Serbia Bans Entry for Montenegrin Journalist Vuk Maras

Vuk Maras (Photo: PrintScreen YouTube)

Montenegro’s journalist and executive director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in the country, Vuk Maras, said on July 6 that he had been barred from entering Serbia at Belgrade airport, from where he was due to continue his journey to Rome.

“I was served with an order denying me entry to the Republic of Serbia, citing a protective measure of removal, a security measure to expel a foreign national, i.e.  a ban on entering the Republic of Serbia. I am currently waiting for a flight to Podgorica in a police office, so they can deport me,” Maras wrote on Facebook, posting a photograph of the order he had received.

The Montenegrin journalist said that during the layover before his flight to Rome he had planned to go into central Belgrade, and that the police officers who told him “to wait for further information were very polite and professional.” Maras said he believed the move was part of Belgrade’s continued reciprocal measures against people coming from Montenegro’s media community, and that he had “earned” the ban because of his open criticism of the state of media freedom in Serbia.

Maras believes that entry bans could bring anything good to anyone. “Even in the case of (the editor of Belgrade’s Informer) Dragan Vucicevic, whom I consider a go-to media poisoner, primarily of Serbian citizens and then of all others who share the same language area, banning him from entering Montenegro can hardly yield anything constructive. What is needed against propaganda and media poisoning are institutional solutions with a long-term effect, which these bans are not,” Maras said.

Last week, Serbian authorities imposed an entry ban on Montenegrin TV Vijesti journalist Petar Komnenic, after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had heralded  reciprocal measures over the Montenegrin authorities’ decision to bar Informer editor Dragan Vucicevic from entering Montenegro.