Stojan Cerović

In March 1999, a week before NATO began its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, Milošević censored Vreme, which until then was free to criticize the government. Cerović was called upon to join the military. Once again he refused to be conscripted, but this time he had to flee the country. In mid-April (1999) he fled to Hungary with his wife and three children. In Budapest his family was provided with accommodations and given the red carpet treatment by the Hungarian government, a privilege no other Serbian draft dodger and his family was accorded. There Cerović was asked to join an Anglo-American sponsored shadowy government-in-exile, which he refused. In 2000, from January to November, he was employed by the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S. Congress sponsored organization, as a Senior fellow with Special Project Focus. The next few years he lived in a Paris apartment with his family. He became separated from his wife Tinda and died in 2005 following complications after a heart transplant.

He is the author of "Bahanalija", published by Vreme, 1993.

Cerović graduated from the University of Belgrade with a degree in psychology in 1973.

Cerović's early professional life was spent opposing Tito in his post-graduate years, the 1970s, then Milošević and his opposition. He had twice evaded the draft. In 1992, during the wake of the war with Croatia, Cerović co-founded the Centre for Anti-War Action in Belgrade and refused induction into the armed forces, calling on his peers to do likewise in a widely-broadcast radio interview. For weeks Cerović was forced to lay low in Montenegro, but returned to Belgrade when things simmered down and resumed writing his column lambasting Milošević and his officials who were still in power.

Stojan Cerović (9 July 1949 in Titograd, PR Montenegro, FPR Yugoslavia – 21 March 2005 in Paris, France) was a Montenegrin journalist.