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| photo via Radio Museum |
A special thank you to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing this week's Wavescan script
Jeff: Offshore radio broadcasting from international waters has most frequently been associated with radio stations in the North Sea that broadcast pop and rock music, such as Radio Caroline or Radio Veronica. But then in 1993 came Radio Brod (“Radio Boat” in Croatian). In the middle of the worst armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War, a completely different radio station appeared off the coast of the former Yugoslavia, primarily transmitting messages of peace and understanding from the ship ‘Droit de Parole’ throughout the war-torn region. It was a station that has now largely been forgotten, although its importance, even three decades later, is hard to overstate. Here’s Ray Robinson in Los Angeles to tell us what happened.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. And I must first start by saying that we are once again indebted to contributor Dr. Martin van der Ven in Germany who has researched this topic extensively and shared some of his recordings of the station.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” broke apart into its six constituent republics in 1991: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro. Within each of these, individual religious and ethnic groups were claiming larger shares of territory and political dominance. This led to the Balkan (or, Bosnian) War, which lasted a decade. Long-suppressed national and religious identities collided. Conflicts between Serbs (predominantly Orthodox), Croats (predominantly Catholic) and Bosnians (predominantly Muslim) escalated into violent clashes in which ethnic cleansing, systematic expulsions and massive human rights violations were the order of the day.
Countless ceasefire negotiations failed, and almost all major cities and towns in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were destroyed by ground fighting and air strikes. Huge numbers of people in the region were killed or left homeless.
Communication infrastructure almost completely collapsed, and of course the first casualty of war is truth. The only independent and unfiltered sources of information that remained were the Voice of America, BBC, Deutsche Welle and Radio France Internationale, which all broadcast programs in the Serbo-Croatian language.
Many Yugoslavian journalists suffered from a repressive working climate in their homeland and emigrated to Paris. Together, they came up with the idea of creating an independent non-commercial offshore radio station, and they founded a non-profit organization called Droit de Parole (‘Freedom of Speech’). In December 1992, the European Commission became the organization’s primary donor, allocating 1.2 million ECU (the forerunner of the Euro) for the project.
The journalists then set about finding a suitable ship. Radio Caroline's broadcasting ship 'Ross Revenge', which was then in Dover Harbour, was considered, but the British Department of Transport would not give their approval. But at the end of February 1993, reports began to appear in French newspapers that a new broadcasting ship was being equipped in Marseille.
The ship the station had leased was originally called the Fort Reliance, built in 1985 by Appledore Ferguson Shipbuilders Ltd in the port of Glasgow as a supply ship. She was converted into a radio ship at Quay 114 of the Bassin d'Arenc in Marseille, where a 92 foot high antenna mast was installed. This supported an A-shaped aerial, rigged from the bow, up to the top of the mast, and down to the stern.
The ship was then also renamed Droit de Parole. The daily rent of the ship and crew was 55,500 French francs (or about US$7,400 ~ over $220,000 per month), which crazily, the journalists agreed to pay. And that didn’t include the cost of diesel, food and other supplies, or the salaries for the journalists on board and on land. I suspect the owners of the ship saw a potential gravy train, and seized the opportunity.
The French Foreign Ministry refused permission to fly the French flag, citing as an excuse the security of French peacekeepers in the Balkans. So, the Droit de Parole was then registered in Kingstown, the capital of the island state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Droit de Parole set sail from Marseille on March 31, 1993, destined for the international waters of the Adriatic Sea between Bari, Italy and Dubrovnik, Croatia. The ship had a 50 kW medium wave transmitter, previously used by Sud Radio in Andorra, that had been donated to the project by Telediffusion France (TDF). It also had a 10 kW FM transmitter.
Test broadcasts, identifying as Radio Brod, began on April 7, 1993 at 11:00 p.m., on 720 kHz (417 m) medium wave and 97.8 MHz FM. Official broadcasts around the clock began on June 1, 1993.
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Radio Brod
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The ship was not anchored, but continued to sail up and down the Adriatic for safety reasons. Her exact position, between 17 and 18 degrees east and around 42 degrees north in the Adriatic, changed constantly and the course was kept secret.
Two studios had been built on board the Droit de Parole in a large container on the deck - a broadcast studio and a production studio - as well as two editing rooms. The journalists communicated with their contacts in the former Yugoslavia and other countries via an Inmarsat satellite system as well as marine radio, cell phones and a direct radio link. Supplies were tendered out from Bari, Italy.
The number of employees on board fluctuated and was usually between 15 and 20 people from a wide range of professional groups - always at least seven to eight journalists, plus sound engineers, music editors, translators and technical staff.
The Radio Brod team included respected and well-known journalists - Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims – from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia. In addition on land, there was its own, extensive network of independent, often anonymous or secret correspondents, which comprised around 50 employees and extended across all the former Yugoslav republics. Some of the correspondents reported at great risk to their lives. Using satellite phones, they were able to conduct interviews with people live on board. Daily connections were made to Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Mostar, Split, Banja Luka and many other places.
Radio Brod aimed to provide verified and accurate news to an audience caught in the maelstrom of war propaganda. But nevertheless, their editorial balance inevitably leaned to the left, with an anti-nationalistic bias. The station’s main evening news program was broadcast at 9:30 p.m. and included information from all six republics of the former Yugoslavia. News headlines were broadcast every hour. There were also three in depth news programs every day in the morning, afternoon and evening. The language used – Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian – depended in part on the content of the reports. In addition, news was broadcast twice daily in English and French, mainly for members of the United Nations UNPROFOR force in the region.
When not broadcasting news, the station played rap, soul, acid jazz, techno, and rock music: with nine hundred records in their luggage - some donated by record companies - the station offered many 15 to 35 year olds what they would otherwise never hear. 1,000 more CD’s were later donated by French radio.
In June 1993, the European Commission allocated a further 1.0 million ECU to the Radio Brod project. Financial support was also received from:
• Danielle Mitterand's foundation, France Liberties,
• the general director of UNESCO, Federico Mayor Zaragoza,
• and various press groups in the USA, including the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
Under pressure from Serbia, the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines withdrew the registration for Droit de Parole on June 28, 1993. Radio Brod was therefore forced to stop broadcasting, and two days later the radio ship sailed to the Italian port of Bari. Eventually, letters of support from the United Nations and the European Commission made Saint Vincent reconsider, and the Caribbean state renewed the registration. On July 29, 1993, the ship resumed 24-hour operations. Their signature jingle with cries of seagulls and a fog horn was heard, followed by a song by The Clash (“Lover’s Rock”). Radio Brod was broadcasting again.
But in spite of
having a 50 kW transmitter, the reception area for the station was fairly
limited by the geography of the Balkans.
It had a strong signal along the Dalmatian coast, of course, and could
often be heard playing in bars and cafés there.
But inland, the signal was absorbed by the central mountain ranges, and
was very weak in the main centers of power – Belgrade and Zagreb – as well as
in Serbia and large parts of inland Croatia.
Radio Netherlands’ "Media
Network" programme on Thursday 9th September 1993 carried a special
feature on the media in the former Yugoslavia.
Among the reports, presenter Jonathan Marks played a recording of Radio
Brod, made in Belgrade, commenting "as you can hear, Radio Brod's signal
on 720 kHz medium wave is so weak in Belgrade, it has little or no impact in
Serbia, though its FM signal is reportedly quite loud and clear in parts of
Montenegro".
However, at night, the station was well
heard throughout Europe, especially when other stations on 720 kHz had closed down. Indeed, Dr. Martin van der Ven, whose
research led to this article, remembers listening to Radio Brod in northern
Germany between 2 and 5 a.m. in the spring and summer of 1993 using a loop
antenna. He says it was a pretty good
signal.
One of the editors on
board, then 30-year-old Bosnian-Muslim Mirna Imamović had been trapped in
Sarajevo, until she managed to escape.
On the radio ship she ran the program “Desperately Seeking” with
messages from refugees. This meant that
family and friends who lived in refugee camps across Europe and listened to the
program were able to find the whereabouts of their loved ones - sometimes even
reuniting. Imamović said that the real
significance of this opportunity was only understood when a thank you letter
arrived, in which a man from Trebinje in Bosnia-Herzegovina reported that
thanks to Radio Brod, he had found his orphaned grandchildren in a Danish
refugee camp.
And indeed, Imamović’s
own mother, still in Sarajevo, only came to know that Mirna was safe by hearing
her voice on the radio. Her mother then
managed to get a letter to her - a Serbian friend took it to Belgrade, then
mailed it to Mirna's brother in Moscow, who faxed it to the number listed in
Radio Brod broadcasts. So, she knew the
value of her programmes from personal experience. Until then, she didn't even know if her own
mother was still alive.
The ship’s captain,
Frenchman Thierry Lafabrie , admitted that “Technically, we’re a pirate radio
station, but the laws are inadequate. We
are doing the right thing."
But, Radio Brod was
very expensive to operate, and at the end of 1993 it was learned that their
employees had not been paid for three months.
The Paris-based Droit de Parole foundation, citing lack of funds, said
it could no longer pay editors' salaries regularly. And then, due to the perceived financial
mis-management at Droit de Parole, the European Commission decided in January
1994 not to extend any further funding for Radio Brod. As a result, the project lost its most
important financial backer and, after the equivalent of more than US$6 million
had been poured into it, the station had to finally switch off the transmitters
at midnight on February 28, 1994. It was
the end of a unique experiment, which had lasted for only eleven months. Sadly, they became victims of their own poor
stewardship of the public funds with which they had been entrusted, and which
could and should have lasted for years longer.
The floating radio
station hadn't moved any mountains, and the Balkan War continued for many years
afterwards. Some of the Radio Brod
journalists continued their careers in the editorial offices of the South
Slavic service of Radio Free Europe and in the BBC’s editorial offices,
focusing on the former Yugoslav republics.
They were proud to
have worked for the station which sought open dialogue between the various
ethnic and religious groups. They had
helped desperate people to become reunited with their families, or at least to learn
that their relatives were still alive and well.
And it was their achievement through Radio Brod to have provided comfort
and understanding for a short time to a war-torn population.
Back to you, Jeff.
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