H. E. Slobodan Milosevic
President of Yugoslavia
Belgrade
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Vienna, 7 July 1998

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI) strongly condemns the recent closing of Radio Kontakt, an independent radio station in Pristina, the capital of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

On 1 July 1998, Radio Kontakt was closed by Serbian policeman and some of its equipment was seized. The station, which started operating in June 1998, was shut down just two days after is started re-broadcasting news programmes from Radio B92, the principal independent radio station in Serbia. Broadcasting in Albanian and Serbian, Radio Kontakt was the first multi-cultural media outlet in Kosovo and aimed to assert itself as a radio of “good-will and reconciliation.”

IPI is informed that the station was closed because it did not have a broadcasting license from the Yugoslav Ministry of Telecommunications and was therefore operating illegally. In a news conference on 3 July, Yugoslav Information Secretary Goran Matic claimed that “Radio Kontakt was banned because it did not tender in the competition for frequency allocation. … No station can broadcast without a license. This is a technical issue rather than a political one.” However, we understand that Radio Kontakt had in fact tendered for a frequency and even received a note from the Ministry that its application documentation was complete and that the station would be issued a license.

IPI, the global network of editors and media executives, believes that the decision to close Radio Kontakt is part of an ongoing campaign by the authorities to stifle the voice of the independent electronic media in Yugoslavia in general and objective information regarding the Kosovo crises in particular. We therefore urge Your Excellency to ensure that the authorities immediately re-open the station and return all seized items. We further urge you to do everything in your power to end the campaign of harassment being waged against the independent media in Yugoslavia.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director