Media organisations urged the Serbian authorities to lift the entry restrictions imposed on BIRN Montenegro’s Vuk Maras and TV journalist Petar Komnenic in retaliation for Montenegro barring a Serbian pro-government editor from entering the country.
Samir Kajosevic
Vuk Maras. Photo: BIRN.
The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), the SafeJournalists Network and the International Press Institute (IPI) have called on the authorities in Belgrade to revoke the decisions barring BIRN Montenegro’s executive director Vuk Maras and TV Vijesti programme host Petar Komnenic from entering Serbia.
The media organisations described the entry bars on professional journalists as unacceptable and contrary to principles of media freedom.
“The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) condemns any restrictions on the freedom of movement of journalists and citizens in any country, unless based on a final court decision made in accordance with the law and international human rights standards,” ANEM said in a statement [when].
“We call on the European Commission to protect journalists whose freedom of movement is unjustly restricted, preventing them from performing their professional journalistic work, as well as to mediate in establishing conditions that will allow for the unhindered and professional work of journalists in the region,” it added.
The SafeJournalists Network called on the Serbian authorities to “clarify whether similar measures have been imposed on any other journalists or media workers from Montenegro”.
BIRN said that the Serbian authorities’ decision was unacceptable and “represents a blow to media freedom”.
The president of the Media Union of Montenegro, Radomir Krackovic, said that media workers must not be used as “bargaining chips in relations between two states”.
“If the authorities of one country believe that another state has acted improperly towards one of its citizens, the response cannot be to identify a journalist or media worker against whom retaliatory measures will be applied,” Krackovic said.
Maras and Komnenic were barred from entering Serbia as part of Belgrade’s response to the decision of the Montenegrin authorities to bar the owner and editor-in-chief of Serbia’s pro-government Informer TV, Dragan J. Vucicevic, from entering Montenegro.
Vucicevic was barred from entering Montenegro on June 26 after referring to Montenegrin institutions as “anti-Serb” and “Ustasha” (Croatian World War II-era fascists) on Informer TV, accusing them of directly endangering the life of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Vucic said on July 4 that the Serbian authorities would respond “reciprocally” to the bar on Vucicevic “in accordance with the fact that the state has to react to hostile acts towards its citizens”.
After Komnenic was banned from entering Serbia, Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic argued that the measure was not reciprocal because Vucicevic “continually insults Montenegro, its citizens and state officials in his public appearances and with the content he publishes”.
Maras, who was barred from entering Serbia and then deported on Monday, has announced that he will launch a legal challenge.
