A pro-regime daily newspaper published passport photos of 2 Serb brothers claiming that they were Croats managing the student protests in Serbia.
The Vecernje Novosti newspaper published the photo pages of Croatian passports issued to brothers Lazar and Luka Stojanovic whose parents are ethnic Serbs from the city of Knin in Croatia which was part of the Serb Republic of Krajina during the war of the 1990s. Vecernje Novosti’s editor in Chief Milorad Vucelic was a media propaganda experts for the Milosevic regime and head of the state TV.
Vecernje Novosti published the passport photo pages covering up the signatures which are in Cyrillic script not used by ethnic Croats, only by Serbs. The two youths have Croatian citizenship because their father was born in Knin. The father came to Serbia, fleeing a Croatian military operation to oust Serb forces from the Krajina area.
The story drew comments from several lawyers who warned that the publication of personal documents which include photographs is a violation of basic standards of journalism, violation of the law on protecting personal data and endangered the brothers.
The lawyers claimed this was propaganda to discredit the student protests.
The Serbian authorities, including the president, claimed that the student protests were being directed from Croatia, using a published record of student protests in Zagreb several years ago. Anything coming from Croatia is viewed as negative by Serb nationalists.
Source: N1
