A few days after the Serbian Court of Appeal acquitted four former heads of State Security for the brutal murder of journalist Slavko Churuvia in 1999, the Serbian newspaper "Danas" placed an obituary about the death of journalism on its front page, BGNES reported.
Churuvia, born in 1949, has been a long-time fierce critic of former Serbian head of state and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. The journalist attracts a wide readership as the owner and editor of two leading opposition publications.
He was brutally and ostentatiously killed outside his home in Belgrade during a NATO airstrike in response to the Milosevic regime's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
At the time, the current Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, was the Minister of Information. The country adopted the Law on Public Information, after which the prosecution of Slavko Churuvia began. The editorial offices of his newspapers were emptied after judicial confiscations for unclear reasons, but the repression did not end there.
"Sooner or later I will take revenge on Slavko Churuvia," said Vucic months before Churuvia was shot in the back with 17 bullets.
"The court's decision is proof that the Serbian judicial system and security services need to be completely reformed because they still act as if we are in the dark labyrinths of the 90s. The treatment of journalists from critical media is the same as in the 90s -them, only the state has not yet started killing us in the streets", says the position of the editorial office of "Danas". /BGNES
