ZAGREB, April 14 (Hina) - An increase in lawsuits against journalists and publishers, police raids and bugging of editorial offices and reporters' flats as well as physical attacks against reporters showed that the state of affairs in
the sector of Croatia's media did not improve in 1999 as against 1998, read a an extensive report of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. The Committee's 100-page report was presented in Zagreb on Friday. Last year, reporters were beaten, intimidated, tapped and exposed to systematic police abuse when they were brought for questioning, read the report's introduction. According to findings of the monitoring, last year over 1,000 legal actions were instigated against reporters or publishers in courts. Complaining parties, generally HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) officials, surpassed the amount of 65 million German marks requesting damages for
ZAGREB, April 14 (Hina) - An increase in lawsuits against
journalists and publishers, police raids and bugging of editorial
offices and reporters' flats as well as physical attacks against
reporters showed that the state of affairs in the sector of
Croatia's media did not improve in 1999 as against 1998, read a an
extensive report of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human
Rights. The Committee's 100-page report was presented in Zagreb on
Friday.
Last year, reporters were beaten, intimidated, tapped and exposed
to systematic police abuse when they were brought for questioning,
read the report's introduction.
According to findings of the monitoring, last year over 1,000 legal
actions were instigated against reporters or publishers in courts.
Complaining parties, generally HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union)
officials, surpassed the amount of 65 million German marks
requesting damages for suffering "mental anguish".
Over 100 reporters are being sued for slander in 250 cases, and in 15
cases state attorney have initiated actions, in the line of duty,
against them for the alleged libel of top state officials.
The Croatian Helsinki Committee maintains that the manipulation of
the Croatian Television (HTV) by the then ruling party HDZ in 1999
assumed scopes of national cultural shame. The HDZ controlled all
the three channels of the national television last year, the
Committee asserted.
It added that the highest number of cases of censorship related to
the HTV. The report cited individual cases of censorship in the
national news agency - HINA - and local television house AT (in
Dalmatia), and the ban on the magazine "Polemos" due to an article
written by Ozren Zunec, who is now the incumbent head of the
Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS).
The Committee asks from new authorities to start soon changing all
laws which former authorities used for the restriction of the media
freedom.
The Committee assessed that there were still cases of intimidation
of reporters, legal actions were being initiated in the line of
duty, sources of information were not equally available to
everybody and journalists could not get files intelligence
services had made about them.
(hina) jn ms