Serbia / Europe & Central Asia

By Chrystyna Lapychak Wars in Yugoslavia and Chechnya dominated regional and international headlines in 1999. The conflicts raised the journalists’ death toll in the region and prompted crackdowns, as governments blocked access to war zones and engaged in propaganda campaigns.

[Click here for full list of documented cases] At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In…

New York, December 8, 1999 — The Belgrade daily newspapers Blic and Danas and the Studio B television station have been fined a total of 970,000 dinars (about $32,333 at the official rate of exchange) in a defamation case brought against them under the Serbian Information Law. The fines were announced Wednesday afternoon following a…

1999 17-June-99  CPJ update: Correspondents Shot in Kosovo; Yugoslav Army Harassment Continues in Montenegro; While Exiled Daily Distributes in Pristina. British journalists injured in Kosovo attack 14-June-99 CPJ Update:German Journalists Killed in Kosovo 09-June-99 CPJ Update: Two Journalists Escape, While One Faces Trial in Yugoslavia 12-May-99 CPJ Update: Journalists Caught in the Crossfire 27-April-99 CPJ Update: Milosevic regime tightens…

1999 23-April-99 State-run Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) Target of NATO Missle Attack

“When the bombs began falling in Yugoslavia on March 24, the seven Serb journalists who happened to be visiting our offices in New York during a tour of the United States all ran for the phones. They were worried about the families they had left behind, but they also feared for the survival of Serbia’s…

Research Conducted in July 1999

Dangerous Assignments

A retired Croatian general, critical of President Franjo Tudjman’s drive to turn this small country into a military power in the Balkans, took to the airwaves today to spell out what he said was the folly of such a course.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization based in the United States, is dedicated to defending the rights of journalists around the world. Since the Dayton Peace Accords, the treaty that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, and signed in Paris in December, 1995, CPJ has…