Geert Lovink: ANEM media alert: Television producer gaoled

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From: Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>
To: nettime-l@desk.nl
Subject: ANEM media alert: Television producer gaoled 

ANEM media alert

Television producer gaoled

BELGRADE, July 8, 1999 -- ANEM, Yugoslavia's Association of Independent
Electronic Media protests strongly at the sentencing of TV Leskovac
producer Ivan Novkovic to thirty days' imprisonment. Novkovic was
sentenced by a municipal misdemeanours judge in Leskovac. ANEM also
protests at Mr Novkovic's dismissal from TV Leskovac. 

On July 1, during a break in a basketball match between Yugoslavia and
Germany, Mr Novkovic put to air his own message to the Leskovac audience,
calling on them to gather in the town's central square on July 5 to
protest against the policies which have led Serbia to the brink of poverty
and caused the unwarranted destruction of the country. 

Some 25,000 Leskovac citizens subsequently attended the July 5 rally at
which Mr Novkovic spoke. One of the protests demands was that the local
media in Leskovac begin reporting objectively and stop false propaganda
representations of the desperate situation in the southern Serbian town. A
second rally was announced for the following day, July 6. 

In the morning of July 6, the municipal misdemeanours judge found Mr
Novkovic guilty of organising a public gathering which had not been
registered with the police and sentenced him to a month's imprisonment. As
a result of this ruling, protesters at that day's rally in Leskovac
clashed with police as they demanded that Novkovic be released from prison
immediately. 

Novkovic was also immediately dismissed by TV Leskovac after the
conviction. 

ANEM gives full support to Mr Novkovic's action and his courage in
speaking up publicly on a television station which is under the strict
editorial control of the regime. ANEM demands that Ivan Novkovic be
released immediately from prison and reinstated as TV Leskovac's producer.