CEE Grantee in the Spotlight: Radio Television B92
NED’s focus in Central and Eastern Europe was primarily on the countries of the Balkans, where instability, interethnic tension, and dismal economic growth persisted more than a year after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic despite the presence of 65,000 NATO troops and hundreds of international aid organizations. Signs of stabilization did begin to appear, but weak institutions, political extremism, corruption, and unresolved national questions impeded efforts in Balkan countries to reform their hitherto undemocratic political systems and moribund economies. Increasing voter apathy, as seen in the invalid presidential elections in Serbia and Montenegro, demonstrated that the region was far from developing genuine participatory political processes. There were, however, some successes in the region. In September, Slovakia held free and fair parliamentary elections, which resulted in a pro-reform coalition being elected and played a crucial part in Slovakia being invited to join NATO and the EU.
NED’s multifaceted direct grants program to the Balkans was augmented by a special grant from the U.S. Department of State in 2002. NED continued to support programs to strengthen the non-governmental sector in Balkan countries, such as Albania and Macedonia, where there is a weak civil society and serious need for development of independent media, accountability of elected officials, increased transparency in the political process, and the promotion of economic reform and workers’ rights. Greater emphasis was placed on programs that promote civic involvement in political processes and local governance, and that develop civic institutions to monitor and, where necessary, assist reformist governments. NED funding also encouraged greater cross-border cooperation between civic organizations throughout the region, and between Balkan democracy activists and their colleagues in Central Europe.
The republics of the former Yugoslavia—particularly Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo—continued to be a high priority for NED. In Serbia, Radio Television B92 used a 2001 NED grant to produce documentaries that, in one case, led directly to the arrest of key perpetrators of war crimes. With NED support, the Prague-based People in Need Foundation continued operating Kosovo’s only independent journalism school. And in Bosnia, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) used Endowment funds to help local unions defend workers’ legal rights, educate members about their rights, and expand outreach to young workers.
Though tensions between the ethnic-Albanian minority and the Macedonian majority waned during 2002 following the signing of an internationally brokered peace agreement, Macedonia remained a fragile state wracked by interethnic tensions. The Association for Democratic Initiatives received Endowment funding to conduct a comprehensive monitoring and advocacy program to ensure that state institutions implement the minority rights provisions contained in the peace agreement. NED also assisted struggling independent media that report objectively on interethnic and political issues. Medienhilfe Ex-Jugoslawien, a Switzerland-based media development organization, used NED funding to provide emergency support to independent electronic media committed to multiethnic coexistence.
Despite the general pro-reform direction of the governments in Bulgaria and Romania, and NATO’s membership invitations to these countries, their highly centralized political systems continued to limit citizens’ input, and their economies remained largely unreformed. NED responded by supporting organizations like Community Foundation-Sibiu, which conducted a program to increase citizens’ involvement in decision-making processes regarding allocation of municipal budgets, thereby encouraging transparency of city governments. The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) used NED funding to work with the Centre for Social Practices, a think tank based in Bulgaria, to identify and reduce institutional barriers that drive entrepreneurs into the “gray” economy—barriers such as high taxes and licensing fees, limited access to credit, and lack of governmental transparency.
NED increased funding to democratic groups in Albania, where reform efforts remain hobbled by weak state institutions, an underdeveloped civil society, and a deeply divided political landscape.
NED funding also helped key independent policy institutes throughout the Balkans to develop a concrete long-term democratization strategy for the entire region.
NED grantees played a major role in informing citizens, boosting voter turnout, and monitoring the fairness of the September parliamentary election in Slovakia. With NED support, the International Republican Institute (IRI) conducted over thirty-five public opinion polls and focus groups on election-related topics, providing data to political parties, NGOs, and the media. The National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs used NED support to oversee training that targeted young party members, women, and Roma; three participants of its “Youth in Politics” program were elected to Parliament. The Pontis Foundation organized a coalition of thirty NGOs in twenty cities to turn out young voters and produced more than 200,000 “Rock-the-Vote”-type leaflets, posters, stickers, postcards, and T-shirts, which it distributed at concerts and other youth-related events. Other NED grantees in Slovakia, such as Civic Eye, SKOI, and Presov Civic Forum, focused their nonpartisan get-out-the-vote programs on the country’s regions. MEMO 98 concentrated on the role of media in covering elections, organized regional public debates on media and elections, and monitored and reported on the fairness of Slovakia’s leading media in election coverage.
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CEE Grantee in the Spotlight: Radio Television B92
It was 1989, an historic time of collapsing communism and rising democracy in Europe, when a small student-run radio station called B92 took to the airwaves and turned Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, on its ear. Offering a heady brew of rock music, raw commentary, and independent journalism, the popular station was an anomaly. Its young staffers dove headlong into issues underlying Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power in Yugoslavia and the violent trail of his campaign for Serbian nationalism. They were repaid with multiple shut-downs and arrests, but they endured, sometimes operating from scattered locations throughout Belgrade, other times by broadcasting via satellite to outside stations as a backdoor for broadcasting back in.
“We managed to found B92 subversively, during the reign of a one-party ruling system,” says Veran Matic, the station’s co-founder, “and we still stick to the aim that we established back then: promotion of all the aspects of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
NED began supporting this most listened-to station in Belgrade in 1991. Since then, B92 has grown to include a television station, Web site, publishing department, music label, concert agency, and cultural center. “When we linked this ‘B92 cultural network’ with a ‘network of local radio and TV stations’ and with the network of NGOs,” says Matic, “we established a very strong network which functioned very efficiently, even under the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milosevic. This model of networking proved really efficient, and nowadays serves as an inspiring example for other countries facing similar situations as Yugoslavia went through during Milosevic’s reign.”
Having been fed state propaganda for more than a decade, many Serbs are just beginning to comprehend the scope of crimes committed by their former leaders, especially those committed against Albanians, Croats, and Bosnians. Matic had his mind on this situation even as NATO’s bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia was still raging. “I was aware back then that the fall of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic is close, and thus before it falls apart, we must start a wider process directed at healing the society,” he says. Since Milosevic’s demise, B92 has launched numerous initiatives focused on war crimes, such as a weekly radio program on guilt and responsibility, publication of books comparing European nations’ treatment of war crimes after WWII, and creation of a war-crimes archive in Belgrade.
During 2002, thirty-six independent radio and TV stations in Serbia and Montenegro aired the first of two documentaries produced by B92 with a $100,000 grant from NED (awarded in 2001). The documentary, which exposed a paramilitary group’s abduction of sixteen Muslim civilians from a commuter bus, was created partly with the help of a lone Muslim survivor. Matic says the survivor, just thirteen years old when the crime occurred, was spared because the abductors believed him to be Serbian. B92 convinced the survivor to provide testimony, which was forwarded along with other documentary materials—including incriminating photos located with the aid of a B92 source—to a prosecutor. Within days of the documentary’s broadcast, public pressure helped lead to the arrest of one of the key perpetrators. A second perpetrator, already imprisoned for a separate offense, was later identified.
“Investigative journalism is a most expensive job,” says Matic. “It is thus very hard to realize such projects in Serbia through commercial efforts. That is why the role of donors is so important for those who understand the significance of such projects, who realize that a country in a post-conflict period does not need only economic aid, but also spiritual assistance. NED was among the first to recognize this parallel need as a logical sequence of aid that it offered to independent media during Milosevic’s regime.”
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