By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
NIS, Serbia, Jul 28 2000 (IPS)

Journalists in Serbia say they see the recent arrest and conviction of a colleague for espionage as an ominous sign of further repression against all who differ in opinion from the government of President Slobodan Milosevic.

“This was a sentence pronounced against the journalism profession,” said Grujica Spasovic, editor in chief of Danas. “I am very depressed and frightened. Very soon we’ll face the question of how a journalist can normally work in this country”.

Gordana Susa, head of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, said that “(Miroslav) Filipovic was punished because the authorities want to impose single-mindedness on the media … The man who signed all his articles can not be a spy. This is a measure aimed at frightening all the independent minded people, not just journalists,” she added.

Forty-nine year old journalist Miroslav Filipovic was sentenced on Wednesday by a military court here in the southern Serbian town of Nis, to seven years in prison for espionage and spreading false news.

This is the first time in decades that a journalist has been accused and sentenced under these charges. During the trial, partially held behind closed doors, Filipovic pleaded innocent.

The military court, however, refused to accept Filipovic’s defence that all his stories were based on facts and events already printed in the Serbian independent press.

Filipovic was a correspondent for the Belgrade independent daily Danas and A stringer for Agence France Presse (AFP) and the London- based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo, 174 kms south of Belgrade.

In its ruling, the military court said that it was established “without any doubt, that Filipovic collected, processed and sent military information to foreign organisations IWPR and AFP”.

“We did have a dilemma about the fact that many things were available to the public,” the judge, Col. Radenko Miladinovic, said. “But the time will come for others responsible for publishing such information.”

Some of Filipovic’s stories dealt with the atrocities committed by the Yugoslav Army (VJ) against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo at the time of NATO air raids in 1999. They included descriptions of the “kill and burn” tactics of the VJ in villages, the killing of civilians, and also the deep disgust of soldiers forced by their superiors to do such things. The subject of atrocities against non-Serbs in all wars in the former Yugoslavia since 1991, including Kosovo, is a taboo in Serbia.

Other stories dealt with the current behaviour of the VJ in the troublesome Serbian Muslim-populated area of Sandzak and with the problems of Serb refugees from Kosovo and the cold-hearted behaviour of authorities toward them.

The sentence, said Veran Matic, editor in chief of independent B2 92 radio that was taken over by the Serbian government two months ago, was “aimed at frightening all those who want the truth to be made public. It is a message for those who resist the regime, but also for those who want to show a real picture of what the regime has done in the past 10 years”.

Recent opinion polls in Serbia have shown that more than 70 percent of the people are deeply dissatisfied with the regime and the results of its politics that brought isolation and poverty into the country in the 1990s.

State controlled media regularly show an idyllic picture of a country without internal problems and which is now the victim of a foreign conspiracy.

“As defined by the Penal Code, the crime of espionage is a powerful instrument of political caprice and arbitrariness,” says Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, head of the Yugoslav Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

She noted that in handing down the sentence Col. Miladinovic had said that”the degree of secrecy of the material Filipovic sent away was not important for this court. The important thing is that these information can not be sent to foreign organisation”.

“Such a loose definition of classified information jeopardises everyone who reports information, writes reports, analyses political situations, deals with human rights and criticises specific decisions by the state. Now that Filipovic has been sentenced to jail, the daily, ruthless campaign against the media, journalists, NGOs and opposition parties is no longer just a threat, but a real danger to their future work and survival.”

The sentence has been condemned by all the opposition parties in Serbia. The case has prompted also a series of protests by media organisations and human rights groups abroad. The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres called the sentence the Belgrade regime’s “latest step in the policy of repressing the freedom of the press” and threatening independent journalists.

EU foreign policy head Javier Solana described Filipovic as “a man of courage who paid a high price for his integrity.” Solana said his imprisonment would “concern all those who regard the freedom of speech as a fundamental one.”

“Filipovic was not a spy. He never stepped over the boundaries of journalism,” his lawyer Zoran Ateljevic said.

Ateljevic told IPS that he would employ all legal means to prove his client’s innocence. An appeal will be sent to the Supreme Military Court within 15 days. The court has to debate the whole process and the sentence within another 90 days.

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