Unacceptable new attacks on deputy prime minister and return of hate speech

Unacceptable new attacks on deputy prime minister and return of hate speech

Belgrade - The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly protests over the article published in today’s edition of the Belgrade daily Kurir, which is just the continuation of unacceptable nationalistic campaign against the Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, Ivana Dulić-Marković.

Following the previous verbal attacks from the parliamentary stand of the Member of Parliament Zoran Krasić and president of the Leskovac Municipal Council Goran Cvetanović, both high officials of the Serbian Radical Party, the article published in Kurir claims that, after the World War II, Dulić-Marković’s father and uncle were the collaborators of Ivan Jovanović Crni, charged for crimes against Serbs and sentenced to death penalty by hanging in Mostar in 1957.

The daily Kurir titled the article in its recognizable style, with the tendentious, utterly unprofessional and volatile label “Ustasha’s collaborator”. The article, published on the cover of the newspaper, does not however offer any argument contributing to the title or the theory that Dulić's were helping or hiding someone more than fifty years ago.

ANEM reminds that the District Prosecutions in Belgrade and Leskovac had dismissed the complaints against Krasic and Cvetanović earlier this year. At that point, the prosecutions had found that their statements contained no elements of racial, religious or chauvinistic campaigns and therefore had no legal grounds for the charges. Such effortless position of the two prosecutions only helped the irresponsible media to continue their campaigns, not just against Ivana Dulić-Marković, who was not even born then, but against diverse Serbia that denounces religious or ethnic discrimination and violence and strives for the integration into more civilized and democratic society.

ANEM insists that the appropriate authorities, fully aware of the unacceptable return of the hate speech as a communication model in this country, find the way to confront the irresponsible public outbursts. ANEM also urges media and professional associations to act in solidarity with victims of insolent attacks and distance themselves from those who use journalism as profession to break all professional codes and principles in order to promote ethnic intolerance and hatred.

Sasa Mirković, ANEM Chairman