17/07/2014: SERBIA – SEEMO CONCERNED REGARDING THE RULING IN B92 DEFAMATION CASE

Vienna, 17/07/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), a network of editors, media executives and leading journalists from South East Europe, is concerned to hear about the physical attack Zivko Perisic, a Beta News Agency journalist.

The Belgrade high court upheld this in connection to the alleged mismanagement of public funds which included Pavlovic, and which B92 previously investigated and reported about.

Parts of information and evidence B92 included in their story came from an official police memo.

“This decision will not only have a negative effect on B92, but also deprive other media outlets from reporting freely. Restricting the possibility of reporting about matters of public interest is not only dangerous for media freedom and investigative journalists, but for the general public as well” SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic stated.

An appeal can be passed to the Serbian Constitutional Court concerning this ruling.

Vienna, 10/07/2014

The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), welcomes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the imprisonment of two Turkish journalists, Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener, by holding them in pre-trial detention for over a year.

Turkey has been sentenced to pay a fine of € 10,000 to Şık and € 20,000 to Şener. The ECHR found that the authorities violated Article 5-3 of the European Convention of Human Rights on the ‘length and reasonableness of pre-trial,’ Article 5-4 on ‘procedural guarantees of review,’ and Article 10 on ‘freedom of expression.’

Vienna, 07/07/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), condemns the arrest of Besim Ibrahimi, a journalist of the daily paper Lajm.

Ibrahimi was arrested on 5 July 2014 while covering a public event in Skopje, on suspicion that he was taking part in the violent protests. He has been accused of interfering with police officers while they were performing their duty, which he categorically denies.

Ibrahimi claims that he was arrested and beaten with a baton by a police officer, who also offended him on the basis of his nationality. He was released from detention 24 hours later, after strong objections from local and international media and human rights organisations.

SEEMO is calling authorities in Macedonia to investigate this case and stop this practices towards journalists and media workers.

„Journalists must be allowed to do their job professionally and without interference. Media plays an important role in the democratic process, and is necessary for a free society.“, SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic stated.

Vienna, 07/07/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), is alarmed by the behavior of autoritites in the Izmir province in Turkey, where a letter was sent to Ege’nin Sesi newspaper, requesting the removal of an article..

SEEMO fully supports the decision of the paper and paper’s editor-in chief not to remove the article, and consider this letter an attempt at diminishing media freedom.

The article described the events during a commemoration march, when an disagreement began between the marchers and the police. The police officer used foul language, which was an allegation in the article. There was no taped recording of the event.

The letter which was signed by the Police Commissioner 4 July denies these allegations, and demands for the article to be removed.

Journalists of this newspaper did not remove the article, and published the letter as well, but deem this attempt as an attack to freedom of speech and journalistic rights.

Vienna, 14/06/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), a network of editors, media executives and leading journalists from South East Europe is worried by different reports on the violation of media freedom and freedom of speech in Romania in the past several months.

„It has been brought to our attention that journalists and other media workers in Romania have been facing various types of pressure in their work. Journalists are subjects to threats, attacks and self-censorship, which is leading to a deterioration of media freedom in this country“ said SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic.

Dan Constantin, one of the editors-in-chief of Jurnalul National daily newspaper was assaulted and threatened on 14 June. The motivation behind this attack was the guest appearance of Constantin in a TV talk-show on Antena 3 TV channel, a station openly critical of Romanian President Traian Băsescu.

The channel Antena3 was also put under pressure by some politicians after airing a short film about a relative of the President, who allegedly received money, in order to intervene at judiciary level.

Vienna, 12/06/2014

The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), is expressing its unbiased support to the Greek journalists and media workers who held a protest on 11 June, one year since the public broadcaster ERT had been shut down as an austerity measure.

In the meantime, there have been no apparent efforts by the government to restore an independent public broadcaster. The current broadcaster NERIT is run by the Ministry of Finances and according to observers has no editorial independence. The former ERT staff and their unions have started broadcasting on ERT open, a channel with diverse public service in all Greek regions. However, this is not a sufficient and organized replacement.

SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujović stated: „ Public service values and journalistic rights are facing serious pressure in Greece. I ask the authorities to support the work of a professional public service in Greece”.

Vienna, 10/06/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) called on the Serbian police to investigate all cases of hacker-attacks in Serbia in the past weeks. Numerous information that blogs in Serbia have suffered DDoS and other hacker-attacks, are alarming. “We welcome the investigations started by Serbian police, but we are asking the state authorities and police to inform the public in detail about this hacker attacks”, Oliver Vujovic, SEEMO Secretary General said. “It is interesting, that hackers attacked those web and blogs that are critical about the government or published investigations like the Webpage of Pescanik”, Vujovic added. Pescanik.net published claims by assistant professor at the University of Nottingham Ugljesa Grusic, associate professor at the University of East London Branislav Radeljic and PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science Slobodan Tomic, that the doctorate dissertation of the Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic is alleged plagiarism. “This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read,” Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said after Pescanik.net published the article. Stefanovic has denied any wrongdoing in his PhD, received last year from a private University in Belgrade.

In a public letter a group of bloggers and the BlogOpen group in Serbia wrote: “We need your support, solidarity, and help to spread the word about endangered civil rights and free speech in Serbia. For the past few months the Serbian Internet — blogs, media and social networks — has suffered under apparent censorship, especially when it comes to material that is of great public interest”. “We fear that these are abridgements of right to free expression. As a result, we are experiencing the “chilling effect” and a palpable sense of self-censorship”, the group added.

Vienna, 10/06/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) called on the Serbian authorities to respect freedom of information, freedom of internet and press freedom. According to information before SEEMO, journalists Violeta Jovanovic and Dragan Gula Nikolic, both from Mladenovac, a town close to Belgrade, were investigated by the Serbian police following critical comments published on Facebook. Both comments were critical about the handling of the recent floods in Serbia by the authorities. As SEEMO was informed, Nikolic was detained by the Serbian police following a complaint filed by Milorad Cvetnovic, member of the parliament, who was accusing the journalist of “causing damages to the dignity of a high-level representative at the ruling party”. The ruling party in Serbia is Srpska napredna stranka (SNS – Serbian Progressive Party) of the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic. In the past weeks there were several cases of police investigations on people using internet in Serbia. End of May the Serbian police have arrested three internet-users for spreading false information. This three internet-users posted information on personal Facebook pages about the number of persons killed in the floods that hit Serbia in May and were imprisoned for nine days. Around 20 people have been taken in the police for an interview for allegedly “spreading panic” on Twitter and Facebook, according to the Serbian BlogOpen group.

Vienna, 07/06/2014

Following claims on numerous incidents of media censorship / self-censorship in Serbia, the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), expresses its concern over the pressures and threats media workers are received in Serbia.

Over 30 people have been detained on the grounds of false news and panic dissemination, while websites and online content were being blocked.

SEEMO notes that this is only part of the pressure that journalists in Serbia face.

Vienna, 05/06/2014

The South East Europe Media Organisation SEEMO welcomes the decision by the Turkish Telecommunications Directorate to unblock access to YouTube. After 67 days, internet users in Turkey have again from 3 June a free access to YouTube. The decision entered into force after the Constitutional Court on 29 May ruled that the ban violated the rights of users and freedom of speech.