Category: Persecution
Period: from Jul 2017
Outcome: No one investigated (as of 19 May 2018)
The weekly “Vranjske”, run by Vukašin Obradović, stopped publishing in September 2017 after 23 years, when its publisher was forced into bankruptcy following weeks of inspections by the Tax Administration and other inspectorates. According to a report the newsroom received, the paper had not broken any laws, while the Government spoke of a “problem of sustainable financing”. No record was found of anyone examining why the inspections were ordered. In December 2025, a court ordered the SNS in a first-instance ruling to pay Obradović 100,000 dinars for calling him a “proven racketeer”.
The weekly “Vranjske”, which journalist Vukašin Obradović founded in Vranje in 1994, stopped publishing in September 2017 after 23 years and 1069 issues. The closure followed weeks of inspections of the newsroom by the Tax Administration and other inspectorates, after which the publisher was forced into bankruptcy.
According to Obradović, the journalists were informally warned of an inspection after an interview with the former head of the Tax Administration's Vranje branch. OCCRP reports that the inspectors arrived after a second such interview, in July 2017.
On 19 September, Obradović began a hunger strike, locking himself in the newsroom. That same night he was taken to hospital with dehydration and ended the strike on his doctors' advice. A protest, “Stojim uz Vranjske” (I Stand with Vranjske), was held outside the Government of Serbia.
The Government said the issue was not the suppression of media freedom but “a problem of sustainable funding”, and listed the sums the paper had received from the state and the city. Prime Minister Ana Brnabić wrote on Twitter that in 2017 alone the paper had received more than in the whole period from 2008 to 2012.
The newsroom called this “hypocritical and cynical”, and President Vučić later said that “Vranjske was helped four times more than under the previous government”.
According to the daily Danas, in October 2017 the newsroom received a Tax Administration report stating that the paper had not broken any laws and that there were no grounds for a criminal complaint. In November, the “Vranjske” website was also shut down.
When Transparency Serbia looked in 2018 into whether inspections were being used to pressure the media, the Tax Inspectorate refused its request for information. No record was found of anyone examining why the inspections were ordered.
Obradović later worked for the Beta news agency and the daily Danas, and since 2023 has been an editor at Vijesti in Podgorica. In December 2025, a court ordered the SNS in a first-instance ruling to pay him damages for calling him a “proven racketeer” in 2020.