Glas javnosti - Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia

Media Easy Prey
collect branches for building a fi re”. 665 However, on 8 July 2009, the NUNS
fi led a criminal complaint with the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Offi ce against
unknown journalists and persons who worked for RTV Belgrade, RTV Novi
Sad, daily newspapers Politika, Vecernje novosti and others for the criminal
act of organizing and instigating the commitment of genocide and war
crimes, in accordance with Article 145 of the Criminal Code of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. To support its criminal complaint, the NUNS submitted
newspaper articles, sociological analyses and transcripts of television
programmes.
In its criminal complaint the NUNS states: “We hold that before the
outbreak of armed confl ict in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, there
were political and propaganda preparations for it in the media in that
same territory, using hate language and spreading false information in
order to convince the public in the justifi ability of armed confl ict and, in
that context, a gross violation of the norms of international humanitarian
law. We also hold that those forms of propaganda were legally impermissible
and, thus, represented criminal acts”. 666
The President of the Journalists’ Association of Serbia, Ljiljana Smajlovic,
regarded the criminal complaint fi led by the NUNS as “support to
the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Offi ce, so that its investigation into the war
propaganda in the Serbian media during the 1990s, which started last
month, could obtain legitimacy”. “It is hard for me to believe that the
NUNS has noticed just now that the Serbian and other media in the territory
of the former Yugoslavia contributed to an increase in inter-ethnic
intolerance and hate on the eve of the country’s disintegration and during
the war, just as it is also hard for me to believe that the War Crimes
Prosecutor’s Offi ce discovered all that only one month ago”. 667 In her opinion,
it is strange that the Prosecutor’s Offi ce has no professional assistance
665 Ibid.
666 Ibid.
667 http://www.naslovi.net/2009-07-08/vecernje-novosti/udruzenje-novinara-protivnovinara/1229289.
459