His Excellency Slobodan Milosevic
President of Yugoslavia
Belgrade
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Vienna, 24 March 1999

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, strongly condemns the banning of Radio B92 in Belgrade.

We are informed that Radio B92, the country’s leading independent radio station ,was shut down by Yugoslav authorities at 2:50 a.m. on 24 March. Two technical operatives of the Yugoslav Federal Telecommunications Ministry, accompanied by about ten policemen, entered the station’s premises and instructed its staff to immediately discontinue broadcasts.

Giving no justification, the officials also detained the station’s editor-in-chief, Veran Matic, and took him to an undisclosed location.

An official note presented to the staff of Radio B92 said that the station was banned because the strength of its transmitter exceeded the allowed level of 300 watts, “which constitutes a misdemeanour as defined by Article 141, Paragraph 1, Point 6.”

IPI regards the move to shut down Radio B92 as the latest in a series of attempts by the Yugoslav authorities to silence the critical voice of the country’s independent and opposition media, and a gross violation of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” as guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We therefore strongly urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that Veran Matic is released immediately and unconditionally and that RadioB92 is allowed to resume broadcasting. We further urge you to abandon your campaign to clamp down on the independent media and to ensure that all journalists are allowed to objectively report on the latest developments in Yugoslavia.

We thank you for your attention.

Your sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director