19. 09. 2008

35 ASSAULTS ON JOURNALISTS UNTIL AUGUST

The number of assaults on the media practitioners has peaked since 2000. Ten to fifteen percent registered assaults get to the court

Belgrade, September 19, 2008 (Politika) - Until the beginning of August, 35 assaults on journalists were recorded in Sebia, which by far surpassed the „annual quota“ from 2007, when 22 cases of assaults on journalists, photoreporters and cameramen had been registered. Head, limb and ribs injuries, curses, insults, as well as the destruction of equipment and preventing journalists from conducting their jobs, are all the unpleasantries which media practitioners face – states the latest report of the Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS).

- The report includes direct physical assaults and injuries, cases of damaged equipment of cameramen and photoreporters, and serious direct or telephone threats judged as realistic. The number of attacks increased, for example, during the protests incited by the self-proclamation of Kosovo’s independence, as well as the protests instigated by the arrest of Radovan Karadžić. The incidents are an evidence of the low level of conscience of those who organize such gatherings and are bound to provide security, whereas such manifestations frequently turn into an open chase for photo reporters, journalists and cameramen. Still, even if we did not take those two events into consideration, the number of assaults on journalists has peaked from 2000, since the average annual number of attacks was once 20 to 25 – says Nino Brajović, the president of UNS.

According to the Association’s data, court proceedings are instigated only against 10 to 15% of the attackers. Brajović reminds that only a few attackers have been discovered this year. When Saša Stojković was murdered at the swimming pool in Zaječar, three of his friends attacked the newspaper from Zaječar which had reported the event. They were found and tried to an imprisonment of 60 days each. The attacker who had seriously hurt Boško Branković, the cameraman at the TV B 92, at the demonstrations of support to Karadžić, was also found. Branković was attacked while recording a colleague photo reporter of Fonet whose camera had somewhat earlier been broken by the participants of the same demonstrations. The case is still in court.

Medin Halilović, a journalist of TV Novi Pazar, had brain concussion after the attack of a criminal who had, after a death-threat, physically assaulted him in the street. Thanks to the swift police action, the attacker was discovered. However, it is still unclear whether those who threatened to “slaughter” Ivana Milić, a reporter, and Edis Klimenta, a cameraman of TV Jedinstvo from Novi Pazar, if they broadcast the material about illegal construction work. Brajović claims that the attackers mostly remain undiscovered, especially in the case of telephone threats.