August 2021

Genocide Denied, War Criminals Praised on TikTok: Report

Posted on August 31, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A report analysing extremist content and hate speech on TikTok, published by the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, warns that some content creators on the video-sharing platform have been using it to glorify war criminals, promote genocide and Holocaust denial, and spread racist and anti-Semitic ideas.

“Two of the top ten most-viewed videos, with 655,800 and 233,000 views, feature comments that mock the victims and deny the existence of the Bosnian genocide and the Holocaust,” said the report.

The report, which analysed a sample of 1,030 videos, said that more than 240 videos featured support for organisations or individuals linked to extremism or terrorism.

It also said that 246 videos included the praise, promotion or glorification of people such as wartime Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic, Christchurch massacre perpetrator Brenton Tarrant, Adolf Hitler or Islamic State.

The report said that a lot of anti-Muslim hate speech on TikTok was linked to the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the massacres of Bosniaks from Srebrenica.

“This included content about the 1995 genocide at Srebenica, denial of this event, and glorification of those responsible, such as convicted war criminal General Ratko Mladic. Songs used to celebrate Mladic were common in our sample,” the report said.

It also found videos promoting racist stereotypes that portray all Muslims as supporters of terrorism, propaganda footage produced by Islamic State, and 26 posts denying the existence of the Holocaust.

“Content creators promoting hate and extremism leverage the systemic functions of the platform to increase the visibility of their content, including efforts to use the algorithmic promotion of certain hashtags to achieve views and engagement,” the report said.

It warned that evasion tactics to avoid takedowns are simple but effective. Strategies include banned users returning to TikTok with almost-identical usernames, using privacy functions and comment restrictions strategically or alternative hashtag spellings, and making use of profiles’ video grid layout to promote hatred.

The report further claimed that extremist content is not being consistently and thoroughly removed from the platform, and that many examples of hate speech were not taken down quickly.

In response, TikTok said it had taken steps to remove the extremist content and the accounts of the users who posted it.

The company said that it “categorically prohibits” extremism and hate speech and removes any material that violates it policies.

Turkish Govt Increasing Internet, Social Media Censorship: Report

Posted on August 17, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new report published by the Freedom of Expression Association in Turkey on Monday says that the Turkish government under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has increased its censorship over the years on internet and social media.

The report, entitled ‘Disabled Web 2020: Fahrenheit 5651, The Corrosive Effect of Censorship’, says that more than 467,000 websites have been banned in Turkey since 2006, with 58,809 website bans in 2020.

Since 2006, the Turkish authorities have also banned access to 150,000 URLs, 7,500 Twitter accounts, 12,000 YouTube videos, 8,000 Facebook posts and 6,800 Instagram posts, according to the report.

In 2020 alone, 15,832 news articles were ordered to be removed from media webpages, the majority of them critical of Erdogan’s government.

“The Turkish state’s complex internet censorship mechanism continues to be more active than ever before,” the report says.

The Freedom of Expression Association accuses the government of using measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to increase censorship.

The report says that 764 different state institutions – ministries, directorates and the presidency and its branches, as well as courts – have banned access to webpages for various reasons.

However, according to the data collected by the Freedom of Expression Association, a relatively small proportion of the websites and URLs have been banned by the courts – around 35,000 since 2006.

The report also highlights that a how a digital rights law adopted in 2020 has had a serious impact on social media.

According to the data that the Freedom of Expression Association obtained from the Interior Ministry, a total of 75,292 social media accounts were investigated in 2020 and legal action was taken against 32,000 of them.

The report also says that sanctions on the internet are “no longer limited to only access-blocking practices, there has been a significant increase in the number of news and content removed with the content removal sanction, and censorship has begun to be implemented more effectively”.

“The corrosive and destructive effect of censorship and control mechanisms will continue in the years to come,” the report concludes.

Twitter Labels Numerous Media Accounts in Serbia ‘State Affiliated’

Posted on August 16, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Twitter has started to label accounts belonging to various pro-government media in Serbia as state-affiliated media.

Among those it deems affiliated with Serbia’s government are the dailies Srpski Telegraf, Kurir, Informer, Politika, and three free-to-air channels – Happy, Prva TV and B92, RTV Pink’s online portal, as well as the news agency Tanjug.

The label appears on the profile page of the Twitter account and on the Tweets sent by and shared from these accounts. Labels contain information about the country the account is affiliated with and whether it is operated by a government representative or is a state-affiliated media entity.

These labels include a small icon of a flag to signal the account’s status as a government account and a podium for state-affiliated media. In the case of state-affiliated media entities, Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people.

As noted in Twitter’s rules and regulations, Twitter defines state-affiliated media 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.”

None of the media affected has yet reacted publicly to the new rule.

Although the media in question are widely perceived as pro-government due to their highly positive reporting on the government and sharp criticism of the opposition, it is not clear what steps Twitter took to determine whether they fit the criteria. BIRN has asked Twitter about the methodology it used but has not received a reply by the time of publication.

The “Serbia state-affiliated media” label is visible on the pro-government media Twitter page. Photo: Screenshot/Twitter.com

Twitter announced it will start labelling state-affiliated accounts in August 2020, and a number of accounts linked to governments across the world have been labelled since then. However, Serbia is the first country in the Balkan region to be added to this list.

Serbia’s public broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia, RTS, and Radio Television of Vojvodina, RTV, are among those whose accounts are also labelled state-affiliated.

Twitter said it draws a distinction between state-affiliated broadcasters and those working more independently like the BBC.

“State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” it said.

Currently, besides Serbia, labels appear on relevant Twitter accounts from China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Last year, Twitter deleted 8,558 accounts engaged in “inauthentic coordinated activity” – some 43 million tweets criticising the Serbian opposition, independent media and individuals critical of president Aleksandar Vucic and his Progressive Party rule.

BIRN analysis showed that before it was removed, a network of accounts in the service of Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party found its way into the pages of pro-government tabloids, such as Informer and Kurir, disguised as the “voice of the people”.

Poland Further Restricts Media Freedom, Angers US with Controversial Media Law

Posted on August 12, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

After a stormy day in the Polish parliament, Law and Justice (PiS) finally managed to scrape enough support late on Wednesday evening to pass a law that will prevent companies outside the European Economic Area from owning television stations in Poland.

The law is seen as a move to further restrict media pluralism in the country and directly targeted at TVN, the largest private television station in the country, owned by the US-based Discovery Inc., whose news coverage has been critical of the governing party. It is also a direct snub to the Biden administration, which responded to the passing of the law with a harsh statement arguing it would harm Poland’s media environment, its investment climate and even relations with its western allies.

On Tuesday, the PiS leadership decided to fire from the government Jaroslaw Gowin, the deputy prime minister and leader of Agreement, one of two junior coalition partners of PiS. Gowin had been a thorn in the side of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for some time, blocking presidential elections from happening by post back in 2020 and, more recently, opposing the TVN law and the government’s new signature program, the Polish Deal, designed to help Polish working families and win back waning support for the nationalist-populist government.

Without Gowin’s 13 MPs or even some of them, PiS has lost its thin parliamentary majority, which stood at 235 out of 460 seats.

Nevertheless, the party leadership decided to push ahead with the controversial law on Wednesday. Demonstrations in solidarity with TVN were organised in Warsaw and tens of other Polish towns.

Shenanigans

In a surprise development on Wednesday afternoon, the opposition managed to pass a motion introduced by the chairman of the Polish People’s Party, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, which asked for the TVN law vote to be postponed to September. Five parliamentarians from Gowin’s faction and four from the group of maverick politician Pawel Kukiz backed the opposition on this.

There were cheers from the opposition ranks in the parliament upon the announcement of the vote, as this would have been the first major occasion when PiS was defeated in the lower house on a key bill.

But the day was far from over. In what is no longer an unusual practice for PiS, the party’s lawmakers first called for a break, and then invoked anonymous legal experts to claim the vote had been improper in order to force a repeat of the failed vote. By the evening when the poll was repeated, three MPs from the Kukiz’15 group, including its leader Pawel Kukiz, had switched sides to PiS. Kukiz himself pressed the button while opposition MPs shouted “traitor” at him across the hall.

The opposition-controlled Senate is now expected to reject the TVN bill, which the Sejm can later overrule with an absolute majority. In light of this week’s developments, it seems unclear whether PiS can pull that off in the Sejm.

The US, which is a key military and economic partner for Poland, had been putting pressure on Warsaw to leave TVN alone. In a statement following the vote, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken decried the legislation, saying: “Poland is an important NATO ally that understands the Transatlantic Alliance is based on mutual commitments to shared democratic values and prosperity. These pieces of legislation run counter to the principle and values for which modern, democratic nations stand.”

Bulgarian TV Accused of Favouring GERB in Election Coverage

Posted on August 12, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has accused Bulgarian National Television BNT, of bias in its election coverage towards the former ruling GERB party, in a statement released on Tuesday.

A report on how BNT covered GERB in the July elections by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, said BNT had failed in its duty as a public broadcaster by giving more airtime to GERB, Bulgaria’s ruling party until last April.

“Reporters Without Borders, RSF, calls on the political forces in Bulgaria’s new parliament to carry out deep-seated, systemic reforms to strengthen public media independence after Bulgarian National Television, BNT, violated its legal obligation to provide unbiased coverage of the campaign for the snap parliamentary elections held on 11 July,” the statement says.

On Wednesday, caretaker Minister of Culture and a key voice in the 2020-2021 anti-government protests, Velislav Minekov, said he hopes the authorities will look further into BNT’s reporting after the RSF analysis.

“This distortion of informational politics deprives the viewers and the tax-payers of unbiased and informative choice, especially as elections are being held,” Milenkov said.

Emil Koushlukov, BNT’s Director General, has not commented on the accusations, and former PM and GERB leader Boyko Borissov also did not address the issue at a press conference on Wednesday.

Koushlukov was a controversial figure even before becoming BNT director in 2019, after siding with different political figures over the years.

He was advisor to the first democratically elected President of Bulgaria, Zhelyo Zhelev, from 1991 to 1996 before becoming an MP in 2001 through the NDSV – National Movement Simeon II – headed by Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Bulgaria’s former deposed Tsar.

Between 2013 and 2016, he was working at TV7, then owned by Tsvetan Vassilev, whose Corporate Commercial Bank collapsed and is currently exiled in Serbia, and later at Kanal 3. Between 2016 and 2017 he was a director of Alpha TV, owned by the far-right party Ataka.

BNT’s coverage of the 2020-2021 protest wave has also come under fire, with protesters often gathering in front of its office in Sofia and accusing it of underrepresenting the size and the seriousness of the demonstrations.

On July 14, 2020, a petition seeking Koushlukov’s resignation was published and signed by various intellectuals, journalists, artists, and protest figures.

On August 6, Koushlukov was fined 1,500 euros by the Council for Electronic Media for not following the Law on Radio and Television and offering a right to reply to the caretaker cabinet’s Culture Minister, Velislav Minekov.

In early June, Minekov had said BNT should be investigated over its alleged pro-GERB coverage. This was met by claims about an “unprecedented attack from the authorities” from Koushlukov, who further accused the caretaker cabinet of trying to put pressure on BNT. Minekov demanded airtime to answer these claims.

In the months leading up to inconclusive elections in April, which were followed by repeat elections in July and will probably be followed by a third round in the autumn, BNT often broadcasted press conferences and announcements by former PM Borissov.

Serbia ‘Misused’ Money Laundering Laws to Target Critics, Reuters Reports

Posted on August 6, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Serbia is among several countries that have misused legislation passed to meet Financial Action Task Force, FATF, standards to combat money laundering and terrorism financing to investigate critical voices and NGOs, Reuters reported on Thursday.

According to Reuters, in Uganda, Serbia, India, Tanzania, and Nigeria, the legislation was “used by authorities to investigate journalists, NGO workers, and lawyers”.

“Through constant assessments of countries’ measures, the FATF plays a little-known but key role in shaping financial crime legislation and in dictating governments’ security priorities,” the news agency explained. “Across the globe, it has strengthened laws to crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing.”

“But by pressuring nations with weak democratic frameworks to adopt and bolster such laws, the FATF has unwittingly handed a new legal instrument to authoritarian governments, according to a dozen researchers at think tanks and human rights groups,” it added.

Reuters cited Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Financial Crime at the Royal United Services Institute in London, as saying that FATF standards “are increasingly not just being misunderstood, but are being purposefully abused”.

When it comes to Serbia, Reuters recalled a request that the Finance Ministry’s Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering made to banks in July 2020.

This was to provide “client data on some 50 NGOs and media outlets known for criticizing what they consider to be President Aleksandar Vucic’s increasingly autocratic rule”. The list included Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and a number of BIRN employees.

Reuters further reported that, “after news of the letter leaked, Finance Minister Sinisa Mali told a local television channel the intelligence unit was ‘doing its job’ and the data requests shouldn’t be a problem for the targets ‘if nothing is hidden’”.

No individuals have been charged so far as a result of these probes, Reuters reported.

Reuters reported that Maja Stojanovic, director of Serbia’s nonprofit Civic Initiatives, which was named in the letter, told the news agency she believes the Serbian government is using the data for smear campaigns to undermine NGOs’ work.

“When Stojanovic and other targeted NGOs consulted the banks about the requests, the banks said they couldn’t disclose what information they shared with authorities”, the news agency reported.

Reuters said it asked three of the banks, Banca Intesa Beograd, OTP banka Srbija, and Erste Group Bank, to comment, all of whom declined to do so.

Montenegro Data Protection Agency Voices Concern Over COVID-19 Measures

Posted on August 4, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A member of Montenegro’s Council of the Agency for Personal Data Protection, Muhamed Gjokaj, on Wednesday warned that new COVID-19 measures could put citizens’ personal data at risk.

He said he feared unauthorized persons could get insight into citizens’ personal data, and called on the Health Ministry to be more precise about its new health measures.

“The Health Ministry should explain on the basis of which specific legal norms it has prescribed that waiters have the right to process the personal data of citizens who enter a café or restaurant.

“If there is no adequate legal basis, citizens can sue all those entities that ask to inspect their personal data, which also relates to health information,” Gjokaj told the daily Pobjeda.

On July 30, the Health Ministry announced that patrons of nightclubs, discotheque and indoor restaurants must show their ID and National COVID-19 certificate before entering.

The national COVID-19 certificate is a document issued by Health Ministry, which proves that a person has been vaccinated, or has had a recent negative PCR test, or has recovered from COVID-19. According to the Health Ministry, the certificate must be showed to the waiter or club staff.

Montenegro’s Personal Data Protection Law specifies that personal data related to health conditions can be inspected only by medical personnel, however. It prohibits inspection of personal data by unauthorized personnel.

On July 30, the head of the Digital Health Directorate, Aleksandar Sekulic, said no violation of citizens’ personal data was taking place under the measures, as only the name and date of birth of the person were on the COVID-19 certificate.

“We do not provide medical conditions through the certificates but only the data citizens want to provide. They voluntarily agreed to provide a certain amount of data,” Sekulic told a press conference.

On August 3, a lawyer, Andrijana Razic claimed the Health Ministry had violated the law by the new health measures, accusing it of forcing citizens to be vaccinated. She said that non-vaccinated citizens must not be discriminated against in any way.

“It’s completely clear that employees in a restaurant or nightclub have absolutely no right to identify citizens, or ask them for health information that is secret by law. The government should seriously consider the possible consequences of pursuing such a discriminatory and dangerous health policy, based on a drastic violation of basic human rights,” Razic told the daily newspaper Dan.

According to the Institute for Public Health, there are 1,667 registered COVID-19 active cases in the country. The capital Podgorica and the coastal town of Budva have the largest numbers. On Wednesday, the Health Ministry said that 34.5 per cent of the adult population had been vaccinated against COVID-19.

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