After the first reports of attacks against journalists reporting on anti-government protests, the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation called on journalists, photo-reporters and cameramen reporting from the protests in Serbian cities to contact the Foundation if they suffered violence, threats, intimidation or other forms of suppression preventing them from doing their job.
EXPLORE MAP Via TV footage and social media posts, BIRN has documented more than 26 cases of police brutality on the streets of Belgrade during clashes with protesters this week. They include incidents of police violence against civilians, men and women, posing no apparent threat, as well as against journalists. The material reviewed by BIRN shows that most…
IPI urges police and protesters to ensure safety of media covering clashes
Serbian authorities should quickly and thoroughly investigate attacks on journalists covering anti-government protests in the country, and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Hopes initial landmark convictions will not be overturned
“It is of the utmost importance that all those involved in this heinous crime do not go unpunished,” says Harlem Desir, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in the statement for Cenzolovka, adding that his Office will closely follow the trial that will start on 7 July at the Court of Appeals.
The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic in the statement for Cezolovka says that she cannot stress enough the importance of bringing the case of Slavko Curuvija killing to prompt and justly closure.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the judicial authorities in Serbia and Montenegro to combat impunity in two cases in Belgrade – the appeal by those convicted of murdering a journalist in 1999 and the trial of those accused of setting fire to a journalist’s home in 2018 – and to guarantee due process in the retrial of a journalist on absurd drug-trafficking charges in Podgorica.
In the build up and during the course of the general elections in Serbia, which were held on 21st June, physical and verbal attacks against journalists were recorded, as well as intimidation and discrimination.
The Slavko Curuvija Foundation announced that it expects the Appellate Court to confirm the first-instance verdict for the 1999 murder of journalist and publisher Slavko Ćuruvija, with which four former members of the State Security service were sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison.
In almost every third funding contest for co-financing media content in 2019, the money was awarded to media that violated the Journalists' Code, once or on multiple occasions, according to research carried out by the Press Council.
Opting for a retrial and a new evidentiary procedure would be a paradox - to prove what has already been proven. In fact, the point would be for all first-instance convicts to remain at large, Veran Matic, Chairman of the Commission for investigating the killings of journalists, told Cenzolovka, reiterating that the deep state governed by elements of the secret services is very strong
Swift investigation needed alongside reduction in hostilities against media
Serbian taxpayers are unwittingly paying for an army of bots to promote the country’s ruling party and denigrate its rivals.
An unknown man confiscated the mobile phone of Bojana Pavlović, a journalist of investigative journalism portal KRIK, after she took photographs of Danilo Vučić, the son of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, in a Belgrade cafe-bar where he was in the company of famous hooligan Aleksandar Vidojević, whom she'd already written about.
The Commission for Investigating Murders of Journalists has again requested that the Special Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime take over responsibility for the case of the murder of journalist Milan Pantić, a correspondent of national daily newspaper Večernji novosti from the city of Jagodina, which occurred on 11th June 2001.
At the trial for the December 2018 arson attack on the house of journalist Milan Jovanović, the lawyers of the main defendant, Dragoljub Simonovic, a former president of the Belgrade suburban municipality of Grocka and a senior official of the ruling SNS party, questioned the journalist's wife Jela Deljanin in detail about the night the house burned down, but also about every item of furniture that she reported as being damaged in the fire.
IPI backs latest call for Special Prosecutor's Office to take over case
More than 90 percent of the cases in world statistics say that the murder of a journalist is not solved, the murder is not punished, perpetrator is not brought to justice... Somehow, it turns out that killing a journalist is the cheapest form of censorship.
Next month will see the Appellate Court in Belgrade launch the process of considering appeals against the first-instance verdict for the murder of journalist and publisher Slavko Ćuruvija.
