On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the death of the technical staff of TV Belgrade on April 23, 1999, the Commission for Investigation of Murders of Journalists is informing the public and the families of the victims that it will investigate the crime thoroughly and completely.
Commission pledges to investigate RTS bombing case
On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the death of the technical staff of TV Belgrade on April 23, 1999, the Commission for Investigation of Murders of Journalists is informing the public and the families of the victims that it will investigate the crime thoroughly and completely.
Source:
Close the entire text of the article here
The families of the victims have already done much of the work, gathering a substantial number of indications or evidence about a possible sacrifice of workers of the television and those who issued orders to sacrifice them.
However - unlike the other three cases from the scope of the Commission - the competent prosecutor's office is not actively involved in the investigation and processing the submitted evidence, while on the other hand, it has not closed the case either.
The attention of the Commission at this time is turned toward the Army and the Ministry of Defense, primarily due to the fact that the role of the competent services of the Ministry of Defence of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has not been fully established, and there are indications that the concerned ministry also has some documents from which it stems that the military and state leaders of the then state were warned in a timely manner of the exact moment of the attack.
The Commission shall, immediately after the formation of a new government of Serbia, addresse the minister of defense, with a request for generous assistance in the investigation of this case, that is pressuring the conscience of the nation for fifteen long years.
The Commission has received a lot of responses from the Security-Information Agency with the documents of the former State Security Department about the nature of the knowledge that existed regarding the plans of NATO to bomb RTS.
Answers were also requested from NATO about who made the decision to target a media outlet for which it was evident that it was not evacuated and that civilians were working there, that it was a media company, and that it was a unique case in history when a media outlet was targeted with such consequences, victims and destruction, whether members of this alliance and in what way warned the Yugoslav authorities that the RTS building would be targeted, as well as to provide information about the communications from that period that might indicate who was responsible for the victims.
The Commission is actively working on changing perceptions and attitudes about the event in globally as well, on the occasion of conclusions of organizations such as Amnesty International that it was a war crime.
Throughout the years of the tragic wars in the former-YU lands we witnessed the abuse of media by politicians and learned of the value of independent journalism. The separation of journalism from government facilitates the required criticism and review of the latter. We are rightfully suspicious of media that is editorially controlled by government. Conversely, when journalists assume the responsibilities of government, we can not help but critically question the objectivity of their oversight. If judicial inquiries are controlled by journalists, who will supply the critical unbiased reporting of such commissions?
(Miroslav, 30 April 2014 10:36)
Throughout the years of the tragic wars in the former-YU lands we witnessed the abuse of media by politicians and learned of the value of independent journalism. The separation of journalism from government facilitates the required criticism and review of the latter. We are rightfully suspicious of media that is editorially controlled by government. Conversely, when journalists assume the responsibilities of government, we can not help but critically question the objectivity of their oversight. If judicial inquiries are controlled by journalists, who will supply the critical unbiased reporting of such commissions?
(Miroslav, 30 April 2014 10:36)
Throughout the years of the tragic wars in the former-YU lands we witnessed the abuse of media by politicians and learned of the value of independent journalism. The separation of journalism from government facilitates the required criticism and review of the latter. We are rightfully suspicious of media that is editorially controlled by government. Conversely, when journalists assume the responsibilities of government, we can not help but critically question the objectivity of their oversight. If judicial inquiries are controlled by journalists, who will supply the critical unbiased reporting of such commissions?
(Miroslav, 30 April 2014 10:36)