Milos Vasic, one of the editors of the Belgrade weekly "Vreme" and the president of the Association of the Independent Journalists (NUNS), makes an analysis of the newest Law on Public Information in Serbia and the hurry of the regime to pass it, in the October 24 issue of "Vreme."

So, the Law has been passed as an urgent measure. In the letter to the Parliament, Dr. Milovan Bojic (of the JUL party), the Vice president of the Government, states that the "written exposition of the Law presents the necessity" of the urgency. But, this exposition is explained by the "need the legally regulate the sphere of public information and to remove the need to regulate certain matters with decrees." Translated to daily language, this means: we have passed that ill-fated Decree and have seen that the scandal is unbearable and dangerous, so we have decided to secretly and quickly turn the Decree into a Law.

Having in mind the political context, the urgency is understandable: the direction of the development of the Kosovo crisis is dangerous; the black-red coalition is on its way to lose its fourth war; Serbia is poor and confused, frustrated and could get angry. Sooner or later it will find out the provisions of the future peace agreement on Kosovo (among other things, the annex on the police force; it seems that it is important now to shut the mouths of all those who will start to pose unnecessary questions like "what was that most expensive Serbian word?"

The key danger for the freedom of the press lies in three aspects of the new Law, say the lawyers and constitutional experts: in revoking of the basic human right through a lower legal act by confusing definitions, lightning procedure left to the misdemeanor judges and in astronomical fines.

In the Law itself, the "innovations" can be seen immediately say the legal experts: legal terms have been replaced by political ones, while the Ministry of information is not being obliged to issue explanations and guidelines which could help in practice. The term "political propaganda" contained in Article 27 which bans transmission and publication of contents of foreign origin is a political term, the interpretation of which is left to the Ministry. Besides this, presumption of guilt for media is being introduced, where the author of the article, the editor, the editor-in -chief and the publisher have to prove the truthfulness of the published material, and all this within 24 hours. With all this, the complaint to the judge is being brought by the Ministry of information. So, within 72 hours, the judge is to understand what is at hand, who is right, and who is not - and why. So we have come to a situation that the journalists and editors in Serbia have less rights in a misdemeanor procedure that participants in a cafe brawl. This introduction of misdemeanor procedure in the realm of information is a legal and political scandal: if this realm is so important, why isn’t the penal code applied ? Simply because in the criminal procedure, the accused has more rights.


Source: Belgrade weekly "Vreme," October 24, 1998