Suing to Silence: Lawsuits Used to Censor Bosnian Journalists

In Jasarspahics case, Babic filed the suit even without first seeking a retraction. Jasarspahic said his article on Visoko.co.ba had simply stated the facts, as did the eventual verdict in his favour handed down by the Zenica Cantonal Court.

You are a public figure, you spend public money, you exist in public space, you give statements in public space, but you act as if I entered your private space, Jasarspahic told BIRN.

The storm the case kicked up in Visoko, however, made life for Jasarspahic and his family intolerable, prompting their move to Sarajevo.

Babic, the former mayor, declined to comment for this story.

Media and legal experts say it was far from an isolated case.

Defamation suits are used for intimidation, said Biljana Radulovic, a lawyer in the eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina.

Politicians are mostly those suing journalists with the excuse of protecting their reputation. They file lawsuits for protection from defamation, thus intimidating journalists with the enormous amounts being claimed and often won in court proceedings, Radulovic told BIRN.

Adi Isakovic, a judge at the Municipal Court in Sarajevo, said the number of such cases grows during each election campaign and that their sheer frequency is concerning.

The abundance of such lawsuits surely affects the independence of journalists, Isakovic said. If a journalist publishes a news item of public interest and gets sued for defamation, of course it will matter in the future when they publish their next investigative story that they think the public should know about.

The growing rate of such lawsuits in recent years has led to the closure of a number of media outlets and brought others to the brink of financial collapse Sarajevos Slobodna Bosna newspaper and Respekt weekly in Banja Luka among the most prominent examples.

It was simply impossible to function within such a system, said former Respekt journalist Zeljko Raljic, because the judiciary is under direct political control, particularly over the last three or four years.

Vukelic said smaller media outlets were particularly endangered given they lack the resources to fight off repeated lawsuits.

They cannot endure the pressure, he said. Such cases can encourage self-censorship among less experienced journalists, who might ask, Why should I write about that topic when there are a thousand others I can address? he said.