20. 05. 2004

POLITICAL PRESSURE ON TV SMEDEREVO UNACCEPTABLE

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) protests strongly at the attempt of local authorities in Smederevo to break a strike at the city’s municipal television by using police to force entry to the company premises.

TV Smederevo employees have been on strike for 56 days in protest at the sacking of acting director Jovica Seslak without any review of his work, and the appointment to the position of Dragan Kosovac, an agronomist with no experience in the media.

The replacement of Seslak was decided on by the local government, led by the Democratic Party of Serbia and the Socialist Party of Serbia.

After striking staff denied the new acting director access to the transmission centre of the television building on Wednesday, May 19, telephone and power in the building was cut and two transmitters disabled.

Overnight negotiations with the deputy minister for culture, Miroljub Radosavljevic broke down when the government was unwilling to meet the striking workers’ demands. However, at the insistence of Deputy Minister Radosavljevic, the station’s transmitters were reactivated. The chairman and two members of the municipal government subsequently began a hunger strike, claiming that the strike was triggered by a political conflict between the former and present local government authorities. The new acting director of the television station, Dragan Kosovac, resigned.

ANEM regards “politically correct” appointments and dismissals in local public media as unacceptable, particularly when these are carried out with no evaluation of the activities of each individual company. The association also strongly opposes the attempt to violently curtail the right to industrial action by using police assistance, forced entry of premises and cutting electricity, telephones and transmission. Also of concern is the fact that the parties in the minority Serbian Government and those supporting the government are not prepared to oppose pressure and political control of media at the local government level. ANEM has urged the Ministry of Culture to urgently issue instructions for the privatisation of local public media in order for the ownership transformation process to begin. This would limit the ability of local authorities to apply inappropriate influence on the work of municipal media.

Slobodan Stojsic
President of ANEM Administrative Board