THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 20 (Hina) - A French media expert, Renaud de la Brosse, on Tuesday continued giving his testimony at the Slobodan Milosevic trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) about
the instrumenatlisation of local media for the purpose of a project of the creation of a Greater Serbia.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 20 (Hina) - A French media expert, Renaud de
la Brosse, on Tuesday continued giving his testimony at the
Slobodan Milosevic trial before the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) about the
instrumenatlisation of local media for the purpose of a project of
the creation of a Greater Serbia. #L#
De la Brosse, a professor at Reims University, has compiled a report
on the long-standing propaganda in the area of the former Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), entitled "The Media in the
Heart of the Yugoslav War" (in an unauthorised translation).
The report, made at the request of the tribunal's prosecution, is
supplemented with analyses of television and press features.
The French expert's report says that the indictee Milosevic, a
former Serbian and Yugoslav President, used the media for the
purpose of nationalist propaganda in order to justify before
citizens the creation of a state within which all Serbs would live.
The French professor explained methods of stigmatising Croats and
Bosniaks, and programmes of TV Belgrade and TV Pale (which during
the war was the stronghold of Bosnian Serb hard-liners) were
broadcast in the courtroom. In those programmes, alleged witnesses
spoke about "horrendous atrocities against Serbs, massacres of the
wounded, pieces of hacked children in pans, Tudjman's butchers...
concentration camps, knives etc.".
"The authorities in Serbia-Montenegro knew very well about the
fatal role of its media in the dissemination of ethnic and religious
hatred," De la Brosse said and added that Milosevic had full control
over the propaganda machine, appointing editors and revising press
releases, selecting news items and defining their chronological
order.
The witness pointed to the significant role played by the
indictee's wife, Mira Markovic, who "in her articles in Belgrade's
Duga (newspaper) announced exactly what would happen".
On the second day of his testimony, Renaud de la Brosse again
emphasised the role played in that propaganda machinery by Dobrica
Cosic, a former Yugoslav president whom he labelled "a historical
figure of Serb nationalism".
A TV feature in which Cosic explains "how Serbia is a victim of the
genocidal plot" was broadcast in the courtroom as well.
Dobrica Cosic is also one of authors of the notorious 1986 Serbian
Academy of Arts and Sciences Memorandum, which served as an
ideological framework for Milosevic's bids to set up a Greater
Serbia.
Cross-examining the witness, the indictee Milosevic claimed that
the French expert's testimony served only to "demonize Serbs", and
cited alleged reasons for the dismissing his report.
On Wednesday, a former Slovenian president, Milan Kucan, takes the
witness stand in the ICTY courtroom to explain the circumstances of
the collapse of the then ruling Alliance of Communists in the SFRY
in 1991 and the disintegration of the SFRY.
(hina) ms sb