As the Serbian government shuts down more news organizations, protesters are using the Internet as a way to circumvent government censorship of the news.
Radio B92 of Belgrade is sending out daily news via email beograd@cogent.net to journalists, human rights activists, and government officials worldwide.
Students at Belgrade University have built their own site to distribute information about the protests and crackdown in Serbia.
As of Wednesday, five radio stations in Cacek - a town 100 miles west of Belgrade - and the student radio station in the capital have been shut down by Serbian officials. In the town of Pozarevac, broadcasting by the only independent radio station, Boom 93, was discontinued because the station did not have a working license. And, printing of the daily independent newspaper Blic, with a circulation of 250,000, is reportedly "in disarray."
"We are witnessing another wave of oppression aimed at independent media," Milorad Tadic, editor in chief of Boom 93, said in a Radio B92 email report. "The citizens of our country are being reduced to a state of total information blackout."
After the Serbian government shut down B92 on Tuesday, the station started posting news on its site via RealAudio broadcasts. The Internet has flourished as an avenue for dissidents despite the shortage of Net access in the former Yugoslavia
"B92's Internet connection is probably the only unmonitored way of communications B92 has at the moment," said Felipe Rodriquez, managing director at Xs4all Internet, one of the largest ISPs in the Netherlands which provided B92 with its Internet connection only by special permission of the Dutch government.
"I don't expect the Serbian government to tap into the TCP-IP connection between B92 and Xs4all," Rodriguez said. "People at the B92 side can always use PGP encryption as an extra measure to secure their communication with the outside world."
The Federal Ministry for Traffic and Communications in Belgrade, which is reported to be responsible for shutting down some of the stations, on Thursday issued a statement saying that it's not "familiar with the reasons which made the B92 stop its broadcasting."
More than 100,000 protesters in Belgrade have been demanding the overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic since municipal elections were halted by the ruling Socialist party on 17 November. Demonstrations have spread to other cities and towns throughout Serbia, according to press reports.
