The state-owned company Elektromreza Srbije (EMS – the national power grid operator) and Millennium Team, a firm with close ties to the government, filed criminal complaints and lawsuits against journalists and editors of the weekly Radar and the daily Nova. One of these relates to causing panic and disorder, while the other claims reputational damage. The people Nova.rs spoke with conclude that these are classic intimidation tactics and an expansion of repression by which the government is attempting to silence a rebellious society.
Last November, Vuk Cvijic, a journalist for the Radar weekly, reported on the functioning of Serbia’s energy system. His article featured an interview with Bojan Ivanovic, a doctor of electrical engineering who has worked for Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS – Serbian Electric Power Company), Elektromreza Srbije (EMS), and Elektrodistribucija Srbije (EDS – Serbia’s electricity distribution company) for 26 years.
Ivanovic told Radar that Serbia’s power system was in disarray and that incompetent management could even endanger human lives.
Just one day after the interview with the energy expert, who warned about the poor state of Serbia’s power system, a substation malfunction occurred at the 110/35 kV Belgrade facility. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but several thousand residents of Belgrade’s Banovo Brdo neighborhood were left without electricity.
Radar also discovered that voltages in Serbia’s transmission system have not been within permissible limits for the past 10 years.
Due to these articles, which were supported by eminent experts and documented materials, the state-owned company Elektromreza Srbije has sued Mihailo Jovicevic (director), Vesna Malisic (editor), and Vuk Cvijic (journalist) of Radar for, as stated in the criminal complaints, causing panic and disorder. The maximum penalty for this offense is five years in prison.
The private company Millennium Team, which has, in recent years, secured multi-million-euro government contracts, has sued Nova editor Ranko Pivljanin and a Nova journalist for reputational damage. This is not merely a civil lawsuit or a familiar SLAPP suit against our media but a criminal proceeding set to begin next week. The potential penalty is up to one year in prison.
Herein lies the paradox of Serbia’s judicial system: objective and free media outlets that inform the public about crucial social issues are intimidated in the worst possible way, while the business dealings of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) tycoons and Millennium Team owners Ivan Bosnjak and Stojan Vujak remain entirely unquestioned, Nova.rs reported.
Nova.rs journalists reported on their business activities and connections to the state.
Rade Djuric, a legal expert from the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, emphasized in an interview with Nova.rs that the filed criminal complaints and lawsuits are a classic form of pressure and an abuse of the right to file a lawsuit or complaint.
He added that the problem is that Serbia’s judicial system is so compromised that no one is sure how the authorities will act and that, unlike other countries, Serbia lacks specific legal mechanisms that would allow the defendant to demonstrate that a lawsuit is malicious.
He concluded that government representatives from public enterprises and those in power do not understand the Law on Public Information and Media, nor the need to protect public interest by publishing information relevant to citizens.
“This is essential information for citizens to form an objective opinion about what is truly happening, and it is clear that the entire energy system is in chaos and crisis. They are now trying to pressure the media to report less on it,” said the legal expert.
Malisic: Expanding repression
Radar editor-in-chief Vesna Malisic told Nova.rs that in this campaign of expanding repression, by which the government is trying to silence a rebellious society, the focus is clearly on the remaining media not under their control.
“Criminal complaints and lawsuits have become a new form of pressure and intimidation. But never before, not even during Milosevic’s reign of terror, have media outlets been subjected to such brutality and harassment over interviews, testimonies, and authentic recordings. Threats of criminal complaints against journalists and editorial staff for documented material are an attempt to completely extinguish investigative journalism. It is an attempt for Serbia to join the ranks of countries where journalists are arrested and imprisoned for publishing the truth,” Malisic assessed for Nova.rs.
Source: N1
