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

Vienna, 7 April 1999

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, condemns the detention of two Spanish television correspondents and a Dutch freelance photographer in Kosovo.

We are informed that Jon Sistiaga Escudero and Bernabe Dominiguez Lopez of Telecinco, and Arie Kievit of the Rotterdam daily Algemeen Dagblad, were detained by Serbian police on Friday, 2 April, when they unwittingly crossed the border with Macedonia, where they were filming refugees arriving by train from Kosovo.

According to our sources, the journalists were held by police for twenty-four hours before being taken to the Grand Hotel in Pristina. We understand that one of the Telecinco journalists, Jon Sistiaga, appeared on Serbian television and said that all three were being treated well and were allowed to walk around Pristina. He also urged for an end to NATO air strikes, which he called “a crime against civilians.”

IPI is concerned about reports that Sistiaga was forced to speak on television and regards the detention of the three journalists as a gross violation of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers,” as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. We urge you to ensure that they are released immediately and unconditionally and that journalists covering events in Yugoslavia are allowed to exercise their profession without further obstruction.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director