Journalists Decry Information Minister’s Scandalous Remark

Veran Matic (BETAPHOTO/SASA DJORDJEVIC)

On April 6, Veran Matic, the president of the Association of Independent Digital Media (ANEM), sent an open letter to European institutions regarding Serbian Information Minister Boris Bratina’s remark that the country’s protesting university students are unaware “the police have the right to beat and kill them.”

“The freedom of journalists and the media in Serbia has never been at a lower point. In such circumstances, the office of minister of information and telecommunications of the Serbian government – which declaratively supports pro-European policies – is held by a former member of a pro-fascist movement, who garnered media attention for publicly and proudly burning the European Union flag,” Matic wrote in the letter to the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the OSCE and the European Court of Human Rights.

Commenting further on Bratina’s claim that the police have the right to beat and kill students under certain circumstances, Matic said the minister is a symbol of the current regime. Matic went on to stress that the problem is not just such rhetoric but the government’s policy of violence which has taken over the country in the last year and a half.

Serbian Minister of Information and Telecommunications Boris Bratina said on April 6 that he "never said anyone, especially students," should be exposed to violence and that his "words were taken out of the broader context and interpreted in a way that does not reflect the essence of what [he] wanted to communicate."

"My statement referred solely to the broader social and historical context within which I was speaking about the emergence of extreme and anarchist ideologies that in history often led to escalation of violence and tragic outcomes. In that context, I pointed out the fact that any state, in accordance with the law, has the obligation to protect constitutional order, institutions and the security of its citizens, especially in situations when there is violence, attacks on police, the military and state bodies," the minister said.