Serbia is still lagging behind the developed democracies and this long-term practice is not to be changed at any foreseeable future. Criticism is still seen exclusively as an assault, and only an article is sufficient for someone to accuse you of organizing a coup.

By Ratko Femić (Journalist) 
@RFemic

Citizens of Serbia have recently witnessed a rather strange and unprecedented thing – though one would think everything has already been seen in the region. Minister of the Interior held a press conference during which standing behind him were heavily armed members of the special police units wearing masks, thus making it all seem as if a state of emergency was being declared in the country. Days prior to the event, some cabinet ministers, TV Pink and tabloid Informer had taken part in increasing tensions and causing a panic by predicting a coup.

The police was unnecessarily abused after the daily paper “Kurir” published its front-page thus questioning honesty of Prime Minister and people close to him. In order for the story about the coup to be credible, a man seen several times during the day in front of Prime Minister’s residence was arrested. All this political and police setting including the Minister and the masked special forces pushed to add drama. Nevertheless, the man who was arrested as a conspirator was released from custody a couple of days later.

No one was held responsible for spreading panic, abuse of the police, usage of psychiatric diagnosis for the purpose of discrediting people, and manipulating police investigation information.

Many things have been changed in functioning of the military, police and security services; some of them not taking direction they should have, and some remaining the same. Information from police investigations can still be found in the selected media used as a club against nonsympathizers or government critics. I do not refer solely to the leak of the privileged information, but the quality of the information itself used for the purpose of manipulating the public.

Truth on a lie-detector

Imagine a democratic country the Prime Minister of which after having been accused for some trivial matter asked the police to take a polygraph test and Minister of the Interior stated that his boss had passed the test meaning he had been telling truth, and those refusing to take the same test were liars. The very news about refusal to take the test was being reported during the questioning.

Best-man of Serbian Prime Minister, general manager of Elektromreža Srbije, Nikola Petrović has also passed the polygraph test after having been accused of racketeering a company. No judicial proceeding was conducted. The man asked to take a lie-detector, took the test, the public was informed he had passed it and that was it. After that the party he is a member of, i.e. the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, asked those who had been accusing him to do the same thing and referred to them as liars.

Then, a businessman from Šabac Miroslav Bogićević accused the former Minister Mladjan Dinkic of racketeering, passed the polygraph test of which the public was informed by a police officer. When did preliminary investigation become something to be stated to the public as the final verdict?
When put like this, it seems that police, military or security services are not protecting the order or themselves, but the regime or plutocracy of a few belonging to the ruling elite.

Democratic Party’s member of parliament, Dragan Šutanovac, has recently asked to take a polygraph test during the trial about undeclared assets, whereupon the judge and the prosecutor answered almost simultaneously: “Let us be serious! Polygraph is not accepted as evidence in our law”. That would imply that Prime Minister and his associates have been deceiving us for months with their polygraph-proved honesty.

Nevertheless, polygraph not being recognized as evidence at the court of law does not make it inappropriate for dealing with nonsympathizers and to remove those considered to be obstacles for handling all levers of power.

For instance, convicted drug lord Darko Šarić accused the former director of the Criminal Police Directorate (UKP) Rodoljub Milović to have staged the process against him and claimed to have paid him seven million Euros. Šarić asked to take a polygraph test and passed it. Police General Milovic also passed lie-detector test after being questioned for the same thing. How come?

Unlike Šarić, Milović went through a proper media torture that ended the moment he was removed from the position of UKP Director without any formal explanation.

Media support

Without media support these manipulations would account for nothing. Media would naturally express interest for the above mentioned cases wanting to inform the public about significant events. However, some of the media are a part of organized campaigns conducted by certain interest groups. Over the past years – this does not imply only to the current government – the ruling elite and its secondary branches have been most often supported interest group organizing media lynch and supporting campaigns against their opponents.

This is precisely what partially influenced harsh words in the European Commission report regarding media in the country. Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia, Michael Davenport also pointed out information leak during investigation processes. Serbia has met many EU standards when it comes to legislative plan, but it needs to work harder on applying legal solutions.

Information gathered from unnamed, informed sources sometimes can be valuable when it comes to the public interest. However, there is always a question of motif of those who provide the information. The fine line between public’s right to be informed and one’s personal interest is more than often hard to be defined. That kind of information usually violates the presumption of innocence, and its publication seems as reading the verdict without the hearing thus invading on person’s privacy and damaging their reputation.

Sometimes the media is provided with the information by the very police. This process is often being manipulated as well, but the situation is much clearer than the one we have more often – the information being provided by politicians and their advisers who gathered it from their sources within the police, military or security services. They usually use the information to serve their own personal agenda and this has nothing to do with the public interest. Transparent situation implies that a police officer provides the information after being asked for it by a journalist he knows as opposed to providing it himself/herself. There are a lot of honest people working within the system who, at one point, having noticed something illegal going on, and not being able to find a solution by taking the regular course of action for it could jeopardize their position or the job, they would contact a journalist they know and provide them with the information.

Minister of the Interior has stated that information does not leak into the media as often as it did in the past and that there are no more announcements of arrests thus warning the criminals. I haven’t actually checked the above mentioned, but somehow I do not share the feeling. Moreover, I think that information that should not be publically available comes from higher levels or is confirmed by high-ranking officials. How else could one interpret the press conference held by Prime Minister Vučić when he referred to Dragoslav Kosmajac as the biggest drug dealer saying that no one had the courage to say it out loud and then the man goes away for a while? When the authorities managed to locate him, he was accused of tax evasion for not reporting the profit made by leasing apartments. In the end, it was established that the biggest drug lord, as Prime Minister referred to him, owed a bit more than 500 Euros to the state. Nevertheless, it is important that during those days everybody dealt with Komsajac while some major issues passed by unnoticed.

Affairs serve as a comfort in the process of distracting the public from the real problems the government is facing.

Wiretapping affair

Here is another example that has nothing to do with the police, but is connected with the information leak during an investigation. It is the only “wiretapping” affair that has been finished. More than a year ago a conference of the Trilateral Commission was organized at the Belgrade “Crowne Plaza” Hotel. During counterintelligence check bugs and cameras were discovered in the salon where Prime Minister Vučić was to hold meetings and talks. Those were found by Military Security Agency (VBA), and photographs of the found devices were published the very next day in a pro-government tabloid “Informer”. The tabloid, some other media, as well as Minister of Justice claimed it was a case of wiretapping Prime Minister. The hotel management claimed that other salons were equipped with the same devices in order for waiters to be able to see the inside of the salon on the monitors positioned in front of it so they would know if there was anyone in. Some form of video surveillance. The affair shook the establishment for long: Prime Minister being a target again… A couple of days ago, during a working lunch with the VBA Director I asked the head of the agency general Petar Cvetković why they had leaked the photos from the investigation to the media. He answered that the photos were theirs, but the agency had not provided them – thus clearly indicating political abuse of the agency, for if it had not been them, then it had to be someone from the Ministry of Defence which is their superior. When asked whether the agency filed a complaint against a Doe for wiretapping Prime Minister, his answer was negative for there had been no criminal offence.

Information leaks and no one investigates how the media get it, for this is how political protagonists are being protected. Also, in case of a legal proceeding it is usually instituted against the journalist who published the information. Actually, the very term “information leak” is a problem in this case. We are talking here about the system, i.e. a rooted organized parallel channel leading to certain media for quite some time. It represents a failure of the system and institutions, for the cases are being opened in the media, mostly tabloids that conduct quasi-investigations, the victims of which never see the court or be convicted. Nevertheless, after such treatment their reputation is damaged, as well as their health and social relations. These occurrences are encouraged by the top structures in the state by actively participating in it, instead of striving to suppress the deviations.

The unprotected Protector of Citizens

On several occasions The Protector of Citizens Saša Janković has warned against this practice and estimated that the most dangerous of all ties between organs of the state and tabloids is the informal one. He personally experienced the alliance between the police and tabloids when they dragged him through media mud for days using the most horrifying accusations, and all with the help of carefully selected court documentation and misshapen interpretation of the already closed case.

It was about the suicide of his friend back in 1993 which was used to cast a shadow of doubt on Jankovic that he was the one who probably committed a murder and then tried to cover it up. In his, as well as in other cases, organs of the state provided tabloids with the information only so these could use the unreliable information and misinformation to hit the target and thus accomplish goals that could otherwise not be accomplished within the institutions.

There is another side to the medal and this is that the channels of the official communication with the media are often jammed when a journalist is in a need of information. Whereas, on one hand, information reaches the media mostly with the help from politicians, on the other hand, the procedure is followed when a journalist makes a request, awaits the answer for several days, gets inadequate information or often no information at all. That is where the appeal to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection comes in handy, but the very procedure also consumes too much time for journalists working in daily papers.

It is often impossible to get the information of public importance, which is inalienable right for the media should be a watchdog of the public interest. Personal data protection and availability of information of public importance are some of the fundamental principles forming the basis of modern democracy, and the balance between the two is a key for development of democratic society.

Nevertheless, Serbia is still lagging behind the developed democracies and this long-term practice is not to be changed at any foreseeable future. In this country, criticism is still seen exclusively as an assault, and only an article is sufficient for someone to accuse you of organizing a coup.