Re: Syndicate: RADIO B92 CLOSED DOWN AND SEALED OFF

["J.B." <jbstudio@sirius.com>]

Dear v and all:

It's very interesting to read of Nikacevic's background (the new
court-appointed "Director" of Radio B92.)  This type of hollow opportunist
always seems to be lurking and ready to exploit situations where people
wish to accept a diet of lies.

I've just checked, and evidently the official B92 site has been shut down.
The following article is from the HELPB92 site http://helpb92.xs4all.nl
which also has a statement and interview with Sasa Mirkovic, the authentic
Director of B92.

--J.





                                        Sound of B92 Banned
 Friday April 2, 09.00 CET

  Government officials have shut down radio B92 - silencing the last
independent voice in Serbia. In the early
  hours of Friday morning, April 2, police officers sealed the station's
offices, and ordered all staff to cease
  work and leave the premises immediately.

  A court official accompanied the police. He delivered a decision from the
government-controlled Council of
  Youth to the station's manager of 6 years - Sasa Mirkovic - that he had
been dismissed. The Council of
  Youth replaced Sasa Mirkovic with Aleksandar Nikacevic, thus changing the
independent management of
  the station.


  B92 has been the only source of alternative information in and from
Serbia since the start of NATO airstrikes
  against Yugoslavia 10 days ago. Although a ban on the station's
transmitter in the morning of the first day of
  airstrikes - Wednesday March 24 - took the station off the air, B92 has
continued to broadcast news and
  information via the Internet and satellite. On the same day as Federal
Telecommunications' officials seized
  the station's transmitter police officers also detained the station's
chief editor - Veran Matic. He was
  released unharmed and without explanation eight hours later. Since the
transmission ban on B92 the
  station has been policed and has been operating under severe restrictions.

  The ban on B92 is the latest in a series of crackdowns on free media in
the past week. The wave of media
  repression has resulted in the closure of a large number of members of
the B92-led independent
  broadcasting network - ANEM, and restrictions on the independent press.
The prominent
  Albanian-language newspaper and radio station Koha ditore was also closed
down last week, as were all
  other independent media in Kosovo, including Radio 21.

  Since the launch of B92 news broadcasts on the web last Wednesday its
site has had some 15 million
  visitors. Support sites such as http://helpb92.xs4all.nl report 16,000
visitors per day. Local radio stations
  across Europe have been re-broadcasting b92's audio signal from the
Internet.

  B92 is the leading independent broadcaster in Yugoslavia, and established
the national re-broadcasting
  network of 35 radio and 18 television stations - ANEM - in 1996. The
station was due to celebrate its 10th
  anniversary this May.



------Syndicate mailinglist--------------------
information: http://www.v2.nl/east/
mail archive: http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/current/
to unsubscribe send a message to <syndicate-request@aec.at>
with the message in the body: unsubscribe your@email.adress