Serbian Regime’s Threats Imperil Lives of Independent Journalists

Vojislav Seselj, a paramilitary commander who rose to deputy prime minister of Serbia, once pulled a handgun in the lobby of the parliament building and pointed it at a photographer.

Such extreme behavior was all part of a steady harangue from Seselj over the years, so Serbian journalists were hard to rattle--until he took aim at them again last week. Three days after an assassin killed Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic, Seselj accused local journalists in the independent media, partly supported by Western aid, of murder.

Calling the journalists “worse than any criminals,” the leader of the widely popular Serbian Radical Party warned that they would suffer “the worst possible” consequences.

In Serbia, where the list of political assassinations and underworld murders grows almost by the week, local journalists have joined those watching their backs. Seselj is not considered a man prone to making idle threats.

President Lashes Out at His Opposition

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Seselj ally, stirred fears again Thursday when he spoke of a continuing war against Yugoslavia, a battle that he said is being supported from within.

The “only unburied axes,” Milosevic told his Socialist Party’s congress, “remain with those into whose hands they were placed by their rich bosses, who oblige them to cut off the disobedient heads of a proud nation.”

Milosevic’s invective-laced speech, in which he called the opposition “toadies” and “cowards,” left many here convinced that, after almost 10 years of ruinous war, the Yugoslav president is getting ready for more.

“Without hiding the hatred and readiness for evil, Milosevic has offended and slandered the democratic opposition and its supporters, who represent a majority in the country he is heading,” the opposition Serbian Renewal Party said Friday. “Milosevic has sent a clear message to his people and the world: He is preparing for a new war, which must not be allowed.”

The opposition is still too weak to get rid of Milosevic on its own, but the president also is getting weaker after losing his footholds in Serbia’s Kosovo province, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, said Veran Matic, a founder of the banned B-92 radio station. Serbia is the dominant of Yugoslavia’s two remaining republics; Montenegro, which defied Milosevic during last spring’s NATO campaign against him, is the other.

That makes Milosevic all the more dangerous to his own people, especially high-profile critics who know that no one who speaks out against Milosevic’s regime is safe.

“That things must get much worse before they get better is clear from the fact that Milosevic has no way out,” Matic said. “His only exit is through The Hague [war crimes tribunal].”

And the target of Milosevic’s regime is the West--and its perceived supporters.

“For you to kill statesmen here like rabbits and be safe? You are wrong--you are very wrong,” Seselj fumed about journalists last week after Bulatovic’s assassination. “Nothing will be done with gloves on now. Whoever is working for the Americans will have to bear the consequences.”

The journalists have responded to Seselj--who once bragged that Serbian nationalists fighting in Croatia were not the type to be “gouging out eyes with knives but with rusty spoons”--by refusing to report on him or his party, and so far, 71 television, radio and print agencies are officially ignoring Seselj.

But Seselj can play that game too--with Milosevic on the same team. The Socialist Party barred 11 independent journalists from covering the party congress this week, and Seselj has ordered his party’s government ministers and members not to speak with anyone from the boycotting agencies.

It would all sound rather silly if it weren’t just a hint of something much more dangerous.

Serbia’s death squads have targeted journalists before and, in one of the best-known cases, are believed to have killed editor Slavko Curuvija on April 11, 1999--less than three weeks into NATO’s air campaign against Milosevic for his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Curuvija had constantly attacked Milosevic’s regime through his newspaper Dnevni Telegraf and magazine Evropljanin. But his final offense apparently was an open letter to Milosevic in which he accused the president of ruining the country and bringing shame upon Serbs.

The government had tried to silence Curuvija with fines totaling more than $500,000 in 1998, a crippling sum in a country where the average monthly salary is about $40. But Curuvija didn’t give in without a fight--one that cost him his life.

As Seselj railed against the “traitor media” earlier this month, he singled out Belgrade’s B2-92 radio station. It is the reincarnation of B-92, which the government banned March 24, just hours before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began bombing Yugoslavia.

Recent surveys show that the independent media are drawing three times more readers and listeners than Yugoslavia’s state-run services. Tightened economic sanctions are adding to the pressure on Milosevic’s regime, B-92 founder Matic said in an interview this week.

U.S.-Led Strategy Called Ineffective

The problem with the U.S.-led strategy to remove Milosevic from power is that it’s always being rewritten, more in response to relations between the United States and Europe than the need to solve problems in Yugoslavia, Matic said.

“There isn’t a longer-term strategy anymore,” Matic added. “Basically, the strategy changes from day to day. And when you add all these things together, you get the impression that the West is again helping Milosevic prolong his political life.”

Matic thinks that the journalist most likely to be at the top of the regime’s hit list is Aleksandar Tijanic, a brave, burly writer considered Serbia’s best journalist. He co-signed the open letter to Milosevic that probably got Curuvija killed.

Curuvija’s killing, like most in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, remains unsolved.

So does the attempted murder of Bosnian Serb newspaper editor Zeljko Kopanja, who lost his legs when a car bomb exploded outside his home in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka on Oct. 22. Kopanja’s Nezavisne Novine newspaper featured Tijanic’s writing on its back page, but the editor was probably attacked for something more serious.

His newspaper was the first in Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia, to investigate Serbian war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 civil war.

Despite growing fears of more trouble, Matic is already thinking of his radio station’s role in post-Milosevic Yugoslavia and of the need for the country’s people to face the truth of war crimes and seek reconciliation. On his cluttered desk is a new copy of a book, “No Future Without Forgiveness,” by South Africa’s Desmond Tutu.

Radio Station Founder Not Backing Down

In October 1998, when NATO first threatened to bomb Yugoslavia, Seselj told Serbia’s parliament that Matic was “a lieutenant-general of NATO.” Curuvija, who was killed half a year later, was only “a NATO sergeant,” Seselj said.

Although he knows that Seselj is only one of his very powerful enemies, none of whom have many scruples, Matic--the father of two children, ages 8 and 13--is not about to surrender.

“My foolishness kept me here,” he said, only half-joking. “The smart thing would have been to move some time ago. But it’s senseless to leave now when the end is almost here.”