On Friday, a threatening letter arrived at the N1 premises in which, among other things, they “remind” N1 of the attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 employees were killed.
Due to N1 coverage of student protests, blockades and mass dissatisfaction of citizens, the media outlet has been a target of one of the most intense, dangerous and coordinated campaigns against media in Europe in recent weeks.
In a statement for N1 Sarajevo, Maja Sever said that every such threat should be reported and made public, stressing that N1 in Serbia is a special target.
“I do not have to give my opinion at all, it is enough to type Aleksandar Vucic plus N1 into Google, and we will see how the man who leads the country targets and actually calls for such attacks on the citizens of Serbia with his threats. He threatened the other day that broadcasting (N1) should be reviewed in general,” Sever recalled.
The targeting of N1, as she added, comes not only from Vucic but also from lower-ranking Serbian officials.
“Every day we can hear, after all, that people who are in power protested in front of the N1 newsroom. What happened to those people and the danger they were working in is, I can say, perhaps unprecedented in Europe at the moment,” warned the EFJ president.
She also said she was worried about this escalation, and this targeting by Serbian officials, which, as she said, is growing month by month, day by day, especially after the tragedy in Novi Sad.
“What worries us is Europe’s response, what worries us is the report on the rule of law published the other day in which there is no answer to what is happening not only in Serbia, we share a similar disappointment in Croatia and that is what actually worries us and that is what we initiated yesterday as a part of international organizations, European, when I say ‘us’ I mean the European Federation of Journalists, but there are also the European Center for Freedom of the Press, the International Press Institute, and so on, in which we warned publicly about the escalation of violence towards the journalists in Serbia, really requested a strong and concrete reaction from the European Commission in order to finally solve the attacks on journalism and freedom in Serbia,” Sever underlined.
Source: N1
