Who’s Crushing Dissent?
Media Monitor | By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid | June 4, 1999
NATO has been bombing Serbian radio and TV stations, killing journalists in the process.
In his recent speech on Kosovo, President Clinton strongly denounced Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, saying “he uses repression and censorship at home to stifle dissent and to conceal what he is doing in Kosovo.” Clinton’s answer to this, which he didn’t articulate, is worse than repression and censorship. NATO has been bombing Serbian radio and TV stations, killing journalists in the process. Over in the Serb republic of Bosnia, which is under NATO occupation, the methods of censorship and repression are not as blatant as bombing and killing. But they are real nonetheless. And, ironically, a story about U.S.-engineered censorship in Bosnia appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on the very day that Clinton gave his speech denouncing Milosevic for censorship. In fact, the article used a journalistic device of citing several examples of censorship and asking the reader to consider that Milosevic or some other Serb nationalist was orchestrating this particular attack on a free press. It turned out that the drive for censorship and control was coming, in part, from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had supplied media equipment to a broadcaster and was now threatening to take it back. Here is what the Journal reported about heavy-handed U.S. attempts to censor Bosnian Serb media: “Last month, regulators ordered one small TV channel to stop broadcasting when it promoted anti-NATO protests; it initially defied the order but went off the air…and is negotiating to get back on. And authorities are insisting that other stations balance their Belgrade-inspired reports with Western views.” This is happening because Bosnia is not the place that President Clinton claims it is. In the speech we quoted earlier, Clinton said, “...with all the difficulties, the tensions, the dark memories that still exist in Bosnia, the Serbs, the Muslims and the Croats are still at peace and still working together.” But this is almost complete nonsense. Bosnia is being held together by 30,000 foreign troops, including 7,000 Americans, which constitute a NATO-led force. In that speech, Clinton actually went further, saying, “Nobody claims that we can make everyone love each other overnight. That is not required. But what is required are basic norms of civilized conduct.” He suggested this is happening in Bosnia What he really means is that “civilized conduct” is going to be enforced at the point of a barrel of a gun. Technically, Bosnia is a NATO protectorate, where bureaucrats appointed by the United Nations run the country. The key one is Carlos Westendorp. He has the complete authority to call in the NATO peacekeepers to intimidate broadcasters or even take stations off the air. After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began, armed NATO peacekeepers were ordered into Bosnian Serb broadcasting stations to tell the journalists that they had to report the news in a manner approved by NATO or else they would be taken off the air. Robert Gillette, deputy director of the so-called Independent Media Commission, told the Journal that, “If somebody felt a little intimidated, good.” This commission is partly funded by the U.S. State Department and runs the local media. Which means that you’re helping to pay for repression and censorship.
Reed Irvine is the former Chairman of Accuracy In Media and Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report.
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