Committee on Culture Votes Down Discussing Informer Interview

Protest Held outside Daily Informer Building, Belgrade, September 28 2022(BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

The Serbian parliament's Committee on Culture and Information on Oct. 3 voted down discussion of an interview with a rapist recently published in the Informer daily.

Chair Sinisa Kovacevic of the People's Party proposed the agenda, which got votes from members from the Democratic Party, the United caucus, the Green-Left Bloc and the Dveri (Doors) and Oath-Keepers parties.

Kovacevic said the issue was not "that the interview came out," but that "a scandalous interview came out" causing "revictimization of the victims and reliving of the ordeal of the women who went through that."

During the discussion, Serbian Progressive Party MPs Nebojsa Bakarec and Snezana Jovanovic dismissed the topic as an attempt to privatize and misuse institutions.

The Progressive party "treats all media outlets equally. We will never include items like this in a session of the Committee on Culture and Information, perform inquisition of media outlets or witch hunts, or condemn any media outlet," Bakarec declared, stating that the Committee session whose agenda included "considering the manner in which the interview" with convicted serial rapist Igor Milosevic "in the Informer newspaper was compiled and published" was in fact "an attack on (Serbian President Aleksandar) Vucic."