Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday he wanted to privatise all the country’s media organisations to ensure press freedom, and again rejected allegations of censorship.
Vucic, on a visit to Berlin, said that 80-90 percent of Serbia’s media was already privately owned.
“My aim in the manifesto was… that we privatise all media through legislation, that is our wish, and thereby allow full media freedom,” he told a joint press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
He once again refuted recent allegations by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The European body’s freedom of media representative Dunja Mijatovic said last month that she was concerned about a “worrying trend of online censorship in Serbia” during the mid-May floods that claimed 51 lives.
Mijatovic had noted that several websites critical of the government’s handling of the crisis were temporarily offline and a number of individual blogs were deleted after being re-posted on news websites.
“We are a free country and however we are always ready to hear remarks,” Vucic told reporters, adding that the accusations lacked any basis.
He has already called for an apology from the OSCE.
Source expatica
