Pescanik is an independent production house producing a radio programme with the same title, broadcast on Radio B92, an ANEM member station, since 2000. ANEM has also demanded an immediate investigation by the relevant institutions into a case involving the demolition of Pescanik radio programme author Svetlana Lukic’s car in a parking lot near the B92 building, along with the alleged jamming of Radio B92’s signal during the Pescanik broadcast.
The Pescanik internet site has been unavailable since Saturday, January 24, due to synchronized attacks by hackers from different locations. At the same time, numerous listeners of the Radio B92 programme from different parts of Serbia claimed that the signal of this ANEM member station was jammed, and that the jamming was especially intense during the Pescanik slots. During the premiere broadcast of the latest Pescanik programme, on January 23, the car in which Lukic drove to the B92 building was demolished in a parking lot near the building.
Both of the Pescanik programme’s two authors have already suffered various attacks, among which was a successful bid to physically prevent a promotional activity for the programme in the town of Arandjelovac on December 3, 2007.
After they received information on the jamming of the Pescanik programme and demolition of Lukic’s car, a detailed investigation of this case was demanded from the relevant authorities by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic.
According to ANEM sources, our member station, B92, has already asked the Republic Telecommunications Agency to provide information about whether their monitoring and measuring centres registered any activity that could have caused any interference in signal reception on January 23 and 24.
ANEM has already warned that frequent attempts to prevent the Pescanik authors from expressing their opinions and the opinions of the guests on their programmes regarding current developments in Serbia, in an unobstructed way, constitute a serious attack on freedom of expression. ANEM has thus joined in the demands directed to the relevant state institutions to provide for unobstructed exercising of all the rights that are guaranteed in the Serbian Constitution. By expressing our support for the Pescanik authors, ANEM defends the right of each individual to fully and freely exercise their right to freedom of expression.
