TUZLA, 06.03.2018.-Journalists, redactions and Journalists Associations from Tuzla region condemned rough attacks on freedom of journalists and reporting due to the protest former fighters on the loop Sicki Brod.
Journalists express disappointment that police, government, political parties and NGOs dealing with the protection of human rights did not respond to attacks on journalists.
Apart from the generally poor social and material position of journalists and media companies, journalists face almost daily chanting during regular journalistic work. Numerous examples of assaults on journalists remain only registered in the reaction of journalistic associations, while adequate reactions of the authorities and the judiciary are absent.
Memisevic: He grabbed the microphone and started pushing me
“I came to one group and I asked them to give me statements. I’ve greeted them, introduced myself, said what I was interested in. One agreed to give a statement, but in the course of the statement big, younger, a taller man came and grabbed the recorder, stopped the recording, grabbed me by the shoulder, and began to push, lash on me. He insulted me, he was telling me everything. I can not repeat that now” said Sabina Memisevic, editor of the portal “Tuzlarije.net” during a gathering of journalists.
Aggressive behavior towards journalists and their prevention of a journalistic task, during the recent protests by former fighters, are just the last in a series of examples.
“The attack on journalists is an attack on a public word, a democracy, an attack on something that should be our job, and people prevent us from doing our job every day,” says the president of the “Club of Journalists” Tuzla Bedrana Kaletovic.
Divkovic: Police shuts, a sleeping prosecutor
For journalists’ associations, the greater problem of gross violations of the rights of journalists on the street is the silence of institutions that should protect this right.
“Police shuts, which often complicates in this, the prosecution sleeps in heavy winter sleep. And what’s worst, we have a list of NGOs dealing with the protection of civil and human rights, freedom, and none of them spoke about this” said the president of the Association BH journalist Marko Divkovic.
From today’s gathering of journalists and journalist associations in Tuzla, once again the police and judicial institutions have been called upon to prevent attacks on journalists and such attacks of punishment. Journalists are calling for editorial and professional solidarity in situations of violation of journalistic freedoms and collective condemnation of such incidents.