Press freedom groups have urged Serbian authorities to thoroughly investigate the brutal attack on Teofil Pancic, a reporter for the independent weekly Vreme. Two masked assailants followed Pancic aboard a Belgrade bus at around 11 p.m. on Saturday, attacked him with metal rods, and quickly fled. Pancic, briefly hospitalised after the attack, suffered a concussion and arm injuries.
Pancic told the independent Belgrade-based broadcaster B92 he believes the attack was in retaliation for his journalism. Zoran Stanojevic, a Vreme colleague, told New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that Pancic often criticised nationalism and the spread of violence in Serbian society.
“We condemn this vicious attack on our colleague Teofil Pancic and urge Serbian authorities to bring his assailants to justice,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “The promised investigation into this assault must be thorough and consider journalism as a motive.”
“We are shocked by the violence and barbarity of this attack on one of the country’s most respected journalists.We urge the authorities to pursue the investigation until both the perpetrators and instigators are arrested. This attack is an opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of recent amendments to the criminal code that are supposed to ensure greater safety for journalists," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said.
Serbian authorities condemned the assault and promised to investigate, B92 reported. “I believe the police will do their work and find the attackers who assaulted and injured Teofil Pancic. We have to invest a lot more effort to create an environment in which physical attacks against those who think differently would never happen,” Serbian President Boris Tadić said in a statement.
RSF said, “The judicial system must end the impunity that has prevailed until now for those responsible for this kind of attack. The attempted murder of Dejan Anastasijevic, another Vreme journalist, on April 13, 2007 also caused a stir, and prompted signs of a response from the authorities. But the investigation went nowhere. Let us not forget that a judge rejected the complaint filed by Brankika Stankovic of radio and TV broadcaster B92 over the death threats she received following the broadcast of several documentaries about corruption in Serbian football. The judge’s insistence on treating the threats as just insults or defamation was unacceptable.
“Investigative reporting about sports has over the years become as risky as investigative reporting about organised crime or the war crimes committed in the 1990s. Ultranationalists and criminal groups are poisoning a major part of the world of sport and the journalists who cover this phenomenon are exposed to especially violent reprisals that almost always go unpunished. If Serbia wants to join the European Union, an effort must be to prosecute those responsible for these threats and impose punishments that commensurate with the crimes committed.”
