(Washington Insider Magazine) -Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has issued a challenge to Twitter to close his account after the social network labeled several Serbian media outlets as state-affiliated.
“I can’t wait for them [Twitter] to close my account, so I become another Trump in the world,” he said as reported by the Associated Press. “Who should they cooperate with tycoons, thieves and criminals? It is most normal that they cooperate with the government.”
Twitter muzzled former U.S. President Donald Trump at the beginning of the year at the height of protests in Washington on Jan. 6 when Congress was supposed to confirm the electoral vote after his loss. Trump’s defeat ended in the U.S. Capitol Building being stormed and hundreds arrested. Serbia’s Vucic received support from Trump’s Special Envoy to the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue Richard Grenell.
Twitter said the action was to prevent further violence.
The social media platform has defined the term “state-affiliated” as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”
More than 10 media outlets and newspapers in Serbia have been branded this way. This has led to Vucic stating that the labeled media sources were “spreading freedom-loving ideas,” ABC news reports.
Serbian State television also commented, calling Twitter’s decision “political,” stating that in an act of protest it would stop posting content on Twitter’s network. A pro-government tabloid called the Informer called the move “a war propaganda machine,” Euronews reports.
Vucic has for much of his 10 years in power maintained a tight grip on the media, utilizing them as government mouthpieces that criticize the few remaining independent media outlets as propagators of Western ideology and as being owned by the opposition or by foreign embassies.
To date, Twitter has labeled accounts in the U.S., China, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as state-affiliated.
