President Milan Milutinovic
President of Serbia
Belgrade
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Vienna, 18 November 1999

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, respectfully requested visas for a delegation to travel to Belgrade from 12-16 November 1999. On 12 November, we were informed by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in Vienna, that the IPI delegation had been officially refused permission to visit your country. The delegation had the following objectives:

  • To conduct a fact-finding mission in order to assess the current state of press freedom in Serbia.
  • To present a recent IPI publication, “The Kosovo News and Propaganda War,” which is a collection of over 75 articles by leading journalists and media analysts from over 40 countries. The book examines and challenges the media’s overall coverage of the Kosovo conflict; questions the sources of information; outlines the obstacles that were erected to impede free reporting; asks where and how truth got lost or distorted; and probes for media lessons worth learning from this tragic experience.
  • To visit an IPI member in prison, Nebojsa Ristic, editor-in-chief of TV Soko in Sokobanja, eastern Serbia, who was handed down a one-year prison sentence on 27 April for allegedly “provoking unrest among citizens and causing them to mistrust the decisions of state agencies.”

IPI deeply regrets the refusal of our delegation’s right to travel to your country, as it prevents us from providing an objective perspective of the media situation in Serbia, and sends out a clear message that the Yugoslav authorities have no intention of re-integrating their country into the European society of states. We urge Your Excellency to ensure that members of the International Press Institute, as well as journalists from around the world who wish to report from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, are issued visas without further hindrance, and that this is organised within a reasonable timeframe. IPI fully intends to re-apply for visas and sincerely hopes that our request will receive a positive response. I thank you in advance for your kind co-operation and await your prompt reply.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director