Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-16-Speech-4-208"
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"en.20000316.7.4-208"2
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"Mr President, apparently, the Milosevic regime is not tired of fighting battles, not by a long shot. Recently, it has taken systematic action against local stations, in particular. It does not flinch from using violence in these activities. Neither do the government-run media shrink from launching a full-blown witch hunt against the country’s independent media. They are then termed rather scornfully ‘NATO agents’ and ‘traitors of the mother country’.
It is not by chance that the powerful Serbian police apparatus operates mainly at local level, especially in those towns and cities where the opposition emerged victorious in the 1996 local elections. With the same elections round the corner and parliamentary elections not too far off either, many in Serbia suspect that the Milosevic regime has already launched its own campaign.
The target, regional radio and television stations, is an obvious one from a Milosevic viewpoint. Anyone in Serbia’s small and medium-sized towns who wants to see and hear anything other than what is spouted parrot-fashion by the state media based in Belgrade is heavily reliant on these stations. By the way: the few independent papers that do exist are hard to come by in the provinces. This once again underlines the significance of a political counter weight on the Serbian air waves.
As can be expected, Serbia’s dictator is fighting his battle against the as yet independent media in an underhand manner. Legalistic arguments over missing licences or outstanding financial state payments mask the true political intentions: to silence his own people as much as possible. What did receive the official seal of approval for the Serbian population, however, were the politically correct pop music stations of Slobo’s son Marko and daughter Marija.
Given this sad situation, all those in Serbia who stand up for the freedom of the press deserve our support. This is not just verbal support, but also tangible support in the form of new transmission equipment being provided to the affected stations, following consultation, as stipulated in paragraph 3 of the present joint resolution. Milosevic’s willing servants are then welcome to hold on to the confiscated technical equipment."@en1
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