2014 Publisher OKF, Cetinje For Publisher Milorad Popović Editor Milorad Popović Translation into English Goran Drinčić Design Suzana Pajović Printed Ivpe, Cetinje Circulation 1000 ŠEKI RADONČIĆ ANATOMY OF A PERSECUTION To Elvira, for all the sleepless nights CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 9 INDEPENDENT AND PRIVATE AT THE SAME TIME 13 THE MISSION OF GROWING RICH 20 INDEPENDENT GUARDIANS OF THE REGIME 27 POLICE INTERROGATION IN THE EDITor-In-CHIEF’S APARTMENT 33 GIVE BACK WHAT YOU STOLE 39 I. I LOVE YOU TOO 39 II. WHAT’S UP WITH YOU ŠekI, HAVE YOU GONE MAD? 42 III. Well-off LITTLE OLD MAN 46 IV. INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN THE HANDS OF COSA NOSTRA 52 HOW OPPONENTS ARE TURNED INTO REGIME SPIES 54 GET THE REGIME AgENT 59 DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE A SOUL 65 A HOUSE OPPOSITE THE SINGLES’ HOTEL 76 AMBUSH FOR THE HUNTER 87 MORAL SAVAGERY 96 ARREST THE TERRORIST FROM SARAJEVO 101 A TOMB FOR ŠemSUDIN 114 A HERO OF OUR TIME 129 AN OCTOPUS 138 ŠekI’S OBITUARY 147 SPIN 155 FOUL DEEDS OF THE EDITor-In-CHIEF 164 mIŠKO’S AND KočAN’S MEDIA CONTAMINATION 169 CAB ASSASSIN 176 1. NEW EXAMPLES OF MEDIA MANIPULATION 176 2. I’LL BEAT YOU UP, I’LL KILL YOU, I’LL MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT TILL THE END OF YOUR LIFE 182 ROTTEN TEXT ODOR 186 7 ALFRED AND THREE UNGRATEFUL BOSNIAKS 192 LAMENT FOR ŠekI 203 FROM MIKELI TO DON MIKELI 209 1. “SUPREME REGIME SERVANT” 209 2. FROM USED LADA TO AN SUV WITH TINTED WINDOWS 212 604 DAys ON THE WEBSITE OF HATRED 216 PAPAK FROM PAPE AND SMRadončIć FROM GUSINJE 223 IN THE JAWS OF THE MEDIA MAFIA 231 ARREST THE WRITERS 238 CLAY PIGEON 247 PEN AND BLOOD 251 TWISTED REALITY 256 1. NEW FABRICATIONS OF THE INDEPENDENT ONES 256 2. ARREST ŠekI FOR MAKING A HERO OF OUR TIME 261 INSTEAD OF AN EPILOGUE 263 A Note about the Author 267 APPENDIX 269 8 INTRODUCTION When a river of lies, insinuations and insults went against me, carrying logs and stones and covered with feces, I was afraid of the possibility to disappear in the mud without a trace. Almost three years later, this terrible flood would lose its power, returning to the natural riverbed and turning into a smelly stream. I collected this dirt with disgust, conducting its forensic analysis. Like an enthusiastic scientist, I stayed up late into the night, sometimes until dawn, studying this stench, and often going to sleep with the feeling that I got it under my skin. But I never gave up: while solving the puzzle I analyzed the collected material, commented upon it, drew patterns, and discovered formulas. I put the report on the results of my research between the covers of this book, calling it “The Anatomy of a Persecution”, alluding to “The Anatomy Lesson“ by Danilo Kiš who was, as we know, persecuted, labeled, and falsely accused for seven months because of “A Tomb for Boris Davidovič”, which eventually forced him to write the memorable work about his persecutors. Unlike Kiš, with my apologies for comparing with him, I was not persecuted for a book, but because of a documentary film, “A Hero of Our Time”. Assisted by the intellectual underground, town rumor, and the Internet, Podgorica’s self-proclaimed elite attacked the film even before I finished it and before they saw it: they accused me of denying my earlier works through it, betraying myself and them, called me a forger, a traitor, a regime man… 9 As soon as the persecution began, I started to collect, in a corner of my working room, the newspapers and printed texts in which my film was impugned, while I was stoned and called derogatory names. At the time I have already edited the film and thus did not let the persecutors distract or drag me away from it and draw the attention in a wrong direction. But the pile in the corner of my room kept growing, just like a tumor. My stomach was churning with every glance at the hideous pile on which one could already sit down and whose smell was stronger than the smell of a toilet in a provincial bus station. Yet, I did not want to make a film about a false hero – a police inspector and a participant in the war crime of deportation – which was the reason for the persecution against me. A Hero of Our Time was not my choice, my will: it was a film that was simply extorted. I was planning something else: to, finally, shoot a documentary about the planetary crime of Srebrenica’s inferno. As regards the false hero, I wanted to publish an investigative article, in which new light would be shed on his wartime role by Bosnian refugees whom he arrested and a policeman who set them free, while the hunter on Bosniaks himself took the credit for this heroic act of liberation. However, the editor-in-chief of Monitor categorically refused to publish my article on this Montenegrin swindler: he said he was a blood-brother of his. As of the following issue of Monitor, I was, without notice and the right of appeal, deleted from the impressum of a newspaper for which I wrote for twenty years. In order to ensure a clear conscience and a good night’s sleep, I decided to make a documentary on the Montenegrin swindler and hunter on Bosniaks, not knowing that I would therefore be exposed to the most brutal and the longest media persecution against a publicist and documentarian. Persecution which is, although lower in intensity, still underway. 10 As soon as he heard that I was making a documentary about the false hero (who, in fact, was the person in charge of the arrests), which meant breaking the blockade of independent but private media, his patron, the Lord of Truth, the uncrowned king of Montenegrin media and the biggest seller of lies in Montenegro, opened the dam and let the river of logs, stones and feces at me. At the same time, his partners, editors, journalists, columnists, politicians and Internet shooters, in fact the people from his payroll or those who had other common interests with him – either publicly or secretly, competed in throwing insults at my yet unseen film and its author. And when they eventually saw the film, they attacked me saying that the witnesses from my film were paid, corrupt, fake... At the time when the persecution turned into hysteria, the Association of Public Broadcasting Professionals INPUT included “A Hero of Our Time” in the top 60 achievements for 2012 and showed it at the Screening Conference in Sydney. This award for “creativity, expertise and innovation” and the subsequent inclusion of the film in the official programme of the European Film Festival for Documentaries dokumentART in Germany and Poland further enraged the persecutors, making them invest superhuman efforts to shut my mouth with mud and throw me into the muddy river. I did not step back. On the basis of their persecution and my replies, the Montenegrin public began to see the hidden side of the so-called Montenegrin independent media. Debunking the false hero turned, not by my will, in unmasking other Montenegrin false heroes of our time as well: primarily the Lord of Truth, “independent” media moguls, editors, journalists, intellectuals, and other moral authorities from this journalistic- mafia lair. The anatomy of this unseen persecution is in your hands. 11 INDEPENDENT AND PRIVATE AT THE SAME TIME [OR HOW MATHEMATICS PROFESSOR ENTERED MONTENEGRIN JOURNALISM AND CREATED MEDIA MONOPOLY HAVING UNDERSTOOD THE POWER OF MEDIA; ON THE SCHEME OF HIS MEDIA POWER AND ON HOW HE MANIPULATES THE PUBLIC AND HOW HIS MEDIA ARE KILLING PEOPLE] While a local chamber trio performed works by Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Piazzolla at the main stage, four partners from the first row rubbed their hands in satisfaction: the concert was staged on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary since the foundation of their newspaper. “Vijesti daily is not only the first independent daily chronicler in the history of Montenegro but also an important generator that pushes the authorities and the entire political elite to change”, Miodrag Perović, the oldest founder of Vijesti and mathematics professor who quietly entered the Montenegrin journalism twenty years ago, humbly stated before the concert. Visionary Perović entered not only Montenegrin journalism but the legend as well. However, a member of the new class, Miško the Independent, wisely said nothing about the manner in which he and his partners, while engaged in the noble journalistic mission and fighting against totalitarian regimes, managed to move from their leased apartments to villas and castles, gaining enormous wealth in only fifteen years. He also kept silent about the guerilla way in which the four of them achieved the American Dream in the midst of poor Montenegro. Miško was likewise silent as regards the other co-founders and co-owners of Vijesti – journalists whom the four revelers brutally robbed of their founding shares, and then shamelessly accused, in front of the Montenegrin public, of falsely claiming to be the founders of Vijesti. The robbed journalists were not invited to attend the great anniversary. They were rejected as bad conscience. 13 Listening to chamber music, Miško the Independent was slightly bored and often moved his unfashionable tie and untidy hair. The other co-founder, Šćeka the Independent, often had to loosen the belt of his trousers, as it was pressed by the big belly. The third partner, Željko the Independent, the author of the best panegyric for disguised fascist Boris Tadić, and of the worst text on opera in the history of Montenegrin journalism, turned around him, not believing that the great hall of the National Theatre was empty, with only about thirty guests, mostly Vijesti journalists.