14. 09. 2005

ILIC: I ADORE YOU!

BELGRADE, September 14, 2005 – Capital Investments Minister Velimir Ilic says B92 works for the European Basketball Championship. In an interview on TV Leskovac on Monday night, Ilic said: “B92 only twists things and criticize. Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, Natasa Kandic, Sonja Biserko and others are constantly there. It’s unbearable, in a normal country they wouldn’t be able to work. And no one says anything, not to displease them. Well, I stood up to them and said: ‘Hello, you can’t do that!’ They do what they want, and we all know who they work for”, said Ilic. He and some other members of the Cabinet know why B92 hates the state, said the minister, but declined to elaborate on the reasons. Commenting on the issue to his long-running criticism of RTV B92, Ilic said that he did not know why B92 was attacking him. Ilic decided to keep the secret on Wednesday as well. Instead, he tried to be witty in front of the Serbian Prime Minister. When journalists asked him to reveal the secret – who B92 worked for, Ilic only said: “I adore you.” After the journalist had insisted on the answer, Ilic said: “For the European Basketball Championship!” As Bratislav Ilic reported for B92, the capital investments minister Velimir Ilic was visiting the southern city of Leskovac to open a barbecue festival. Ilic revisited the withdrawal of criminal charges against Marko Milosevic, saying that the charges against the son of the former Yugoslav president had been withdrawn earlier and that he had not been aware of it. “I do my own work, and I have plenty of it, and I don’t deal with Marko Milosevic nor do I have time for that,” said Ilic. Professor at the Faculty of Political Science Snjezana Milivojevic told B92 that the fact that the government of Serbia continued to exist despite insulting the public meant that the government did not care about the media. “Unfortunately, although minister Ilic is in the government, he has all the reasons to be pleased about this state not being a normal country. If it were a normal country, ministers would not have been allowed to behave like he does, not because it is forbidden, but simply because that is not the proper public behavior or a level in political culture in normal countries.” Such behavior violates the regulations of the European Recommendation on Hate Speech, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1997. One of the provisions of the Recommendation envisages that the public clerks must refrain from any form of hate speech. Such statements should be prohibited and publicly condemned whenever they appear.