The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI), welcomes the prompt police action against three men who physically attacked a TV crew from TV Vijesti. The incident occurred on 18 November 2011 in Niksic, a town 55 kilometers from the Montenegrin capital Podgorica.  The TV crew was filming the Niksic suburb of Humci, when a group of three men began insulting and hitting them.

At the same time, SEEMO notes that four cars belonging to the daily Vijesti were torched in recent months and that none of the perpetrators in those incidents has been identified.

In a separate development, SEEMO welcomes the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of Koprivica vs. Montenegro. The ECHR ruling stated that Montenegro violated Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights by ordering a magazine editor to pay damages worth 25 times his monthly pension. This decision breached his human rights, according to the decision.

The Koprivica case dates back to September 1995, when the then editor-in-chief of the magazine Liberal published an article entitled “Sixteen”.  The article reported that a series of journalists – 16 of them from Montenegro – were going to be tried for incitement to war by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). One of the sixteen journalists, the editor of a major state-owned media outlet, complained in court that the article damaged his reputation, and asked for compensation.

In 2004, the Court of First Instance ordered Koprivica to pay 5,000 euros as compensation, and in 2009 the court specified that the damages should be paid in regular transfers amounting to half of his pension.

The ECHR decision read: “The Court noted that the final civil court judgment had undoubtedly been an interference with Mr. Koprivica’s right to freedom of expression.”

SEEMO has praised Montenegro’s decision to decriminalise defamation, but the organisation condemns disproportionally elevated defamation fines.

Commenting on the two developments, SEEMO Secretary-General Oliver Vujovic said: “While I am happy that the police acted rapidly to identify the men who attacked the TV Vijesti crew, I would also like to remind police authorities that there are still unsolved cases. As for the ECHR decision, SEEMO believes that defamation fines should not exceed a total of six average monthly journalists’ salaries in a particular country.”