The news came at the end of a particularly intense day on Friday: a few hours earlier, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić had announced that, due to the situation in Kosovo, he would request a convocation of the United Nations Security Council. Attention was therefore focused on the events relating to Kosovo and on possible new tensions.

In this context, the news arrived that the Belgrade Court of Appeal acquitted all four defendants accused of the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija.

Ćuruvija, a journalist of great civic spirit, was killed in April 1999 after criticising the regime of Slobodan Milošević and his wife Mira Marković. At that time, Vučić was the Minister of Information.

The four defendants were very prominent figures of the Državna bezbednost (DB), the security agency of the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, heir to the infamous UDBA. Specifically, Radomir Marković was its head at the time, Milan Radonjić was head of the Belgrade department and Ratko Romić   and Miroslav Kurak were DB operatives.

The trial of the four began in 2015, thanks to the  Commission to investigate the killing of journalists in Serbia  . The Commission was created in 2013 by the Serbian government, in which Vučić was then deputy prime minister, as the result of the persistent insistence of Veran Matić, the historic editor-in-chief of B92 at the time of Milošević, who wanted to shed light on the murders of Ćuruvija, Dada Vujasinović and Milan Pantić. At the time of the start of the trial, Vučić himself had said that he would resign   if those responsible were not found.

 

A troubled trial

From the beginning, Ćuruvija’s was defined as a state murder and it was thought that the trial would confirm what everyone knew.

The trial, which began in 2015, saw around a hundred witnesses appear before the judges, although some key figures, such as Milošević’s wife Mira Marković  , believed by many to have instigated the murder, were never heard. The investigation only looked at the facilitators and material executors of the murder, without trying to find out who the instigators were, since this would most likely have led to Mira Marković and Slobodan Milošević.

Other key figures, who could have been investigated   due to their membership and the role they held at the DB, were instead heard only as witnesses. Numerous witnesses then, during the hearings, had sudden amnesia  or changed their initial versions. Over the years, it became known that the inspector who conducted the investigations had been threatened and risked his life  .

The first instance sentence was issued in 2019 and the four defendants were sentenced to over one hundred years in prison. In the second instance, however, the sentence was overturned and in September 2019 the Court of Appeal ordered the trial to be repeated. The trial was repeated starting in October 2020 and in December 2021 the Court of First Instance essentially confirmed the previous decision for the four defendants. This sentence, however, was ultimately annulled by last Friday’s acquittal.

The four are therefore considered not guilty and although in principle there is still the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court, the chances of success are decidedly slim  , as the experts have pointed out, and the acquittal of the four defendants cannot be overturned. In any case, on Monday 5 February, the prosecutor’s office made it clear that it intended to appeal to the Supreme Court.

 

An announced decision

The acquittal is a tombstone on the chances of justice in the Ćuruvija case. But it is a decision that did not come entirely unexpectedly. Although it was only announced last Friday, it seems that it had already been taken for some time.

Veran Matić himself, in the spring of last year, had implied   that the Court of Appeal had already ruled on the case of the four defendants. In September, Matić himself and the Ćuruvija Foundation   had written that in fact the sentence had already been issued and that the Court had acquitted the four defendants. This despite the fact that the sentence had not yet been published, as they were waiting for the most appropriate moment to make it public  . The same invitation to publish the sentence was then reiterated by the  Ćuruvija Foundation in November   last year.

The authorities gave no explanation as to why the publication of the ruling was delayed for so many months. It is possible that the street protests against the government and the heated electoral climate were the elements that recommended delaying the publication of the sentence, so as not to further exacerbate tensions.

 

The reactions and protests

Despite the content of the sentence having been widely anticipated and the fact that the news was communicated just before the weekend, the acquittal decision still caused quite a stir in Serbia.

Perica Gunjić of the Ćuruvija Foundation   is lapidary: “The decision is scandalous and represents a defeat not only for journalists and freedom of the press, but for the entire independence of the judicial system and for the democratisation process itself”.

Regarding the trial, Gunjić comments that “the court during the entire trial made many strange decisions, which indicated that something was wrong. The two first instance decisions were written in an approximate manner, as if there was the intention to have them annulled in the second instance”. This decision, concludes Gunjić, represents an “immediate return to the 90s, to the darkest period of the new history of Serbia, to the times of wars, to the times of Slobodan Milošević”.

Matić then commented that both the political will and the role of the institutions have failed, especially as regards the judicial sector, which in fact remains anchored to the 1990s.

Matić himself then commented that in the next few days he will discuss the future of the commission investigating the killing of journalists and whether it still makes sense for it to exist. The European Union, OSCE and numerous other members of the diplomatic community expressed their disappointment at the acquittal.

Furthermore, on Monday 5 February, a protest was held in front of the Court of Appeal in Belgrade, organised by journalists’ associations: the demonstrators were silent for 25 minutes in front of the Court, symbolising 25 years of silence since the Ćuruvija murder.

 

The reactions of the judicial and political world

On Monday 5, the President of the Court of Appeal of Belgrade published a statement   in which, while he understands the dissatisfaction of Ćuruvija’s family and friends, he specified that the Court judged on the basis of the evidence contained in the case which was not sufficient to support the prosecution’s thesis.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said she could not comment on the Court’s decision as the judiciary is independent. Brnabić stressed how the proceedings had only begun 16 years after the assassination, thanks to Vučić’s coming to power. As a citizen, however, she said she will seek justice.

The Minister of Justice, Maja Popović, however, said she was deeply disappointed   by the decision of the Court of Appeal, saying that the judicial system had not carried out its function. Vučić himself said late in the evening of February 5 that he was shocked by the decision, which is a great injustice and a terribly serious matter for the country.

The predominant feeling among those who followed the trial is one of anger and helplessness, but at the same time there is a dark awareness that the forces that dominated Serbia during the 1990s are still at work, as pointed out by Jelena Ćuruvija, the daughter of the murdered journalist  .

Symbolically, the day after the acquittal, early in the morning on the pro-government television Pink, Aleksandar Vulin, former director of the BIA – the the agency that replaced the DB – and former leading member of Mira Marković’s party in the 1990s, openly declared that his generation’s task is to bring together all Serbs wherever they live   and that this process has already begun and cannot be stopped.

These words closely echo the idea of Greater Serbia and bring the 1990s back to mind.

This statement was coordinated by the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and candidate countries. 

This final decision comes 25 years after the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija, who was shot dead outside his apartment in Belgrade on 11th April 1999. First convicted in 2019, the Court of Appeals confirmed the guilty verdicts in  2020  of the four former members of the State Security Service (SBD), Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak and Ratko Romić. A retrial started in 2022 following additional information related to the facts of the accusation.  The final hearing of the retrial was held in March 2023 and its verdict was only made public last Friday. The Court confirmed the decision of the second instance court and acquitted the defendants due to lack of reliable evidence. This decision is final and cannot be reversed. 

 

The Media Freedom Rapid Response partners strongly denounce the Court’s decision and ultimately the lack of justice rendered for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija. This verdict reinforces an existing climate of hostility against journalists in Serbia, often singled out for their work and targets of harassment and pressure. Further, this decision fails to send a clear message that attacks and violations of journalists’ safety and rights will not be tolerated and will be strongly addressed by the State. Finally, it casts a shadow over the investigations of the killings of two other journalists in Serbia, Milan Pantić in 2001 and Dada Vujasinović in 1994, whose cases still remain unresolved. 

 

We call on the international community to strongly condemn  the lack of accountability in solving Ćuruvija’s case and bring justice to his family. We also urge the Serbian State to ensure justice for the killings of journalists Pantić and Vujasinović, and commit to ensuring a safe climate for all journalists in Serbia.

This statement was coordinated by the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States, Candidate Countries and Ukraine.

It is a decidedly agitated post-election period in Serbia, despite the fact that the month of January is generally considered a calm month given the numerous holidays on the calendar. This year, the heated post-election climate is being reflected in debates on social media and is resulting in actual cases of online violence, which have targeted both the independent press and civil society.

 

Hatred, threats and insults towards journalists

The first targets were Vanja Đurić and Zeljko Veljković, journalists from N1 and Nova television respectively, often critical of the government. The two journalists  , on X, had commented critically on the fact that a fourteen-year-old girl had sung patriotic songs dedicated to Kosovo before a Red Star Belgrade match.

Both were immediately overwhelmed by a wave of comments, insults and threats. Vladimir Đukanović, a leading member of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and very active on X, commented   how the journalists had lost their honour, but as a true believer he felt the dutiy to forgive them, light candles for them and hope that “the absurd hatred they carry in their souls” would one day abandon them.

In his tweet, Đukanović says he is convinced that one day the two journalists will repent and confess the bad actions they have committed. He was joined by other politicians from the extra-parliamentary right. The following tweets by trolls and ordinary people, who instigated further insults   and threats, were much less mystical. Pro-government tabloids   soon joined in accusing Đurić and Veljković of attacking   the 14-year-old.

In the end the two journalists were subjected to an actual media pillory, which led Vanja Đurić to delete her account on X after her telephone number had also been made public.

Cenzolovka  , the media freedom portal of the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation  , denounced the incident and the treatment of Đurić and Veljković. Cenzolovka‘s intent was to draw attention to the “verbal torture” suffered by journalists, who explain that they did not attack the fourteen-year-old.

From here on, attention shifted to Cenzolovka which in turn was made the target of insults and threats. The article collected more than 500 comments, 90% of which with offensive content towards the portal and journalists, accused of being enemies of the Serbian people, who consequently should be deported, tried or even impaled…

It is as if someone had given the signal from above, writes the Cenzolovka editorial team. Among other things, this is the second case of threats received by Cenzolovka in less than a month. At the end of December, commenting   on an article, another X user had threatened the portal’s editorial staff by claiming that journalists and left-wing sympathisers should all be summarily executed. The tweets were then deleted, but the case was still reported to the prosecutor’s office, just as the latest episodes relating to Đurić and Veljković and to Cenzolovka itself were reported to the prosecutor’s office.

 

The impact on journalists

These attacks on journalists and media freedom are not rare. As Perica Gunjić, editor-in-chief of Cenzolovka, states, “almost every day the country’s leaders refer to independent journalists as foreign agents or traitors to the country. These definitions are dangerous and quickly become threats that journalists regularly face, both on social media and during fieldwork”.

The Cenzolovka portal remains determined to continue its work, but there is clearly concern about the state of independent journalism in Serbia which, after the change in management at NIN, sees independent voices progressively dying out.

“In Serbia, many journalists cannot work in such conditions and throw in the towel because they are subjected to enormous stress every day. As for Cenzolovka, there will be no self-censorship, we will not be scared and we will continue to work professionally. But all this has a negative impact on the entire journalistic profession which increasingly becomes a form of propaganda for political leaders and deals less and less with investigative and critical journalism”.

 

A multi-pronged attack

In addition to independent journalism, civil society voices critical of the government were also subjected to attacks and threats on social media, including the Crta organisation, which during the electoral round played a key role in observing the elections and harshly questioned   their regularity. Crta immediately became a target of criticism by the aforementioned Đukanović, who said that they should be arrested, and Nebojša Bakarec  , another member of the presidency of the Serbian Progressive Party.

Diplomatic representations in Serbia have mobilised in support of Crta and even the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, has expressed her concern  .

Together with Crta, judge Majić was also threatened via Telegram by a person who speaks on behalf of the self-proclaimed “president’s wolves”, who are threatening to take to the streets and clean up all the trash from Serbia  . Miodrag Majić, judge of the Belgrade Court of Appeal, is one of the founders of the civic movement Proglas, which before the elections had led a campaign to encourage citizens to participate in the vote. The attacks on Crta and Judge Majić were virtually simultaneous with the Cenzolovka affair.

 

Troll farms in Serbia

Numerous trolls, or bots as they are more commonly called in Serbia, also participated in the attacks against journalists. The presence of trolls in Serbia, at the service of the SNS, was already documented almost seven years ago, when an insider reported the existence of a small army of trolls who managed a few thousand profiles and who acted in a coordinated manner following well-defined instructions. Last summer, a list of around 14,500 fake social media profiles  , managed by around 3,000 people, became public knowledge.

The operating methods were very similar to those reported, with very specific orders given to the various profiles. SNS itself had proudly confirmed that being a troll for SNS was in fact an act of patriotism  . Troll factories are not illegal in themselves, but become very problematic if there are threats, insults and acts aimed at intimidating those who think differently.

 

The word to the prosecutor…maybe

In light of the above, it seems that the attacks on the two journalists and then on Cenzolovka, as well as the attacks on other representatives of civil society, are the result of coordinated activity initiated by political representatives and then relaunched by tabloids and trolls. The cases have been reported to the relevant authorities, in this case the Cyber Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, but the judicial system in Serbia has great difficulties in systematically investigating and prosecuting such cases, unless the person threatened is president Vučić  .

The risk is that the lack of an adequate response by institutions to such attacks could substantially promote impunity and encourage further online violence, which often precedes physical violence. And this must be an additional element of concern in Serbia, where too many cases of violence against journalists remain unsolved.

This statement was coordinated by the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States, Candidate Countries and Ukraine.