Freedom of expression

An opposition lawmaker applied to court on June 26 to lift the coverage ban imposed on the kidnapping of 80 Turkish citizens by Sunni militants in Mosul, Iraq on June 11.

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), made his appeal to an Ankara court citing in his petition his constitutional right for freedom of expression.

VIENNA - Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Dunja Mijatovic said in her regular six-month report on freedom of the media in Serbia that her office is ready to help improve the situation in the media in the country, and she also called on the government to protect the freedom of the Internet.

During his first official visit to Germany on Wednesday, Prime Minister Vucic said that recent allegations of censorship in the Serbian media were false.

BELGRADE - OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic said that good cooperation with the Serbian government does not mean that she will stop pointing to violations of media freedoms, stressing that the message to Serbia's leaders remains the same.

Michael Davenport, head of the EU Delegation in Serbia, said no democratic country whose goal was to join the European Union should put any restrictions or pressure on free speech.

"One has to fight for the freedom of speech, to keep it and protect it," Davenport told a panel called "Blog open-close" held in Belgrade on June 10.

Davenport: EU on side of freedom of expression

BELGRADE -- Head of the EU Delegation in Serbia Michael Davenport stated on Tuesday that freedom of expression is a fundamental right on which any democratic order rests.

The EU will always take the side of those who are denied this right, he said.

BELGRADE - Deputy head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia Paula Thiede said late on Sunday that there were serious problems in terms of media freedom in Serbia, and the government, NGOs and intellectuals had already been engaged to work together with the OSCE on the promotion of freedoms of speech and the media.

The European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, has called on the Serbian government to respect freedom of the press and allow journalists to publish information freely about the floods that hit the country in mid-May.

Macedonia's journalists union is taking the case of the expulsion of reporters from parliament in December 2012 to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

It decided on this move after the top court in Macedonia ruled that their expulsion from the chamber by police had been done “for their own safety”.

Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE press freedom envoy, has condemned a series of ongoing attacks on the OSCE website coming from unknown hackers, which she said were engaged in censoring the organisation.

“On-going DDos attack on OSCE website unacceptable, forces set in motion trying to limit freedom of expression,” she tweeted on Wednesday.