Police Close Yugoslav Radio-TV Station
Police forced an opposition-run radio and television station off the air Sunday, rounding up the protesters who tried to protect the facility.
Hours after the police action, 2,000 demonstrators gathered to protest the shutdown of Radio Television Pozega, which is run by Pozega’s opposition-controlled municipal government.
The trouble started Saturday when police and state officials came to the station to shut it down because it allegedly failed to pay state fees for using its frequency.
The station’s staff showed payment receipts to the police and broadcast an urgent appeal to its audience for people to come down and defend the station from what it called another illegal closure of nongovernmental media in Serbia.
Several hundred listeners responded and prevented police from seizing the transmitter from atop a high-rise in Pozega, 70 miles southwest of Belgrade. However, as the crowd diminished overnight, police rounded up the remaining protesters and took the transmitter away.
“We won’t let them get away with this,” chief station editor Branko Nikolic said. But he did not say what would be done to get back on the air.
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