Serbia

New York, October 18, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces the attack on Vesna Bojicis, Kosovo correspondent for the Serbian-language service of Voice of America (VOA) radio. An unidentified assailant stormed into Bojicis’ home Tuesday night, beat her, and threatened to kill her because of her reporting, according to local press reports.

The attacker knocked on Bojicis’ apartment door in the village of Caglavica, near the provincial capital, Pristina, on Tuesday night, reports said. When she answered the door, a masked assailant forced his way into the apartment, hit Bojicis repeatedly on the head, condemned her work for VOA, and cited her purported “bias in favor of Albanians,” the Belgrade-based Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) reported. The attacker told Bojicis that this was her “final warning” and that he would kill her and abduct her child if she did not stop her reporting, ANEM said.

August 9, 2007
POSTED September 12, 2007

Stefan Cvetkovic, TNT, Bela Crkva
THREATENED

On August 9, Cvetkovic, editor in chief of the independent radiotelevision station TNT in the city of Bela Crkva, about 100 km (62 miles) east of the capital, Belgrade, received two anonymous phone calls from an unidentified number. A male voice threatened to kill him and uttered profanities at him, the independent Belgrade-based broadcaster B92 reported. Cvetkovic believes the threats are in response to his station’s critical coverage of local authorities.

New York, April 17, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by an attack against Dejan Anastasijevic, an investigative reporter and editor for the Belgrade weekly magazine Vreme. One of two hand grenades planted on a window sill outside the journalist’s bedroom exploded at 2:50 a.m. Friday, Anastasijevic told CPJ.

“We commend the authorities’ efforts to protect our colleague, Dejan Anastasijevic, and his family,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “But we reiterate our alarm at this heinous attack on a prominent, independent journalist and his family, and we call on authorities to bring those responsible to justice as soon as possible.”

New York, April 3, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats made against Dinko Gruhonjic, head of the Vojvodina branch of the independent news agency BETA and chairman of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, by a local neo-Nazi group.

The threats, which were posted on a neo-Nazi Web site this week, stem from Gruhonjic’s coverage of National Formation, a neo-Nazi group based in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, the journalist told CPJ. Gruhonjic’s reports publicized the group’s activities, including a 2005 organized attack where neo-Nazis armed with crowbars, attacked participants marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht—a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria in 1938—according to local and international press reports.