A Turkish group called Cyber Warrior Tim Akincilar hacked the Serbian Public Debt Administration’s website on Friday in what appeared to be a protest against Serbia’s denial of the Srebrenica genocide.
On the Public Debt Administration site’s front page, the hackers posted a photograph of a hall full of coffins and the number 8372 – a reference to the number of Bosniaks killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, Serbian news website 021 reported.
Over the photo were the words “Unutmadik”, Turkish for “We haven’t forgotten”. This was also a reference to a quote by the first Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who said: “Do not forget genocide, because a forgotten genocide will be repeated.”
The photo posted by the hackers was taken down and the Public Debt Administration site was functioning normally again on Friday afternoon.
The Serbian authorities do not accept that the massacres and deportations of Bosniaks from Srebrenica constituted genocide, despite the rulings of international courts.
Hacking group Cyber Warrior Tim Akincilar states on its website that it was founded in 2001 and fights “attacks on our faith and moral values, actions against our state and our country, and events that negatively affect society and the public conscience”.
It has often been reported that Cyber Warrior Tim Akincilar is related to Turkish nationalist groups, while ‘Akincilar’ refers to the Ottoman army’s vanguard units.
In previous years, the hackers have attacked the websites of various Greek authorities, such as Greece’s Foreign Ministry in September 2020, but also sites belonging to the Dutch government in 2018 and the sites of some government institutions in Egypt in 2019, when these countries had disagreements with Turkish government.
So far, the UN tribunal in The Hague and Balkan courts have sentenced a total of 48 people to more than 700 years in prison, plus five life sentences, for Srebrenica crimes.
The region needs more proactive transparency, open contracting and political will to deal with freedom of information, FOI, speakers from the region and internationally told BIRN’s conference Platform B: Freedom of Information in the Balkans, held on Thursday.
Countries are still struggling with the slow implementation of FOI laws, political pressures and institutions’ unresponsiveness, while the first year of the global pandemic also saw excessive delays in responding to FOI requests, speakers at the event, at which BIRN’s annual freedom of information report was officially launched, agreed.
Ivana Jeremic, editor at Balkan Insight from Serbia, told the conference that 2020 was “extremely hard” in terms of getting any information from institutions in Serbia, making it difficult for journalists to do their job.
“I don’t know what to expect in future, but the trend is not optimistic, there is no will from institutions to implement our law, which is actually among the best laws in the world, but on paper.
Besides, people who are in charge [of FOI requests] at institutions are not educated enough on how to respond to those requests and there is also lots of pressure on them about which information should be made public and which not,” Jeremic said.
Kreshnik Gashi, managing editor of KALLXO.com and Author of the TV show Justice in Kosovo, told the conference that journalists and the general public face many problems when it comes to freedom of information in Kosovo.
“The law on the classification of official documents in Kosovo is not implemented by all institutions and as a result we have problems when documents are requested by various parties. One of the problems is whether or not the official is allowed to provide the document to the journalist or the party, as it is not clear whether that document is public or not,” he said.
“In consequence, all the required documents have to go through this process always, because there is no clarity on what is confidential and what isn’t”, he added.
However, there are signs that things might be changing for the better.
“I should mention as a very good model and practice that Kosovo has decided to open all contracts in public procurement, an action that has helped our work a lot and makes monitoring and reporting on public contracts management possible,” Gashi said.
Sandra Pernar, Senior Regional Coordinator – Europe, at Open Government Partnership, OGP, told the discussion that there are many similarities between the regional countries that are part of the initiative – implementation being one of them.
“In general for the region, I can say that the conclusion is very much the same as the one many [speakers] said several times today, and that is: there is not so much of a problem with bad regulation, it is really about the implementation. This is something that should be addressed,” Pernar said, adding that the region should pay more attention to proactive transparency, “which is obviously not there yet”.
The report’s findings were further discussed with other BIRN journalists, civil society members and public institutions’ representatives, which was followed by a Q&A session.
The report, Freedom of Information in the Western Balkans in 2020: Classified. Rejected. Delayed, which covers 2020, is part of BIRN’s ongoing project, A Paper Trail to Better Governance, with the main aim of exposing wrongdoing in government and public and private companies and among powerful individuals through country-based and cross-border investigations.
Besides analysing a total of 358 FOI requests submitted by BIRN journalists, the report also examines legislation, governments’ partnerships and progress in international organisations in dealing with transparency and open data, the work of regional public information officers as well as regional governments’ treatment of freedom of information during the pandemic.
A draft law published at 9pm on Wednesday would make it impossible for the Polish national broadcasting council, KRRiT, to renew the licence of TVN24, the most important private news channel in the country. Its licence expires in August. It would also impact the future of TVN as a whole.
According to the proposed text, the governing PiS party plans to modify the law on radio and television to prevent media companies whose owners are based outside the European Economic Area – the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway – from getting licences.
The formal owner of TVN, which includes TVN24, the all-news channel, is Polish Television Holding BV, registered in the Netherlands, which in its turn is owned by the US media company Discovery, Inc.
The government claims the modifications are necessary to fight “hybrid activities by third states,” but most independent observers see them as a direct attack on TVN, whose news channels have published investigations on and critical coverage of the PiS government.
In a statement on Tuesday, the TVN management said its ownership structure was “compatible with the law on radio and television, which is confirmed by independent expert analyses conducted by well-known legal experts”.
Since PiS took over the state television TVP, including its all-news channel TVP Info, it has turned into a propaganda machine for the governing party.
After taking over state media and depriving independent media of state advertising during its first mandate, PiS is focusing now on weakening critically inclined private media.
In December last year, the state energy company PKN Orlen, run by a PiS ally, announced it was taking over Polska Press, the owner of much of Poland’s regional and local media. Purges in newsrooms owned by Orlen have followed.
In February, IPI, a Vienna-based NGO that monitors media freedom, published a report that detailed how PiS was step by step destroying independent media in Poland.
“This policy of death by a thousand cuts means that on their own, these measures have been scattered enough to avoid further battles with Brussels over the rule of law,” Jamie Wiseman, an advocacy officer at IPI, told BIRN at the time.
“Taken together, they amount to a concerted campaign of administrative pressure aimed at destabilising critical media businesses and a direct attack on press freedom,” he said.
The draft law stands a good chance of being passed by the parliament, even if one party in the governing coalition, Agreement, led by Jaroslaw Gowin, might not support it. PiS might count on the extra votes from the far-right Confederation and from the maverick Kukiz’15 group.
The European Union office in Tirana has voiced concern about the political impartiality of the new members and chief of Albania’s main media regulatory body.
In a statement, it emphasized that “media regulatory authorities need to work impartially, transparently and with a legitimacy that is recognised by all”, and that “no doubt should exist about the non-partisan, professional & pluralistic nature of the work” of the institution.
“We invite the authorities to consider proceeding with this nomination under the new parliament starting in September, together with the appointment of the other board members of the Authority, in order to achieve the widest possible consensus and legitimacy,” the statement published on Twitter reads.
Albania’s parliament, currently controlled by the governing Socialists and their associates, is planning to elect a new Audiovisual Media Authority Board, AMA, where the main contender is Armela Krasniqi, a close associate of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.
BIRN has learned that the EU statement on Wednesday came after the Socialists spurned an EU private request to postpone the vote.
The AMA supervises the television and radio market in Albania. Rama attempted in 2019 to extend and empower it to supervise and order take-downs or fine online media, claiming it was needed to combat defamation.
The AMA is historically perceived as politically biased, as the members of the board are proposed by political parties. However, the possible election of Krasniqi, a known close associate of the Prime Minister, has raised hackles.
The political bias of AMA was one of the arguments provided by the Venice Commission against extending its power to supervise online media.
The so-called anti-defamation package was approved by the governing Socialists despite local and international criticism but has been blocked by President Ilir Meta’s veto.
Rama once claimed he had withdrawn the law proposal. However, no formal step to remove it from the parliamentary agenda has been undertaken, and the law is still listed as up for discussion.
Digital rights violations have been rising across Southeastern Europe since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with a similar pattern – pro-government trolls and media threatening freedom of expression and attacking journalists who report such violations.
“Working together is the only way to raise awareness of citizens’ digital rights and hold public officials accountable,” civil society representatives attending BIRN and Share Foundation’s online event on Thursday agreed.
The event took place after the release of BIRN and SHARE Foundation’s report, Digital Rights Falter amid Political and Social Unrest,published the same day.
“We need to build an alliance of coalitions to raise awareness on digital rights and the accountability of politicians,” said Blerjana Bino, from SCiDEV, an Albanian-based NGO, closely following this issue.
When it comes to prevention and the possibilities of improving digital competencies in order to reduce risks about personal data and security, speakers agreed that digital and informational literacy is important – but the blame should not be only put on users.
The responsibility of tech giants and relevant state institutions to investigate such cases must be kept in mind, not just regular cases but also those that are more complicated, the panel concluded.
Uros Misljenovic, from Partners Serbia, sees a major part of the problem in the lack of response from the authorities.
“We haven’t had one major case reaching an epilogue in court. Not a single criminal charge was brought by the public prosecutor either. Basically, the police and prosecutors are not interested in prosecuting these crimes,” he said. “So, if you violate these rights, you will face no consequences,” he concluded.
The report was presented and discussed at an online panel discussion with policymakers, journalists and civil society members around digital rights in Southeast Europe.
It was the first in a series of events as part of Platform B – a platform that aims to amplify the voices of strong and credible individuals and organisations in the region that promote the core values of democracy, such as civic engagement, independent institutions, transparency and rule of law.
Between August 2019 and December 2020, BIRN and the SHARE Foundation verified more than 800 violations of digital rights, including attempts to prevent valid freedom of speech (trolling of media and the public engaged in fair reporting and comment, for example) and at the other end of the scale, efforts to overwhelm users with false information and racist/discriminatory content – usually for financial or political gain.
The lack of awareness of digital rights violations within society has further undermined democracy, not only in times of crisis, the report reads, and identifiers common trends, such as:
Democratic elections being undermined
Public service websites being hacked
Provocation and exploitation of social unrest
Conspiracy theories and fake news
Online hatred, leaving vulnerable people more isolated
Tech shortcuts failing to solve complex societal problems.
The report, Digital Rights Falter amid Political and Social Unrest, can be downloaded here.
Starting from Thursday, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo are dropping all roaming charges.
This means that citizens of these countries can make phone calls and send messages across the Western Balkan region without restrictions, paying the same prices as if they are in their home country.
However, the scrapping of roaming fees comes with a caveat, a warning for travelling citizens not to get too comfortable with their internet usage while abroad as there still might be some restrictions applied depending on their provider.
“Users are advised to always check their internet plans with their telecom providers, before travelling,” North Macedonia’s Agency for Electronic Telecommunications, AEK, said.
When it comes to internet traffic, in practice this means that some restrictions might apply, meaning that with some plans users might not be able to use all of their internet traffic from their home plan while abroad, the AEK explained,
Serbia’s Telenor provider explained that the use of the internet abroad will depend on the plan the users have.
“The amount [of internet traffic] depends on the monthly subscription for the tariff plan that users have, so there is no single unified amount, but it varies depending on the plan,” Telenor told N1 media outlet Thursday.
To prevent possible misuse of potentially lower prices in neighbouring countries, authorities across the region also said that while users can buy SIM cards in the neighbourhood, they will be able to use them only four months before they expire.
Roaming charges in the Western Balkan region were abolished in accordance with the Regional Roaming Agreement signed in 2019 at the second Western Balkans Digital Summit in Belgrade.
Countries from the region signalled that the next step would be mulling ways to reduce roaming charges between Western Balkans and the EU. For that purpose, a draft is expected to be prepared by the end of this year.
A court in Kosovo has ordered 30 days of detention for the head of Independent Media Commission, IMC, Luan Latifi, and its Director of Finances, Arben Bilalli, a day after they were arrested in Pristina on bribery suspicions.
The Pristina Basic Court on Thursday said there was grounded suspicion that both Bilalli and Latifi have been involved in a graft affair.
The IMC is an independent institution responsible for the regulation, management and oversight of the broadcasting frequency spectrum in Kosovo.
It licenses public and private broadcasters, establishes and implements policy and regulates broadcasting rights, obligations and responsibilities of individuals and entities who provide audio and audiovisual media services.
The board of the IMC held two meetings on Thursday after the arrests. “After the review [of the situation created] the Board has requested an interpretation from the IMC’s legal department on how to further proceed in line with legal obligations,” it said. “The IMC once again expresses its readiness to provide full cooperation with justice institutions in order to help investigations until the end,” it added.
Arben Bilalli, Director of Finances at the IMC, was arrested first on Wednesday. Prosecution documents obtained by BIRN say he was caught red-handed in an undercover police operation.
The documents say Bilalli and Latifi met a private business’s representatives three times to negotiate a fine the IMC had imposed on the entity.
According to the dossier, Bilalli accepted 8,000 euros from business owners but was not aware that the money belonged to the police and was used to simulate the action. The prosecution says that after he received the money, Bilalli was in constant contact with his boss Latifi.
When the global pandemic halted our “offline” lives, we moved meetings, dinners and parties, shopping, protests to the online sphere. As we sought comfort, education, business and social life in the digital, our only public sphere also became overwhelmed with content designed to manipulate and misinform citizens.
Journalists, civil society activists, officials and the general public have faced vicious attacks – including verbal abuse, trolling, smear campaigns and undue pressure to retract content – in response to publishing information online. Many of our data were stolen, and our privacy endangered. Surveillance flourished.
In the period from August 2019 until December 2020, BIRN and the SHARE Foundation were gathering information on digital rights violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Hungary, Romania and Serbia, and our monitoring shows violations of digital rights continued at an alarming rate in all six countries.
As all six held elections during this period – local, general and/or presidential – our findings raise serious concerns about how the digital arena has been effectively hijacked to propagate fake news, hate-fuelled conspiracy theories and misinformation in support of offline efforts to sabotage democratic processes.
Just when people needed factually-correct information and governments needed close scrutiny to ensure high standards in public life, cyberattacks were launched against state bodies and the public were overwhelmed with false information and discriminatory content designed to manipulate voting and/or stoke hatred of particular groups.
Governments, on the other hand, used the pandemic to curb freedom of expression, abused health data, while many public institutions failed to meet standards of free and open internet.
During this period, BIRN and the SHARE Foundation verified more than 800 violations of digital rights including efforts to prevent valid freedom of speech (trolling of media and general public engaged in fair reporting and comment, for example) and at the other end of the scale, efforts to overwhelm users with false information and racist/discriminatory content – usually for financial or political gain.
Most online violations we monitored were under the category of pressures because of expression and activities (375) while the fewest violations monitored were classified as holding intermediaries liable (0).
Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic
Action was taken in just 21 per cent of cases, which usually entailed – depending on the type of violation – removing articles or deleting posts and/or comments by the general public and public sector organisations. During the COVID-19 crisis, we saw a rise in arrests of citizens accused of causing panic by publishing fake news on social media. Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina were leading in this trend. Legal action, including arrests, penalties or other court action, was taken in less than 0.5 per cent of all monitored cases.
It is important to note that just as some violations included attempts to stifle free speech and frustrate freedom of expression through publishing falsehoods, not all legal actions launched to apparently hold intermediaries liable were legitimate attempts to protect freedom of speech. Some were cynical attempts against the public interest to block the publication of proven facts.
All these violations have contributed to an atmosphere dominated by fear and hatred with already vulnerable communities – such as LGBT+, groups identifying as female, migrants, particular ethnic groups – becoming subjected to worse and more frequent abuse, leaving them ever more isolated from support networks.
Those guilty of using the digital space to undermine democracy, intimidate others from publishing the truth or to spread malicious falsehoods operate with impunity, not least because there is no meaningful sense in the region of what constitutes digital rights – never mind the desire to or means to protect those rights.
Our report is the first effort on the regional level to map current challenges in the digital sphere and aims to fill in the gaps in the research. We took an interdisciplinary approach and looked at the problems from the legal, political, tech and societal angle, as an attempt to show that the problems and solutions to these violations should also be holistic and overarching. We also want to highlight these issues, as the lack of awareness of digital rights violations within society further undermines democracy, not only in times of crisis.
We don’t see the internet only as open and transparent but also see digital evolution as a set of mechanisms and tools that have great potential to serve the needs of people, and let’s not forget that internet access has proved indispensable in times of crisis such as in the COVID-19 pandemic.
We hope this report will serve not just for stock taking but be understood as a map showing what and how to further advance our rights, and also as an invitation to everyone to join forces in making our digital world healthy, too.
Marija Ristic is regional director of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Danilo Krivokapic is director of SHARE Foundation.
Report “Digital Rights Falter amid Political and Social Unrest” can be downloaded here.
As part of our Platform B, we are also hosting a discussion with policy makers, journalists and civil society members around digital rights in the Southeast Europe. Register here.
BIRD Community
Are you a professional journalist or a media worker looking for an easily searchable and comprehensive database and interested in safely (re)connecting with more than thousands of colleagues from Southeastern and Central Europe?
We created BIRD Community, a place where you can have it all!
