"30 court processes against local media in progress"

BELGRADE Lawsuits with "enormous compensation requests" are still being filed against the media, Belgrade-based daily Vecernje Novosti is reporting. The courts were accepting them "without any selection,", the newspaper writes today, noting that this is true "despite the announcements by associations of journalists to strongly reply to ever increasing draconian penalties against the media." "30 court processes against local media in progress" Currently, there are 30 processes in progress against the local media and the compensation requests range up to five million Serbian dinars (RSD). The First Basic Court in Belgrade alone has 400 cases started by photographers who demand compensation from the media that have taken their photos from news agencies and attributed the work only to the agencies, not them personally. The compensations so far, according to attorney Dragan Lazarevic, ranged up to one million RSD. The unrealistic nature of the demands is probably illustrated the best by the fact that Serbian courts have ordered payment of RSD 200,000 to 300,000 to the families that lost their members during the armed clashes in 1990s, the daily writes. Attorney Gorica Lazic said that there were cases in which the court failed to determine the compensation for mental suffering if the suffering, according to them, "was not big." Thus, it turns out that the human life and fear of death are cheaper than "the insults that someone feels when he opens the newspapers and finds a text about him that he does not like." Becejski Mozaik thus prosecuted Serbia at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. “We have published an article in which a report stated an example of the local police officer who pushed his gun in the mouths of the people who were arrested. We had to pay 150,000 RSD of basic compensation and the costs of the trial, because the police officer did not deny that he pushed the gun in their mouths, but because we have written that he was 'an employee in police department', without stating his rank and because the report evaluated that this action should be a reason for lustration”, editor-in-chief Vlada Filipcev said. The local media are "easily beaten in the court by criminals too," says Vecernje Novosti. “We lost a case against a man who was prosecuted by a public prosecutor for extortion and kidnapping. In spite of the fact that we quoted the prosecutor and that he was sentenced on 3.3 years of imprisonment, the court concluded that we breached the presumption of innocence”, Filipcev said. The sentence of the Municipal Court in Becej was confirmed by the County Court in Novi Sad and the media turned to Strasbourg in 2007 and their complaint was accepted. “Various local people in power are paying the poor Romani or other people to prosecute the media," continued the article. For each lawsuit, Lazarevic explained, the media must pay a tax that could go up to RSD 100,000. When the newspapers win a case, they cannot charge the tax from the person that loses because the poorest people do not have to pay the expenses. Five such lawsuits could shut down a newspaper, said Vecrnje Novosti. "These things happened in Vojvodina and in southern Serbia. Another Belgrade-based electronic media had to pay compensation because it published an official announcement from the website of Canadian Embassy in which Canada was offering a reward for the information about the people wanted for war crimes. Two people from that list sued the media and won in the first degree," Vecernje Novosti reported. (FoNet, file) VIP Vecernje novosti

"30 court processes against local media in progress"

Currently, there are 30 processes in progress against the local media and the compensation requests range up to five million Serbian dinars (RSD).

The First Basic Court in Belgrade alone has 400 cases started by photographers who demand compensation from the media that have taken their photos from news agencies and attributed the work only to the agencies, not them personally.

The compensations so far, according to attorney Dragan Lazarević, ranged up to one million RSD. The unrealistic nature of the demands is probably illustrated the best by the fact that Serbian courts have ordered payment of RSD 200,000 to 300,000 to the families that lost their members during the armed clashes in 1990s, the daily writes.

Attorney Gorica Lazić said that there were cases in which the court failed to determine the compensation for mental suffering if the suffering, according to them, "was not big." Thus, it turns out that the human life and fear of death are cheaper than "the insults that someone feels when he opens the newspapers and finds a text about him that he does not like."

Bečejski Mozaik thus prosecuted Serbia at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

“We have published an article in which a report stated an example of the local police officer who pushed his gun in the mouths of the people who were arrested. We had to pay 150,000 RSD of basic compensation and the costs of the trial, because the police officer did not deny that he pushed the gun in their mouths, but because we have written that he was 'an employee in police department', without stating his rank and because the report evaluated that this action should be a reason for lustration”, editor-in-chief Vlada Filipčev said.

The local media are "easily beaten in the court by criminals too," says Večernje Novosti.

“We lost a case against a man who was prosecuted by a public prosecutor for extortion and kidnapping. In spite of the fact that we quoted the prosecutor and that he was sentenced on 3.3 years of imprisonment, the court concluded that we breached the presumption of innocence”, Filipčev said.

The sentence of the Municipal Court in Bečej was confirmed by the County Court in Novi Sad and the media turned to Strasbourg in 2007 and their complaint was accepted.

“Various local people in power are paying the poor Romani or other people to prosecute the media," continued the article. For each lawsuit, Lazarević explained, the media must pay a tax that could go up to RSD 100,000.

When the newspapers win a case, they cannot charge the tax from the person that loses because the poorest people do not have to pay the expenses. Five such lawsuits could shut down a newspaper, said Večrnje Novosti.

"These things happened in Vojvodina and in southern Serbia. Another Belgrade-based electronic media had to pay compensation because it published an official announcement from the website of Canadian Embassy in which Canada was offering a reward for the information about the people wanted for war crimes. Two people from that list sued the media and won in the first degree," Večernje Novosti reported.