Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik has ordered Serb officials and public companies to boycott one of Bosnia’s three public broadcasters after repeatedly accusing it of bias against Bosnian Serbs. Local media reported that Mr Dodik has instructed all government officials and representatives of public institutions and companies in Bosnia’s Serb dominated entity Republika Srpska to refuse to give interviews or statements to the public broadcaster from the country’s other entity, the Croat-Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) federation.
Mr Dodik’s decision has provoked strong reactions from local and international officials who accused him of violating media freedoms and exposing journalists to political pressure. “An instruction to boycott the media curtails the right of citizens to be informed and conflicts with the principles of freedom of the media and freedom of information,” said Ljiljana Radetic, a spokeswoman for the office of the international community’s High Representative to Bosnia. “Such instructions should not be given in a democratic society,” she added.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, has also slammed Mr Dodik, warning that “public broadcasters cannot be exposed to any sort of political pressure”.
“Government officials must know that there are legal complaint mechanisms in place to settle their grievances, and not send a message of arbitrary tampering with individual parts of the media system,” the OSCE spokeswoman in Bosnia, Aida Besic, said. She added that in 2001 Bosnia was one of the first countries in the Balkans to adopt a law on access to information which was harmonized with the best international practices. “Dodik’s instruction…unfortunately undermines the principles of this legislation,” Ms Besic said.
The Bosnian journalists association, BH Novinari, has accused Dodik of “overstepping his authority” by ordering government ministers and public officials to “act against the law”. “This is an example of impermissible political interference in the work of the media,” the association said in a press release.
Mr Dodik has repeatedly accused the public broadcaster from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, RTV FBiH, of bias against the Serbs over its frequent reporting on his alleged involvement in high-level corruption. The public broadcaster recently outraged Bosnian Serb political leaders by airing a video clip portraying Mr Dodik as Adolf Hitler.
(Source: BalkanIOnsight.com)
