of the email write the message <subscribe balkan-reports>. To unsubscribe, write <unsubscribe balkan-reports>, Alternatively, contact Duncan Furey directly for subscription assistance at <duncan@iwpr.org.uk>. For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's Website: <www.iwpr.net>. Editor: Anthony Borden. Assistant Editing: Christopher Bennett, Alan Davis. Internet Editor: Rohan Jayasekera. Translation by Alban Mitrushi. "Balkan Crisis Report" is produced under IWPR's Balkan Crisis Information Project. The project seeks to contribute to regional and international understanding of the regional crisis and prospects for resolution. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based independent non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change. Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom Tel: (44 171) 713 7130; Fax: (44 171) 713 7140 E-mail:info@iwpr.org.uk; Web: www.iwpr.net The opinions expressed in "Balkan Crisis Report" are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. Copyright (C) 1999 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting <www.iwpr.net>. ************************************************* SESELJ'S REVENGE Draskovic was a PR figure for the West, to try to soften the most radical aspects of the Belgrade regime. Now the fig leaf is off. By a correspondent in Belgrade Vuk Draskovic's appointment this past January as deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia fed his overstated ambition and tickled his Serbian romanticism. But to President Slobodan Milosevic and the key parties in the governing coalition, the purpose was more concrete, and he has been sacked because this purpose became moot. Draskovic, a firm if chaotic nationalist, had led the major street demonstrations against the regime two years earlier and was generally welcomed in the West. He was therefore a useful figure to try to persuade the Western powers that Belgrade was serious about its offers for political autonomy for the Kosovo Albanians (without NATO troops). After several tough steps by the government--such as adopting a draconian Information Law and fuelling growing tensions between Milosevic and Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic--Draskovic's task was to ease international pressure. As a symbol of the former "nationalist opposition," Draskovic's co-option into a position of power effectively left Serbia without any opposition, and appeared to signal his acceptance of the regime's policy in Kosovo. With the start of the NATO bombing, Draskovic assumed an almost constant presence on CNN, the BBC and other international media, trumpeting Belgrade's line that Albanians were fleeing Kosovo because of the bombing, and otherwise wearing down listeners with his own bombardment of obfuscations and absurdities. Now, at least figuratively, he is tossed back out on the streets. On Wednesday, April 28, Yugoslav Prime Minister and Milosevic loyalist Momir Bulatovic dismissed Draskovic-reportedly because of pressure from Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party and the Yugoslav United Left whose chief, Mira Markovic, is Milosevic's wife. Jealousies over the extent of his public role may have played a part, as Draskovic had been receiving so much attention, especially abroad. But more importantly, with the regime at war, radical Serbia is ascendant, and it sees no purpose in holding out even the appearance of an opening to the West. The implications are severe. Draskovic may have been positioning himself for a role as a potential partner with the West after the war. But any early prospects of a moderate course are extremely low. As Seselj stated Tuesday, "National unity in Serbia cannot be slammed by small politicians trying to cooperate with the aggressor and offering themselves to NATO as potential allies." One of the key points in Draskovic's statements over his own Studio B television in recent days was that the UN Security Council would decide the composition of a UN forces in Kosovo. Now, opposition to any kind of international troops in the province will only be hardened. Serbia will not agree to anything. The Serbian Information Ministry, which is controlled by Seselj, has issued a ban on broadcasting any statements from Draskovic or his Serbian Renewal Party. The other key point made by Draskovic in his televised statements was that Yugoslavia had to face the fact that it could not defeat NATO. Statements critical of the regime by Vuk Obradovic, leader of the Socialist Democratic Party and a former general, were even censored from international broadcasts. This is the usual way of solving problems in Serbia: shoot the messenger. The correspondent is an independent journalist in Belgrade. THE TELEVISION WAR A central pillar of the regime's power had been shaken, and the battle over public information has begun to claim many victims. By correspondents in Belgrade Five weeks of air strikes have changed the media order in a country where, for ten years, the state has held the sovereign right to control television truth. Now the struggle over television in Yugoslavia has become synonymous with the fight for the survival of the regime. After repeated attacks against Radio Television Serbia (RTS), the majority of Serbia's population is unable to watch RTS channels. The destruction of the RTS building in the centre of Belgrade, which may have claimed more than 20 victims with many more wounded, and the bombing a few days earlier of the 20-plus storey office building in New Belgrade where transmitters of other TV channels close to the regime were situated, has forced Belgrade to take urgent steps to ensure that the government and its message stays on the air. On Monday, April 26, Minister for Information Aleksandar Vucic, a member of the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, called an urgent meeting of the editors-in-chief of private television stations and asked them to take over the broadcast of RTS programmes, in particular the vital news programmes Dnevnik 2 and Dnevnik 3. Studio B, effectively owned by Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement, also had to comply with this request. This meeting took place only a day after Draskovic's controversial interview on Studio B. A central part of these remarks were Draskovic's criticism of state television for hiding the truth about the current military situation, as well as for the viciousness of the vocabulary used towards the West. He also supported international troops in Kosovo. In short, he said everything that normal Serbs are apt to say once they are in the privacy of their own homes. And that was the real danger. Even though Draskovic himself has parroted the party line throughout the bombing campaign, it seems he could no longer support the unsupportable. The clampdown on all major independent media and the imposition of war-time censorship on the rest has ensured full state control of the flow of information. The bulk of the Serbian population has not seen a single picture of Albanian refugees nor any news about atrocities in Kosovo. In recent days, the vocabulary of RTS has become even more radical, describing NATO leaders as "bloodsuckers", "fascists", "paedophiles", "imbeciles", "idiots", "morons" or "retards". According to RTS news, NATO is crushed, Serbia's peace-loving politics have won, America will pay, and Europe is on her knees. Serbia is defending the planet from fascists, and has saved its people from Western criminals--and cloned sheep (the current epithet for US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright). Everyone must show their gratitude towards Milosevic for taking them into the new millennium. To break with this propaganda is to break with the regime. As the Draskovic interview became the key story--Ministry of Information censors banned Danas daily from publishing it, while Studio B re-ran it five times--the regime took over the broadcasts of private TV stations. Currently, the information programmes of RTS are re-transmitted by TV Palma, TV BK, TV Art, TV Politika, as well as TV Studio B. With Draskovic's sacking, the moderate course has firmly lost the internal war in Serbia, and it can be expected that Studio B will be fully taken over by the government. The ever-more ruthless propaganda suggests that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is prepared to accept numerous civilian casualties in order to prove himself absolute ruler of Serbia. Unofficial sources in Belgrade suggest that the government took a decision to make sure that lives were directly put at risk over the struggle for the media. Reports have circulated that workers at the RTS building were blackmailed and threatened with sacking if they refused to work the night time, graveyard shifts. In the days preceding the NATO bombing, it was evident that the building in Aberdareva Street was a NATO target, and there seemed little doubt that it was going to be hit. If these speculations are true, the implication is that the regime is complicit in these deaths. A week before the bombing, all of its employees had gathered on the street and formed a human chain around it. One of the people in the chain was the Serbian Minister of Culture Zeljko Simic. Three days before the attack, the CNN crew moved from the building to work from the Hyatt Hotel. Twelve hours before the attack, members of the state media union organized a protest in front of the building, with banners declaring: "Long live RTS". The rally marked the first public demonstration in support of Radio Television Serbia--the heart of the regime which, for a decade, has advertised ethnic cleansing and extreme nationalism, orchestrating hate-campaigns against Slovene, Croats, Muslims and, finally, Albanians. Now, after the attack, the regime stresses that the people in the building were mobilised at a time of war and were doing their patriotic duty. The killings, Belgrade argues, demonstrate the evil of NATO. "Criminal NATO aircraft targeted the building of Radio Television Serbia at 2.06 AM on Friday April 23, while a news programme was being broadcast, trying to kill the truth about their monstrous bombardments of our country," RTS declared several hours later, when it returned on air via other transmitters. "NATO is naive to think it can destroy the truth by bombing," the editor of Vecernje Novosti, Serbia's biggest selling daily, wrote shortly afterwards. A special weekend edition of the pro-regime newspaper Politika declared: "Stupidly identifying the state TV as a source of political power, the criminals in Brussels at the NATO headquarters thought they could destroy our political leadership." Yet a central pillar of the regime's power has been shaken, and the battle over public information has begun to claim many victims. The contributors to this report are independent journalists from Belgrade. IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 26 -- ### -- ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress