|
|
Doc. 8310
27 January 1999
Cultural situation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Opinion
Committee on Culture and Education
Rapporteur: Mr Emanuelis Zingeris, Lithuania, European Democratic Group
The Committee on Culture and Education has been following developments in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in its fields of competence: education, media, and the cultural heritage.
More than once its Sub-Committee on the Media h s drawn attention to the situation of the media and in particular to the attacks by the government against the independent media. In recent months the situation has further deteriorated with the adoption of the new Serbian Law on Public Information. This provided the authorities are not willing not want to abide by governmental propaganda.
We are very much concerned with the new Serbian Law on Universities. Serbian university professors have sought the help of the Council of Europe and we should certainly join all those who have vigorously condemned the assault of the government on university autonomy.
We are also very concerned at the growing educational problem for the many refugee children in Kosovo and neighbouring countries. The problem is not only access to education but also itscontent when it comes to the preparation of a future generation. It is evident that the recent upsurge in the armed conflict has worsened these problems.
The academic community of Belgrade has launched an appeal for protection of the cultural heritage of Kosovo. In addition to the early Orthodox buildings there is also a significant Muslim heritage. There is no evidence as yet of deliberate targeting and let us hope that all sides will show restraint.
Media situation
There is no coincidence in the fact that the two regulations on the press - the Government of Serbia's Decree on Special Measures in the circumstances of NATO's Threats of Military Attacks against Our Country, rescinded a few days later and replaced by the Law on Public Information - were adopted at a time when public attention was diverted by the threat of NATO air strikes. From the beginning, the authorities have always used the conflict in Kosovo as a screen behind which to launch attacks on the independent media
Over the last two years, the independent media in FRY have gained strength, become better organised and now represent one of the most serious threats to the unlimited power in place in Belgrade. The attitude of the authorities can be best seen through the way the three coalition parties refer to those media, calling them "the fifth column", "traitors", "foreign mercenaries and servants of foreign commanders".
Nevertheless, the government propaganda still has a strong grip over the majority of the population. The governmental press (Politika Express daily) and, especially, the Serbian Radio and Television (RTS) remain very powerful and reach large proportions of the population, unlike the independent media.
The violation of freedom of expression in FRY can be briefly summarised as follows:
1/ Yugoslav journalists and foreign correspondents, covering the events in Kosovo, have been subjected to harassment, from intimidation to physical reprisal;
2/ As a result of the Government Decree "on special measures" and the adoption of the Law on Public Information three Belgrade dailies were banned, including the oldest and most influential of Yugoslavia's independent dailies, Nasa Borba. Several editors and publishers have been subjected to Draconian fines and taken to court;
3/ Independent electronic media are not allocated frequencies; a TV station and four radio stations were closed down last year, others were severely fined;
4/ Foreign journalists, experts and academicians are regularly denied Yugoslav visas.
The Law on Public Information
The two regulations adopted in October 1998 not only represent a clear violation of the European Convention of Human Rights (Article 10), the International Covenant on Civil and Human Rights of the UN (Article 19) and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (article 19); they are in contradiction even with the Serbian constitution.
Under the law, the media are deemed guilty as soon as the state charges them for a misdemeanour and until they can prove the contrary.
Article 27 prohibits the total or partial transmission or retransmission of radio and television broadcasts "of political propaganda in the Serbian language or languages of the national minorities in the Republic of Serbia from foreign broadcast organisations funded by foreign governments or their organisations", except where there is reciprocity on an inter-state basis. In practice, this provision lead to a ban on the Serbian broadcasting of foreign stations such as the BBC or Voice of America.
Yugoslav citizens still have access to foreign news thanks to widespread satellite dishe but the costs are often prohibitive.
The law allows the government to level instant heavy fines, minimum 40 000 USD, on media that it decides have violated any of a long list of vague rules.
The Council of Europe provided an expert opinion on the law and criticised, in particular, the very broad grounds on which the public prosecutor can initiate proceedings, the speed with which the court must first act, the (apparent) lack of discretion to refuse the order, the speed with which the hearing must take place after notice to the publisher.
Silencing the independent media
On 12 October 1998 three Belgrade dailies - Dnevni Telegraf, Danas and Nasa Borba received a written warning from the Information Minister, Aleksander Vucic, accusing them of fomenting "fear, panic and defeatism" and threatening to close them down. In the night of 13 -14 October two clerks of the Serbian Ministry of Information with heavy police assistance entered the premises of Danas and Dnevni Telegraf and ordered their closure. This act was presented as an implementation of the Serbian Government Decree on the "duties of the media" in the "state of imminent danger of war". Paradoxically, on the same day, 13 October, President Milosevic had solemnly proclaimed in an address to the nation the end of NATO's military threat. The closure of Nasa Borba followed next day.
The newspapers' only crime was failing to publish government propaganda about recent events in Kosovo and subsequent threats made by NATO.
The editors of Dnevni Telegraf and Danas are now trying to have them printed in Montenegro, but they are facing obstacles in distributing them in Serbia. Controls on the border with Montenegro have also seized copies destined for Serbia of the independent weekly Monitor. Dnevni Telegraf was fined with fines ranging from 120 000 USD to 240 000 USD for seeking to "destroy the constitutional order and the territorial integrity of Serbia and Yugoslavia" (Article 67 of the law).
The authorities have even used expropriation as a means of silencing the independent media: on 12 November 1998 the Federal Government decreed that the weekly economic review Ekonomska politika (registered in 1993 as a private joint-stock company) had become part of the Federal Public Institution "Borba".
Print media in Kosovo have not so far been directly affected by the new Information Law, but on 16 December 1998 six Albanian-language newspapers in Pristina received a warning from the Information Minister saying that they would face misdemeanour charges for "shortcomings" that the ministry had detected in their reporting. The major problem for print media is their distribution from Pristina to the rest of the territory of Kosovo.
It appears that the Yugoslav Federal Parliament will soon consider a draft of the new, Federal Media Law and a new Federal Telecommunications Law is also being prepared. According to Federal Government officials they will abide by European standards, but this is still to be proved.
Allocation of frequencies
Many other conflicts have broken out over the second round of decisions in the public tender for frequencies of electronic media. There have been clear signs of an open showdown with the media outlets grouped in the Association of Independent Electronic Media in Yugoslavia (ANEM), which cover almost the entire territory of FRY.
Despite submitting their documentation, only three out of forty independent radio stations and only one out of the others received a decision on their application respectively in the first and the second round of the tender. Many have been frustrated in their attempts to complete their files with the Ministry due to refusal by local authorities to issue them with the necessary papers. Finally, stations with permanent licences for their transmitters which therefore did not participate in the tender, were summoned by the Ministry and forced to sign contracts for the temporary use of frequencies and to pay extremely high fees with arrears since 1 June 1998. Most of the stations have paid this fee, thus legalising their status.
Radio B92, the main independent radio in Serbia, has been subjected to constant attacks by the federal authorities.
On 18 August 1998 the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry inspectors banned CITY Radio in Nis, a station which attracted a large audience thanks to its objective information programmes, rebroadcasts of news by Radio B92 and the BBC Serbian Service. On 18 January 1999 the director was found guilty of illegal possession and operation of a radio station under Article 219 (1) of the Serbian Criminal Law and sentenced to 12 months probation with a 2 month suspended imprisonment.
Radio Kontakt in Pristina, the first multi-cultural media outlet in Kosovo presenting itself as a radio of "good-will and reconciliation", was also banned.
Radio Senta in Vojvodina, the first independent station to broadcast programmes in Hungarian, had applied in the tender in February 1998. It was closed on the very day when the owner received a note from the Telecommunications Ministry demanding payment for using frequencies.
On 10 October 1998 Radio Index was shut down after inspectors of the Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry seized its broadcasting equipment. This Belgrade-based student station had become very popular during the mass civil demonstrations of 1996/7. Before the closure, Radio Index had had its frequency jammed.
Denial of visas
There is clear evidence that the Government tries to prevent foreign journalists, experts and academics from visiting the country.
The "International Conference on Broadcasting for a Democratic Europe", organised by Radio B2 and ANEM under the auspices of the Council of Europe, had to be cancelled due to the refusal of the Yugoslav authorities to grant entry visas to a large number of foreign participants. Thanks to the efforts of the then Chairman-in Office of the Committee of Ministers, the Greek Minister for European Affairs, Georgios Papandreou, and to foreign and domestic public pressure, the conference was eventually held on 4 and 5 December 1998 will the participation of all those invited.
In the beginning of January, the Yugoslav Government denied visas to members of a delegation of internationally prominent academics, including Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Polanyi. According to Human Rights Watch, the group had intended to travel to Belgrade to meet with embattled Serbian colleagues.
The new Serbian Law on University
On 28 May 1998, the Serbian Parliament passed into law a previously undisclosed bill on university and academic matters. The new Law on University gives to the governmental authorities exclusive power to appoint rectors, faculty deans, and governing boards at all public universities.
The law strips professors and other teaching staff of the right to elect or even to propose members of university and faculty-level governing and supervisory boards, the membership of which is determined by the Government. Although faculty-governing boards continue to include places reserved for professors and students, such individuals are appointed and removed by the Government.
The law authorises the Government to shut down public universities at its discretion.
The Law on Universities also abrogated existing contracts of teaching staff, including the contracts of tenured faculty members and required that all professors and other teaching staff sign new employment contracts within 60 days of the entry into force of this law. Many professors and teachers have refused to sign the new contract, which they saw as a declaration of loyalty to the government.
The new Law on Universities removes existing safeguards for academic autonomy and thus opens the door to political meddling in academic affairs by both present and future Governments of Serbia, turning universities into institutions that exclusively serve the interests of the Serbian state authorities.
To the extent that the Law on Universities authorises government-appointed university administrators to remove or otherwise sanction faculty members who have been critical of the government or active in the opposition, it violates internationally recognised human rights law, depriving such professors of their rights to free expression, association, and assembly.
According to the Council of Europe expertise, the new law "is a grave assault on academia and the principles of freedom of expression and academic pursuit. To the same degree, it further undermines democratic reform efforts in universities and Serb society at large. It is the function of the universities to contribute to the development of society, not only through teaching and research, but also as a cultural centre and resource. In the light of the continuing repression of independent media, the abolition of university autonomy threatens to ring the death knell to the formation of public opinion in Belgrade".
Since the adoption of the new law, rectors, deans, and members of governing boards at universities across Serbia have been replaced with government appointees, many of them prominent members of the ruling political parties in Serbia; demonstrations against the new law have been violently dispersed; and professors accused of being involved with opposition political parties or of being opposed to the policies of Yugoslav President Milosevic have come under fire.
The most dramatic changes under the new law have taken place at the University of Belgrade, where 16 out of 30 faculty deans have been replaced. Nearly forty high-ranking politicians and party leaders were given administrative or governing board positions. The government appointees have suspended or fired dozens of the most respected academics in Serbia and initiated proceedings against students.
On 10 December 1998 the new government-appointed Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering, Mr Teodosic, ordered "filters" to prevent users of the Yugoslav academic Internet network from accessing the web site from Open Net, the Internet branch of Belgrade's Radio B92, a major source of independent news and information. The number of users affected by this measure is huge and consists of students, professors who have not yet been fired and researchers of all universities and institutes in Serbia. Teodosic has been a central figure in academic repression. In October 1998 he suspended twelve professors forcibly who refused to sign the new "contracts" and hired private security guards to remove them and also to control the movements of students in the Faculty building. He has threatened rebellious students with eviction from the Faculty.
In July 1998, a number of non-governmental academic organisations and individuals involved in higher education in Serbia and Montenegro joined together in an Alternative Academic Educational Network (AAEN) in order to provide alternative programmes in those academic disciplines that are either neglected or do not exist at the Yugoslav universities.
Conclusions
The attitude of the Serbian authorities is typical for a government which wants to exert unlimited control over the population and tries to prevent it from knowing the truth (the media) and what to think about it (education). On the same line of thinking, one can anticipate the next attack to be launched against the civil society represented by the non-governmental organisations.
The Council of Europe has tried to assist the democratic forces in the country by advising a group of NGOs on a draft law on non-governmental organisations. It has also provided expert opinions on the Law on Universities and the Law on Public Information
It is however clear that the simple abrogation of these two extremely undemocratic regulations will not resolve the problems with human rights in FRY. The Council of Europe has been very supportive of civil society initiatives aiming at creating open spaces for public debate and has developed close ties with a network of civil society, media, academia and local authority representatives engaged in upholding the respect for Europe's basic principles. The dialogue with representatives of civil society and with all those committed to democratic reforms in FRY should be pursued with even greater persistence, as they need strong moral support in order to fulfil their mission in the difficult conditions described above.
Bearing in mind the attempts of the authorities to impose an information blackout, the Council of Europe should also strive to make its position better known amongst the general public in Yugoslavia. It should find practical ways to support those forces in the country which try to promote national dialogue and values common to all the citizens.
The Committee on Culture and Education, after hearing media, university and NGO representatives on 26 January 1999, supports the draft recommendation presented by the Political Affairs Committee and wishes to complement it by the following amendments:
- add at the end of paragraph 12:
"and encourages other Committees to hold similar meetings in their fields of competence and in particular that of education"
- insert, after sub-paragraph 14.v. the following sub-paragraph:
"Increase its support to the civil society in FRY and use all possible means to make this support known by non-governmental organisations, by the authorities of FRY and by the Yugoslav population at large, for example by organising meetings on the spot and fact-finding missions."
Committee for report: Political Affairs Committee (Doc. 8308)
Committee for opinion: Committee on Culture and Education
Reference to committee: request for urgent debate, Reference No. 2355 of 25 January 1999
Draft opinion approved by the committee on 26 January 1999