Journalists and politicians suffer more online attacks in Serbia and Hungary; no lull in hate speech targeting minorities in North Macedonia; fake news and frauds occur in several digital spaces.
Online threats to journalists and politicians in Serbia, Hungary
Episodes of intimidation and other online threats continue to mark several online environments. Serbia, in particular, remains at the top list of regional countries, with the highest rate of online attacks on journalists and independent media.
Along the same lines, Hungary’s digital space remains a breeding ground for hate campaigns, online attacks and other politically motivated incidents of intimidation.
A police officer stands by as cartoons from French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo are projected onto buildings in central Montpellier in France, 21 October 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO
On November 5, the mayor of Budapest’s 9th District, Krisztina Baranyi, received threatening messages after refusing to answer questions from a journalist of the pro-government media Pesti Srácok on a TV show a few days earlier. The mayor had refused to answer an inquiry about the payment of utility bills in Ferencváros. She replied: “I’ve been saying it for a long time, and I vowed that I would never speak to the propaganda media, to paid propagandists, so I won’t do that now either. I didn’t know you would be here, and if I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.”
Following this, Gergely Huth, Pesti Srácok’s editor-in-chief, defended his colleague and freedom of the press in general. “According to the editorial office of PestiSrácok.hu, the presenters of ATV acted ethically and correctly when they warned Krisztina Baranyi, a public figure and public official, of the seriousness of her actions and rejected the accusations and slanders that seriously hurt our colleague Szilárd Szalai’s professional honor and human dignity. We evaluate Krisztina Baranyi’s statements and behaviour as a gross attack on press freedom,” read the media release.
In Serbia, several cases of online threats and intimidation were also recorded. On November 6, Dragoljub Petrović, editor-in-chief of Danas daily newspaper, received a threatening email which had “Belgrade Charlie Hebdo” in the subject, alluding to the 2015 terrorist attack on a French satirical magazine. The message described detailed plans of an attack on Danas offices in Belgrade. Days earlier, on November 3, Serbian parliamentarian Staša Stojanović, a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, published an insulting tweet against the opposition, branding them “enemies of the state, people and [Serbian] identity”.
Finally, Dragan Bursać, a journalist based in Bosnia and Herzegovina writing for the Serbian portal Autonomija, received threatening messages on Instagram on November 2. The journalist is often targeted with threats, insults and hate speech because of his writing about nationalism and post-war societies in former Yugoslavia.
Hate speech still mars North Macedonian online environment
National, ethnic and other minorities, as underlined in some of our previous articles, are being systematically attacked in North Macedonia’s digital landscape, which remains full of hate comments and acts of discrimination.
Ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje attending a protest. Photo: EPA/GEORGI LICOVSKI
The ethnic Albanian minority was subjected to the greatest number of registered episodes. On November 13, a Twitter user wrote that, “Shiptars (Albanians) went around the world to promote Islam as a religion of peace”. Another user typed: “Stinking traitors, Shiptarian poltroons, sold souls, filthy whores. Your faggot tribe, you should be exterminated”. Three days earlier, another Twitter user wrote that “Shiptars” are “the cancer of Macedonia”. The same user said: “Тhey’ve screwed up healthcare, economy, police, customs, infrastructure, history, constitutional order, judiciary, law and what not. No, I’m not a nationalist, I love Macedonia, and they treat it destructively. We hate you.”
Other acts targeted the LGBTI community. A Twitter user wrote on November 11: “Faggots in the past were much bigger men than today”, sharing a picture of the later gay singer Freddie Mercury. In another episode, a Twitter user commented that he was shocked at the way “faggots” go to the extreme of being attractive to straight culture.
Fake news, denigrated women and fear of retaliation in Romania
The latest cases recorded in Romania in the first half of November saw several violations of digital rights of various natures.
On November 9, a priest told a live interview on BZI’s Facebook page, a local media outlet in Iasi, north-eastern Romania: “This is about two unmarried girls. In my opinion, they both suffer from some kind of deviant behaviour. They are hysterical.” His accusations concerned two women he had attacked on the grounds of Vladiceni Monastery, on the outskirts of Iasi. The two women not only filed a criminal complaint but also filmed the attack and published the video on Facebook. During the interview, BZI journalists did not contact the two women.
Activists belonging to two feminist NGO associations protest peacefully in front of the Bucharest Court’s headquarters against sexual abuse, aggression and violence against girls and women in Bucharest, Romania, 08 March 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT
Three days earlier, on November 6, Emilia Sercan, an investigative journalist who recently revealed the PM’s plagiarism, complained of being often followed by “strange men” in Bucharest. Her fear of retaliation reflected that she said she had been followed by state actors multiple times recently. Sercan said she suspected it might be part of an attempt to expose her sources. “This is a failure of the state. If a journalist is harassed, surveilled or targeted by ‘kompromat’ actions, these are signs of a failing state and of a failing political class that doesn’t understand the role of the media in a society,” Sercan told Radio Free Europe Romania.
Another episode saw the spread of a fake narrative about unexploited diamond reserves in Romania by multiple online media, including one that uses the visual identity of the well-known newspaper Romania Libera. However, there never were any natural diamond reserves in Romania, according to Stefan Marincea, a researcher at the National Institute of Geology.
Phishing and online scams hit Serbia
Computer frauds in digital spaces show no sign of slowing down and are occurring at an alarming rate in many countries.
Serbia recorded two such episodes on November 4. First, a fraudulent email allegedly coming from the Serbian branch of Raiffeisen bank claimed to contain an international payment copy. The spreadsheet attachment was probably aimed at infecting devices with a macro-virus.
On the same day, the Ministry of Interior warned the public about phishing emails impersonating police commanders and heads of police departments. The malicious emails, sent to a number of state institutions and private citizens, contain an attachment allegedly in connection with charges of paedophilia and other criminal acts.