YUGOSLAVIA: Serbia’s Main Independent Newspaper Threatened with Ban

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Branko Milinkovic

BELGRADE, Nov 21 1994 (IPS) - Serbia’s main independent daily newspaper the ‘Borba’ is in danger of being banned after a legal challenge by the government against its holding company saying the paper had never been properly registered.

The company’s board of mangers have immediately decided to appeal to the Supreme Court to clarify the registration. Importantly more than 50 Serbian lawyers have indicated their readiness to support the respected newspaper which acts as an opposition spokesman to authoritarian regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

However, the chief legal adviser of the daily ‘Borba’, the Serbian attorney Branislav Tapuskovic, is very sceptical about the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal because the procedure may be held behind closed doors.

The ‘Borba’ has in fact been critical of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic since he rose to power in the Serbian communist party of the late eighties. The ‘Borba’ also supported the reformist line and pro-Yugoslav orientation before the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia after the fall of the communists.

In the last few years the paper has also had a clear anti-war stance along with ‘Radio B-92’; the weekly ‘Vreme’ and the television station ‘Studio B’. The Borba became a symbol for profesional and independent journalism in Serbia.

The Borba was established as a paper by Yugoslav Communist Party in 1922 and became a government mouthpiece for many years. However, this changed in 1991 when it was transformed into the private shareholding company in July 1991.

As a former owner, the state controls some 17 percent of the newspaper’s shares and has its two representatives on the board of managers. Earlier this year they lodged a complaint that the newspaper’s registration was null and void.

Last month another government complaint was lodged — claiming that the Borba’s Act of Registration had not existed at all until October this year, when it was finally published in the ‘Official Gazzette’.

The same state official finally took legal action to sue the daily ‘Borba’ for alleged irregular registration. It was last week that a Belgrade court confirmed that this process was taking place.

“The Milosevic regime has tried one strategy after another to achieve the aim of stopping the Borba from pursuing an independent line.