************ Sebastian Lütgert ************ ************ KEEPING THE FAITH: B92 statement ************ The Sound of B92 banned ************ KEEPING THE FAITH: B92 statement From: helpb92-l@xs4all.nl B92 statement KEEPING THE FAITH Our slogan used to be "Don't trust anyone, not even us". To this we have now added "... but keep the faith" Belgrade -- April 1, 1999 On March 24, 1999 secretary-general of NATO issued the order to attack Yugoslavia. Four hours later Radio B92's transmissions were banned and essential transmission equipment confiscated. B92 Editor-in-Chief Veran Matic was detained without explanation and without an opportunity to contact his family or lawyers. He was released eight hours later, again without explanation and without having been questioned. War has been declared in Yugoslavia. Sources of information are drying up. B92 has continued to broadcast around the clock on the Internet and two satellites and via a number of stations in neighbouring countries. B92's news services in Serbian and English are getting more than a million hits a day from people downloading our information. By producing programs and distributing them to the heartland via satellite and local rebroadcasting, we have managed to preserve ANEM, the Association of Independent Electronic Media. Coverage from Kosovo is now completely impossible. Our principled position on the Kosovo tragedy has been known throughout the world for a long time and it has not changed one iota. We are sad to report that our prediction that NATO bombing could only cause a drastic exacerbation of the humanitarian catastrophe has proved true. Operating in war conditions involves enormous risks and we are prepared to run those risks until we are physically prevented from doing this job. Visits from the police almost daily and hours of questioning indicate that increased repression is possible in the future. The introduction of courts martial and threats to bring back the death penalty not only aggravate the psychosis but present a clear and immediate danger. People are leaving the country in droves, but we believe that someone must remain to pick up the pieces of the democratic processes when the war is over. Many achievements on the democratic front have now been destroyed. Somebody with the will and the ability to build democratic institutions must remain. Foremost among those institutions are the independent media which are the basis for any democratic change and reform. It is precisely for this reason that we salute all the initiatives throughout the world for the support of Radio B92 and other independent media. (Among these we must specifically mention helpb92.xs4all.nl.) Permanent support is essential to us. Radio B92 has received numerous awards for the solidarity it has offered to others. Now B92 itself is in need of that same solidarity. http://www.b92.net ************ The Sound of B92 banned Pressrelease Radio B92 Amsterdam, April 2, 1999 Sound of B92 Banned Government officials have shut down radio B92 - silencing the last independent voice in Serbia. In the early hours of Friday morning, April 2, police officers arrived to seal the station's offices, and ordered all staff to cease work and leave the premises immediately. A court official accompanied the police. He delivered a decision from the government-controlled Council of Youth to the station's manager of 6 years - Sasa Mirkovic - that he had been dismissed. The council of youth replaced Sasa Mirkovic with Aleksandar Nikacevic, a member of Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, thus bringing B92 under government control. B92 has been the only source of alternative information in and from Serbia since the start of NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia 10 days ago. Although a ban on the station's transmitter in the morning of the first day of airstrikes - Wednesday March 24 - took the station off the air, B92 has continued to broadcast news and information via the Internet and satellite. On the same day as Federal Telecommunications' officials seized the station's transmitter police officers also detained the station's chief editor - Veran Matic. He was released unharmed and without explanation eight hours later. Since the transmission ban on B92 the station has been heavily policed and has been operating under severe restrictions. The ban on B92 is the latest in a series of crackdowns on free media in the past week. The wave of media repression has resulted in the closure of a large number of members of the B92-led independent broadcasting network - ANEM, and all independent press. Since the launch of B92 news broadcasts on the web last Wednesday its site has had some 15 million visitors. Support sites such as http://helpb92.xs4all.nl report 16,000 visitors per day. Local radio stations across Europe have been re-broadcasting b92 audio signal from the Internet. B92 is the leading independent broadcaster in Yugoslavia, and established the national re-broadcasting network of 35 radio and 18 television stations - ANEM - in 1996. The station was due to celebrate its 10th anniversary this May. http://www.b92.net http://helpb92.xs4all.nl --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl ******************************************************************************** ROLUX h0444wol@rz.hu-berlin.de http://www2.hu-berlin.de/~h0444wol/rolux/