PRESS FREEDOM: Balkans Needs Media for Reconciliation

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, May 4 2004 (IPS) - Independent local media is essential for reconciliation efforts within the Balkans, a meeting here declared on Press Freedom Day Monday.

Local media are "essential to provide trustworthy information that is vital for peace and reconciliation efforts," according to the declaration adopted after a two-day meeting organised by the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO).

More than 150 participants from around the world called on UNESCO to reinforce its coordinating role in supporting media initiatives in conflict and post- conflict zones.

The meeting was followed by a regional conference Tuesday on media in post-conflict and transition countries. This meeting was organised jointly by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and UNESCO.

"It is not by chance that Belgrade was chosen for those events," Vuk Draskovic, foreign minister of Serbia & Montenegro told journalists Monday night. "Our recent past bears the marks and the scars of all the problems journalists face in the war zones, under repression and in poverty and isolation."

These are the first major international media conferences to be held in Belgrade in 20 years.

Draskovic, himself a journalist and a writer, was one of the opposition leaders in the 1990s when former Yugoslavia fell apart in bloody wars. Serbia was run then by Slobodan Milosevic, who fell from power in 2000.

Under Milosevic’s regime a number of journalists were killed for writing against wars and his politics, while a part of media was turned into his propaganda machinery. This media justified the wars that took the lives of more than 240,000 people.

The process of reconciliation between nations who fought the wars has barely begun.

The UNESCO meeting looked at questions of press freedom beyond the Balkans.

Cuban journalist and poet Raul Rivero Castaneda was awarded the 2004 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which was received by his stepson Miguel Angel Sanchez Reyes.

Rivero was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year after founding an independent news agency in 1995 and participating in the establishment of the first independent association of journalists in Cuba in 2001.

"I thank UNESCO for having chosen Raul Rivero to represent all those in Cuba and throughout the world who defend the liberty of ideas and their free expression," Sanchez Reyes said.

The award was named after Colombian journalist Guillermo Cano, who was murdered in 1987 for exposing the activities of powerful drug barons.

Media professionals who attended the conference on ‘Media in Conflict and Countries of Transition’ agreed with UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura that "freedom of expression and freedom of the press are prerequisites for the participation of citizens in the democratic lives of their societies."

But many of them, coming from Africa, Latin America or the Middle East, say that the road to such freedom is thorny and dangerous.

"Before that, the problem of safety is crucial," Rodney Pinder who heads the International News Safety Institute in London told IPS. "Just the Iraq war has claimed 38 dead," he said. "But it’s a scary list, as journalists died also in Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire), Somalia, Kashmir, Palestine, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Congo, Guatemala, Nepal, Colombia, Brazil and Russia. We really need to move from a culture of reaction to one of prevention."

Andrew Puddephatt, executive director of the London-based Article 19, a freedom watchdog, warned that a simplified approach to different media in different areas is dangerous.

"The international community has made mistakes by trying to impose similar standards in different places," Puddephatt told IPS. "It’s a superficial approach that is also marked with the shifting of the attention of media donors from one place to another. They should coordinate their strategy and not leave places dry as their caravan moves on."

Members from the Central Asian and Southern Caucasian region comprising eight countries of the former Soviet Union (with about 80 million people) spoke of other kinds of problems.

"The region itself is of great concern to international human rights organisations in general," said Azer Hasret, chairman of the Central Asian and Southern Caucasian Freedom of Expression Network (CASCFEN). "Some countries enjoy a portion of media freedom, while others suffer from very tight dictatorship. A lot has to be done first to prevent intimidation of journalists, as there are more than a hundred cases of violation of their rights each year in each country."

Media professionals from the countries of former Yugoslavia such as Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia & Montenegro pointed to problems brought by transition to a market economy.

"No doubt that the Balkans is a paradigm of the post-conflict situation," Nebojsa Spaic, head of Belgrade Media Centre told IPS. "But there is more to it. In the situation when most of us are turning from non-democratic to democratic societies, media remain the outlet for people in power."

The financial and political elite, "joined or combined, takes over the media and abuses them for their purposes," Spaic said. "It’s doubtful when the professional journalist ethics will step onto the scene, if ever."