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China Increasing its Footprint in Balkan Media, Study Concludes

Posted on December 9, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A study presented on Wednesday authored by Vladimir Shopov, an expert on foreign relations and an European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) visiting fellow – says China is positioning itself in the media sector in Southeast Europe.

For the purpose of the study, “Getting on the Radar: China’s Rising Media Presence in South-East Europe”, Shopov said he conducted 40 interviews in eight countries over September to November, with different “media experts, journalists, policy analysts and researchers, university lecturers, diplomats, politicians and businesspeople”. The author also used desk research.

“China is creating an increasingly elaborate media cooperation framework with both state and private media institutions,” the report notes, adding that while “the focus is largely on economy and business”, it is “gradually expanding to include politics” – with mainly positive and fact-based reporting and “little critical content”.

The report elaborates on each Western Balkan country in detail.

It notes that China’s Xinhau News Agency has official collaboration deals with counterpart agencies in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia, where study visits for local journalists to China are organised often. Study visits are also organised in Croatia and Montenegro, despite a lack of extensive collaboration contracts there.

Free-of-charge Chinese content, such as documentaries “about China’s system of governance”, was brought to Albania under a 2019 agreement between the respective public broadcasters, the report recalls.

Albanian media report mainly on bilateral Chinese relations and run interviews with Chinese officials. The Chinese embassy has encouraged youngsters to write about China’s management of the pandemic.

Unlike Xinhua correspondents in Albania, who are not very active, in Bosnia and Herzegovina they engage in activities beyond journalism such as lecturing in universities.

“The other main actor is the China-focused” Kina-Danas regional media outlet, running since 2014, which reflects Beijing agenda and functions as a regional media outlet.

Stories focus on Chinese economic projects, although Chinese businesses do not usually communicate much with the media.

In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency often distributes the “photo content” of Xinhua, the report notes.

Another Chinese outlet present for decades in Sofia, which has its local network, is Economic Daily. The news portal 24 Hours has created a segment entirely based on Chinese sources and content, called Focus China. Various portals presenting views of Beijing are currently being created in the country.

Croatia’s official collaboration with Chinese media is thin and “the main platform for cooperation are annual study visits for Croatian journalists”, the report says.

The local media’s increased reporting on China focuses on individual projects or China-US relations. The biweekly magazine Globus has a supplement on China and there are unofficial reports on Chinese companies’ failed attempts to acquire Croatian media organisations.

In Kosovo, China’s non-recognition of its statehood creates “extremely limited space for interaction” there, but the Beijing liaison office, although barely noticeable, is increasing its activities. Local reports focus mainly on Serbia-China relations and on Kosovo’s non-recognition.

China’s media presence in Montenegro is also thin. Chinese media provide free content for local media, which is considered low quality by most journalists. Montenegrin events are covered by Xinhua’s correspondent in Belgrade.

Coverage of developments in China is growing in North Macedonia as well, though, “most news items are about the economy, relate to ongoing or potential bilateral projects and remain factual” and often they are just translations of Western media reports.

In 2016, China’s State Council Information Office signed a collaboration agreement with Serbia’s Ministry of Culture, which intensified “media collaboration at the institutional level”.

News items in Serbia on China are often very positive, with “all projects … presented as investments while in most cases they are being funded via loans”, the report notes. Reporting on Chinese embassy activities is mainly managed by the Serbian state, and “critical outlets are visibly kept at a distance”.

The Human Factor: Experts Warn of Czech Hospitals’ Cyber Vulnerability

Posted on December 9, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

On the morning of Friday, March 13, the duty nurses at the University Hospital in the Czech city of Brno received emergency guidelines on conducting essential meetings.

The Czech Republic had just declared a strict nationwide lockdown and organisations across the country were scrambling to move their meetings online. But the hospital in Brno, bracing for its first wave of Covid patients, was going the other way.

The emergency guidelines said all operational matters must be discussed face-to-face rather than online, in team meetings to be held at regular intervals several times a day.

The measures worked, and the virus – a form of ransomware that had paralysed the hospital’s computers – was eventually contained.

“You cannot prepare for a situation like that,” recalls Branislav Moravcik, the head nurse at the hospital’s Clinic of Anaesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Resuscitation. “The key is not to panic.”

Moravcik learnt of the cyber-attack in the early hours of Friday morning. Upon reaching work, he backed up his most important data on a flash drive and shared the emergency guidelines with his team.

With computers and medical equipment linked to the IT network shutting down around him, he sent the guidelines using a personal laptop tethered to his mobile phone’s internet connection.

Were such an attack to happen again, Moravcik said, it would be helpful if staff could draw upon planned protocols, as well as mandatory training, to work out what to do.

Healthcare workers care for COVID-19 patient in the department of anaesthesiology, resuscitation and intensive care medicine (ICU) at General University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic. Photo: EPA-EFE/MARTIN DIVISEK.

The incident at the University Hospital in Brno was one of several cyber-attacks or attempted cyber-attacks targeting Czech medical facilities this spring.

In mid-April, hospitals in Ostrava, Olomouc and Carlsbad reported malicious activity in their IT systems, just days after the National Cyber and Information Security Agency, NUKIB, had issued a warning signalling the imminent threat of such attacks. As is usually the case, there was no clue to the hackers’ identity beyond the strings of numbers denoting their IP addresses.

These incidents revived a debate in mainstream media outlets about the state of the Czech public sector’s IT infrastructure, accompanied by speculation that the hacks might have been the work of foreign powers such as Russia and China.

The Czech government responded by pledging to upgrade its cyber defences. But as the country faces a second, deadlier surge of coronavirus infections over the winter, cyber-security experts are once again questioning the healthcare system’s ability to withstand attack at a time of crisis.

Experts interviewed by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, have said any investment in technical solutions must be accompanied by large-scale staff training in the basics of digital hygiene. Expensive upgrades, they argued, could only be as effective as the weakest links in the system – the tens of thousands of individuals who accessed public sector IT networks every day.

“The human factor plays a big role in cyber security,” said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast, a Prague-based provider of anti-viral software that helped Brno’s University Hospital deal with the aftermath of the attack. “It is easier to trick a person than it is to hack into a system.”

Hackers often use seemingly innocuous e-mails to convince individuals to provide the confidential details or download the infected files that end up compromising entire networks. Salat said stressed-out, busy workers – such as those staffing a hospital during a pandemic – would be particularly vulnerable to such “social engineeering” tactics.

To minimise the risk, he said, medical facilities should keep their software up to date, make constant backups of important data, and train staff in best practices for digital hygiene as they do for other forms of hygiene.

Digital-hygiene lessons would have to be repeated at regular intervals for their message to be re-enforced. Jan Kozanek, a cybersecurity specialist at the Accenture consultancy, warned of long-ingrained bad habits in the public sector, describing how any visitor to a local hospital was free to check standards for themselves with a little test. “Just count how many times you can spot passwords written on a piece of paper” near a computer workstation, he told BIRN.

‘Only an amateur would leave tracks’

Hospitals’ overwhelming reliance on IT systems to provide urgent care has made them popular targets for hackers seeking to extort money. Ransomware attacks, in which hackers encrypt data and demand payment for restoring access, have been reported at medical facilities across the US and Europe this year.

An attack on a hospital in the German city of Dusseldorf in September was investigated for having caused the death of a seriously ill patient, in what was thought to be the first such case of its kind. The investigation was however dropped as there was not enough evidence that the hack had led to the death. The best-known such attack remains the 2017 “Wannacry” hack that plunged the UK’s National Health Service into crisis, leaving computer screens frozen with messages demanding ransom payments.

This year’s cyber-attacks in the Czech Republic fit within this global trend, as well as within a narrower trend for hacks targeting the country’s public sector IT infrastructure. In June last year, for instance, NUKIB reported that the Czech foreign ministry’s e-mail servers had been targeted by hackers. This April, the country’s main travel hub, the Vaclav Havel Airport, said it had thwarted an attack on its IT system.

Healthcare workers transport a COVID-19 patient to Motol University Hospital after transfer from Zlin region, in Prague, Czech Republic. Photo: EPA-EFE/MARTIN DIVISEK.

Both the EU and the US issued statements criticising the cyber-attacks in the Czech Republic this spring. Several Czech media outlets went further, accusing Russia of orchestrating the hacks – a claim described by the Russian embassy in Prague as a “provocation”. Russia has major business interests in the country and its government is frequently accused of trying to influence Czech politics, as well as public opinion through disinformation campaigns. Similar accusations have also been directed at China, another global player with interests in the Czech economy.

Experts are however cautious about claims that foreign governments are involved in the recent hacks. According to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, the former CEO of Israeli cyber-security firm, Finjan, who currently heads the Prague-based digital marketing company, Socialbakers, state actors prefer making discreet inroads into IT infrastructure over high-profile hacks. “Governments want to have access on a long-term basis, not visibility in the news,” he told BIRN.

Alexandra Alvarova, a writer on disinformation tactics in the Czech Republic, said claims of Russian involvement in the hacks would most likely remain unverified unless there was a high-profile defection from the ranks of its intelligence service. “In this business, only an amateur would leave tracks, and Russian intelligence hackers are some of the best in the world,” she told BIRN.

Czech lawmakers are currently seeking to amend laws in order to give NUKIB a bigger role in defending hospitals from cyber-attack. NUKIB spokesman Jiri Taborsky said the legislative changes are a response to a “long-term, unsatisfactory situation” in the Czech healthcare system’s cyber-defences.

“This situation in turn reflects long-term under-investment in hardware and software infrastructure, as well as in human resources,” he told BIRN in an emailed statement. “NUKIB has been warning of this every year in its annual report on the state of cyber-security.”

The agency said it was also providing “educational materials and courses to help medical staff nationwide educate themselves” about the cyber threat.

‘Working crazy hours’

While claims of foreign involvement in specific hacks are rarely proven, the view that the Czech Republic is lagging behind in cyber-security matters has become a vote-winner.

The 2017 general election delivered a breakthrough for the Pirates Party, a new political formation that won the third-largest share of votes with a tech-savvy message that appealed to younger voters. A legislator for the party, Ondrej Profant, told BIRN that the country’s older governing class simply “did not understand the digital world – they lack the elementary habits”.

He acknowledged that the government had prioritised cyber-security following the attacks this spring, and praised NUKIB’s new digital-hygiene guidelines for staff at public offices. However, he warned, more training was needed.

“We are willing to invest in expensive technologies which improve our security by some margin against highly sophisticated attacks, but we forget about the staff at the main entrance,” he said. “It is as if we are building a very high wall to protect ourselves but leaving the door unlocked.”

It is moreover uncertain how much of an impact additional training will have on everyday habits in Czech hospitals. Apolena Rychlikova, a journalist who has reported on the healthcare system, said the effectiveness of digital-hygiene training would also depend on variables such as staff members’ age and workload.

“In general, medical facilities were understaffed and people were working crazy hours – and that was before the pandemic,” she told BIRN.

Albin Sybera is a journalist and Visegrad Insight fellow based in Ljubljana. This article was edited by Neil Arun. It was produced with a Reporting Democracy grant for stories that reveal how the Covid-19 crisis is reshaping politics and society in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe.

Serbian Security Service Named Among Users of Israeli Surveillance Software

Posted on December 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

In research published on Monday, Citizen Lab, an Institute of the University of Toronto that specializes in surveillance issues, listed 25 countries and agencies – including Serbia’s Security Information Agency – that use the software of the Israeli company Circles, which enables the user to locate every phone in the country in seconds.

Founded in 2008, Circles reportedly exploits weaknesses in the global mobile phone system to snoop on calls, texts, and the locations of phones around the globe.

Circles is a part of NSO Group, an iPhone and Android spyware developer that is being sued by Facebook over attacks on the accounts of 1,400 WhatsApp users.

It has also been criticized for selling its services to governments that use it to spy on activists, journalists and other citizens, according to Forbes.

Circles, whose products work without hacking the phone itself, says it sells only to nation-states, but Citizen Lab’s research, based on leaked documents, shows that clients can purchase a system that they connect to their local telecommunications companies’ infrastructure, or they can use a separate system called the “Circles Cloud,” which interconnects with telecommunications companies around the world.

According to Citizen Lab, likely Circles customers include governments in Australia, Belgium, Botswana, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Bill Marczak, from the University of California in Berkley, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, said the investigation should raise awareness on the wider issues. “We hope this report enables people to ask more precise questions and perhaps even improve the regulation of the field, which today operates as if it were the Wild West,” Marczak told Calcalyst.

But an NSO spokesperson told Forbes in the name of both NSO and Circles that they operate with “a commitment to ethical business and adhere to strict laws and regulations in every market in which they operate”.

“We cannot comment on a report we have not seen. Given Citizen Lab’s track record, we imagine this will once again be based on inaccurate assumptions and without a full command of the facts. As ever, we find ourselves being asked to comment on an unpublished report from an organization with a predetermined agenda,” the spokesperson said.

The technique used by the Circles tech is known as Signaling System 7 (SS7) exploitation. A SS7 is a protocol suite developed in 1975 for exchanging information and routing phone calls between different wireline telecommunications companies, the Citizen Lab report says.

In its research, the Toronto-based laboratory notes that whileabuse of the global telephone system for tracking and monitoring is believed to be widespread, it is difficult to investigate. When a device is tracked or messages are intercepted, there are not always traces on the target’s device, the report warns.

Albania Govt Moves Again to Toughen Defamation Penalties

Posted on December 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Ministry of Justice in Albania on Thursday said it is working on changes to the penal code that include upping the fines to 4.5 million leks (36,000 euros) for defamation, and extending responsibility not only to journalists but also to editors and directors of media outlets and others.

The current penal code classes defamation as a misdemeanor punishable by fines of up to 3 million leks. It also obliges the claimant to prove that the defendant intentionally distributed untrue statements while being aware of the true fact.

The new rephrasing proposed by the ministry removes this important criterion while enlarging the scope of the provision to provide protection not only to individuals but also to institutions, while foreseeing heavier fines if the claimant is a state or political official.

“If this penal offence [defamation] is directed against a political body, an administrative or judicial body, or against a person who [is] representative of one of these bodies … the punishment is increased by 1/2,” the proposal reads.

“When this penal offence is committed through the printed press, responsibility is extended to the administrative director or, case by case, to the deputy director, to the publisher and the typographist in case they know about the penal fact.”

Speaking to Ora Television on Thursday, Prime Minister Edi Rama explained the rationale thus: “I wouldn’t mind if someone calls me a donkey, but if they call me a thief, that is a charge”.

Rama is in his eighth year as Prime Minister, and has repeatedly dodged allegations of corruption raised against his government or about the collaboration of his party with organised groups to pressure voters in elections. Claiming he is the victim of lies and fake news, he has attempted several times to create new legal tools against “defamation”.

In 2015, he personally proposed changes to the penal code introducing prison sentences for defamation charges against officials, after the opposition accused him of protecting organised crime groups from justice.

In 2016, his government proposed changes to the Electronic Commerce Law that ordered websites to “take down illegal content immediately” when someone claims their reputation has been infringed.

In 2018, his office proposed the creation of an administrative body to supervise the online media with power to order takedowns of news under the threat of hefty fines. According to Rama, the law was needed to “protect businessmen from media attacks”.

All these initiatives have failed to get through, however, following strong criticism by local and international rights organisations and institutions.

The latest change is also currently blocked in the parliament after the Venice Commission issued a highly critical report last summer, pointing out that the change could “block any critical remarks against public figures and/or suppress legitimate political debate on matters of public interests”.

The Council of Europe advisory body also emphasized that “oligarchs (multi-millionaires or billionaires who create or take over media empires to serve their business and / or political interests)” could make use of it.

Hungarian Media Expansion in Balkans Raises Worries but Lacks Impact

Posted on December 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

When Hungarian investors completed the purchase of the Slovenian state-controlled Planet TV for almost 5 million euros in October, it was the latest in a series of media takeovers in Slovenia and North Macedonia by Hungarian businessmen.

The Planet TV buyer, TV2 Média Csoport Zrt, was reportedly co-owned by Jozsef Vida, one of the wealthiest Hungarians, described as a member of the business circle around the ruling Hungarian party of Fidesz.

The Hungarian expansion started in 2017, when three companies from Budapest – Ridikul, Ripost and Modern Media Group – bought Slovenia’s Nova24TV. In 2018, Ripost and Modern Media Group left Nova24TV when two companies Hespereia and Okeanis became the new owners of their shares. Both companies were established on the same day in November 2018, by the same lawyer.

Among the owners of the Hungarian companies were Peter Schatz and Agnes Adamik, who later changed her name to Agnes Kovacs. They both previously worked for the Hungarian state broadcaster. Also involved was Arpad Habony, as a co-owner of Hungary’s Modern Media Group.

Ripost and Modern Media Group left Nova24TV when two companies Hespereia and Okeanis became the new owners of their shares. Both companies were established on the same day in November 2018, by the same lawyer. One of the companies, Hesperia, is owned by Agnes Kovacs.

Nova24TV is co-owned by members of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), which is headed by the current premier, Janez Jansa, one of the main allies of Hungarian Prime Minister Orban in the EU. The investment was reportedly backed by Karoly Varga in 2016, a billionaire whose construction companies have been among the biggest winners of the public contracts handed out by the Hungarian government in recent years.

Following that deal, Peter Schatz’s R-post-R acquired a majority share in Nova obzorja, the publisher of Demokracija, a political weekly co-owned by the SDS.

Macedonian charges made against Hungarians

Macedonian financial police have filed charges against Peter Schatz for tax evasion, BIRN has learned.

The financial police told BIRN Schatz made illegal gains for himself and his company CHS Invest Group, which is a majority owner of Alfa TV.
“[Schatz] did not report revenues in the total amount of 11,959,475 denars (around 190,000 euros),” the police said.

According to the police, Schatz damaged the budget of North Macedonia to the tune of around 19,000 euros.

The investigation into money laundering against Schatz is still ongoing. In August last year, the financial police asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office to freeze the money held by another Schatz company, Target Media Skopje, because of suspicion it was being used for the transfer of potentially dirty money from Slovenia and Hungary.

Despite those suspicions, and an official request, the money was not “frozen ”. “The legal entity Target Media is used only in order to transfer funds directly from foreign legal entities to Alfa TV,” the financial police said.

According to the police, the companies that were used for money transfers were Ripost Zaloznistvo from Ljubljana and Ripost Media in Hungary.

“[They] do not have any employees, their financing comes from sources of dubious origin, ie. there is a suspicion of a crime, abuse of official position and authority, and the funds transferred to the Republic of North Macedonia by these foreign entities are performed in order to conceal that they originate from a possible crime, using invoices for suspicious marketing services,” added the financial police.

Peter Schatz didn’t respond to BIRN’s request for comment.

Just as their media buying spree in Slovenia focused on outlets close to Jansa, Schatz’s and Adamik’s investments in North Macedonia have been aimed at those close to another of Orban’s political allies, the former prime minister Nikola Gruevski.

Since 2017, Hungarian interests have taken over websites kurir.mk, denesen.mk and vistina.mk; First republika Dooel Skopje, which publishes the portal republika.mk; and the LD Press media Skopje, which publishes the portal netpress.com.mk. Hungarian interests also own the broadcaster Alfa TV.

The moves by these Hungarian investors who are close to the Fidesz party, which is hostile to independent media back home and has orchestrated the co-opting or killing off of critical media outlets there, has inevitably caused concern among some observers.

Four members of the European Parliament – Kati Piri, Tanja Fajon, Tonino Picula and Andreas Schieder – submitted a list questions to the European Commission earlier this year about these Hungarian media investments and whether they represent Hungarian interference in the democratic process in the Balkans.

On November 25, the European Parliament hosted a plenary debate, “Hungarian interference in the media in Slovenia and North Macedonia”, where Vera Jourova, vice-president of the European Commission, addressed those questions.

“Concerning North Macedonia,” Jourova said, “the Commission and the EU delegation are following the developments in the media sector in the country very closely. The Commission reports on these issues in its regular enlargement packages, including in its latest 2020 report on North Macedonia. This report assessed that greater transparency on media ownership and possible illegal media concentration is required.”

Kati Piri, a Hungarian-born Dutch politician and MEP, went further, claiming it was no surprise that Hungarian leaders, with Slovenian assistance, have put together an international interference operation that has poured millions of euros into pro-Jansa and pro-Gruevski media organisations. “[W]e all know very well that Orban’s outrageous propaganda efforts in North Macedonia and Slovenia are just the tip of the iceberg. Whether in Brussels, Ljubljana or in Skopje, Orban has only one goal: undermining the European Union for his own personal gain,” she stated.

Yet Balazs Hidveghi, an MEP for Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, refuted this, arguing that these companies have invested capital in the media of other member states purely for profit, in line with one of the most basic principles of the EU – the free movement of capital. “The same is true for North Macedonia: investments are private business matters for media companies, and they have nothing to do with politics,” Hidveghi insisted.

Viktor Orban leaves after the second day of the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, in July 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/JOHN THYS / POOL

The editor of the Hungarian-owned Demokracija magazine in Slovenia, Joze Biscak, backs this view, telling BIRN that Hungarian investors are “only here for the money”.

Indeed, a BIRN investigation shows that while the competition struggles, Hungarian-owned media outlets in the region are flourishing. Their combined revenue in Slovenia and North Macedonia in 2018 was more than 10 million euros, according to data obtained by BIRN.

However, research commissioned by BIRN shows that the Hungarian investments are not having much of an impact.

BIRN tasked the social media consultancy Bakamo with analysing the content engagement of Hungary-linked media in Slovenia and North Macedonia, and comparing it with other media.

It found that the Hungary-linked media generate less engagement than their local counterparts on topics like the EU, Russia, China and Orban himself. The only two topics where the audience in North Macedonia engaged slightly more with Hungary-linked media outlets concerned stories related to migration and LGBT communities.

For three months, researchers at Bakamo observed content on websites linked to Hungarian-owned media outlets, identifying them as “Orban-media” (as opposed to “Non-Orban media”). The Orban-media included six Hungarian-owned media outlets in North Macedonia and three in Slovenia. In order to get a fuller picture, Bakamo included 18 additional news outlets in Slovenia founded and operated by SDS members that often share their content with the Hungarian-owned media outlets.

“Readers of Non-Orban media outlets аге more active on social media and engage with the content at а higher rate than Orban-media readers,” the analysis concluded.

According to the research, this means people in Slovenia and North Macedonia, as well as in Hungary, are less moved by what the media linked to Orban are telling them. “Higher engagement means that Non-Orban media articles receive more likes and shares on social media platforms,” the analysis said.

It’s not for lack of trying, though. “Orban-media outlets produce a lot more content than Non-Orban ones. They act almost like spam in an attempt to build reach,” the research showed.

The researchers focused on six key topics: migration, the EU, Russia, LGBT communities, China and Orban. On almost all topics, Orban-media outlets were underperforming in terms of driving a discourse, compared to media not linked to Orban.

The two topics where Orban-media outperformed their competition in North Macedonia were migration and LGBT.

In Slovenia, on the other hand, while causing less engagement, Hungary-owned media outlets have produced much more heated conversations. “Orban-media readers are more emotionally charged,” the research concluded.

In the black

Viktor Orban (C) with Slovenia’s current Prime Minister and leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, Janez Jansa (R), and SDS MEP, Milan Zver (R), attending a SDS campaign event in Celje, Slovenia, in May 2018. Photo: EPA

Despite the apparent lack of impact, Hungarian-owned media are still generating significant revenues.

In 2018, according to available data, in North Macedonia, Hungarian-owned media companies posted revenues of more than 3 million euros, while in Slovenia that amount was around 7.3 million euros.

According to data from the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, the profits of TV Alfa in 2017 were around 27,400 euros. In 2018, that had grown to almost 485,000 euros and in 2019 to almost 640,000 euros. The profits of TV Sitel – the most-watched station in North Macedonia – fell from 770,000 euros in 2017 to around 462,600 euros in 2019.

The situation is similar with the Macedonian online portals that are owned by Hungarian investors: kurir.mk, denesen.mk and vistina.mk. The revenues of the parent company EM Media almost tripled in 2018 from 2017.

The Hungarians also improved the financial results of Slovenian media companies. The revenues of NTV24 more than doubled from around 778,000 euros in 2017, to 1.76 million euros in 2019. By comparison, Planet TV, which at the time was still under Slovenian ownership with many more viewers than Nova24TV, made losses in the millions in 2018.

Similarly, revenues of Nova obzorja, the publisher of Demokracija, in 2018 reached their highest level in its 20-year history since Peter Schatz bought a majority stake in 2017.

Joze Biscak, editor of Demokracija, told BIRN that those profits are the only thing that interests Hungarian investors. “If the balance sheets are in the black, they are happy. If they sink into the red, they are not,” Biscak stated.

He also defended his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and anti-leftwing editorial decisions that create the heated discussions that Bakamo identified as merely a means “to sell magazines and clicks.”

How to get ahead in advertising

The headquarters of the company which advertises olive oil in North Macedonia, Olivery Kft, in the Budapest suburb of Budaors. Photo: Anita Vorak

However, the sources of the money that keep those balance sheets in the black, at least in North Macedonia, remains questionable.

According to an earlier BIRN report, major advertisers in the Hungarian-owned media in North Macedonia included small Hungarian companies like Olivery, which sells olive oil; Bonyart, which sells home decorations; and Skin Delight, a cosmetics company. None of them actually sells anything in stores in North Macedonia.

The advertisement contracts that have resulted in the extraordinary financial gains in such a short period are now attracting the attention of the police in both Slovenia and North Macedonia.

The Slovenian police confirmed that they opened an investigation into the financing of “certain media companies” in 2018.

In addition, the previous Slovenian government appointed a special parliamentary commission to investigate allegations of suspected illegal Hungarian financing of SDS and illegal foreign financing of the SDS parliamentary election campaign in 2018. Those investigations were expected to bring some answers on how Hungarian money was being transferred to the Slovenian and Macedonian media, and how it was being used to finance the party-propaganda machinery.

However, the new Slovenian government that took office in March – a coalition of Jansa’s SDS with the Modern Centre Party, New Slovenia and Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia – replaced the chairman of the parliamentary commission, which consequently hasn’t been particularly active this year.

The Slovenian police confirmed to BIRN on November 23 that their investigation is ongoing, but said it could not comment further.

Serbian Journalists’ NGO Accuses Ruling MPs of ‘Lynching’ Critics

Posted on December 3, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A media foundation named after a murdered journalist has accused MPs from the ruling party of creating a lynch-like atmosphere towards anyone who dares to criticise the government.

In the last week, several Serbian Progressive Party MPs during parliamentary sessions have attacked media outlets, actors and civil society activists, calling them, among other things, “anti-state” elements and “traitors”, and calling on some people to leave the country.

Slavko Curuvija Foundation, which bears the name of a famous Serbian journalist murdered in 1999, on Wednesday warned of the lynch-like atmosphere being created towards everyone who was critical of the regime.

“We are appalled by the daily abuse of the parliamentary rostrum, which launches shameless attacks on anyone who does not belong to the corps of ruling parties and their satellites: from opposition leaders, through independent regulatory bodies, civil society organisations and prominent artists, to doctors and journalists,” the Foundation said in a statement.

It emphasized that the new parliament, composed only of MPs from the ruling parties, instead of conducting its legislative role, was being used to attack anyone who thinks differently, warning that this could lead to physical violence.

“In a deeply polarised society, poisoned by … aggression in public discourse, we fear that such messages from parliament could be a prelude to direct physical confrontations with dissidents,” the Slavko Curuvija Foundation stressed, recalling that threats to independent journalists had been made almost on a weekly basis in recent months.

In the last few days numerous SNS MPs have called the media outlets N1 television and Nova S media portal “anti-state” elements, “anti-Serbian”, “traitors” and “foreign mercenaries”.

SNS MP Marko Atlagic also attacked the actress Seka Sablic after she gave an interview to the weekly NIN in which she criticized the government, saying that she “did not possess any patriotic feelings”. Atlagic also attacked another actor and director, Dragan Bjelogrlic, after he supported Sabljic, claiming that he should leave the country, as he allegedly threatened to do earlier.

Serbian media outlets and civil society organisations have long complained of being targeted by the government for their work. Most recently, they accused the government of trying to silence its critics after it emerged that a department of Serbia’s finance ministry, tasked with tackling money laundering and terrorism financing, had asked banks to hand over data about the transactions of dozens of individuals and NGOs known for their work on human rights, transparency and exposing corruption.

The move has been criticized also by international rights watchdog Amnesty International and by UN human rights experts.

COVID’s Toll on Digital Rights in Central and Southeastern Europe

Posted on November 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The report presents an overview of the main violations of digital rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia between January 31 and September 30, 2020, and makes a series of recommendations for authorities in order to curb such infringements during future social crises.

A first report, compiled by BIRN and which contained preliminary findings, showed a rise in digital rights violations in Central and Southeastern Europe during the pandemic, with over half of cases involving propaganda, disinformation or the publication of unverified information.

The global public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus exposed a new the failure of states around the world to provide a framework that would better balance the interests of safety and privacy. Instead, the report documents incidents of censorship, fake news, security breaches and concentration of information.

More than 200 pandemic-related violations tracked

At the onset of the pandemic, numerous violations of digital rights were observed – from violations of the privacy of persons in isolation to manipulation, dissemination of false information and Internet fraud.

BIRN and Share Foundation documented 221 violations in the context of COVID-19 during the eight-month monitoring period, the largest number coming during the initial peak of the pandemic in March and April – 67 and 79 respectively – before slowly declining.

The countries with the highest number of violations to date are Serbia, with 46, and Croatia, with 44.

The most common violation – accounting for roughly half of all cases – was manipulation in the digital environment caused by news sites that published unverified and inaccurate information, and by the circulating of incomplete and false data on social media.

This can be explained in large measure by the low level of media literacy in the countries of the region, where few people actually check the news and information provided to them, while the media themselves often publish unverified information.

The most common targets of digital rights violations were citizens and journalists. However, both of these groups were frequently also among the perpetrators.

Contact tracing apps: Useful or not?

The debate about the use of contact-tracing apps as a method of combating the spread of COVID-19 was one of the most important discussions in Croatia and North Macedonia.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, the Croatian government led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, proposed a change to the Electronic Communications Act under which, in extraordinary situations, the health minister would request from telecommunications companies the location data of users.

Similarly, Macedonian health authorities announced they were looking to use “all tools and means” to combat the virus, with North Macedonia among the first countries in the Western Balkans to launch a contact-tracing app on April 13.

Developed and donated to the Macedonian authorities by Skopje-based software company Nextsense, the StopKorona! app is based on Bluetooth distance measuring technology and stores data locally on users’ devices, while exchanging encrypted, anonymised data relevant to the infection spread for a limited period of 14 days. According to data privacy experts, the decentralised design guaranteed that data would be stored only on devices that run the app, unless they voluntarily submit that data to health authorities.

Croatia launched its own at the end of July, but by late August media reports said the Stop COVID-19 app had been downloaded by less than two per cent of mobile phone users in the country. The threshold for it to be effective is 60 per cent, the reports said.

Key worrying trends mapped

Bosnia and Herzegovina saw a number of problems with personal data protection, free access to information and disinformation. In terms of disinformation, people were exposed to a variety of false and sometimes outlandish claims, including conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus, its spread by plane and various miracle cures.

Conspiracy theories, like those blaming the spread of the virus on 5G mobile networks, flourished online in Croatia too. One person in Croatia destroyed their Wifi equipment, believing it was 5G.

In Hungary, fake news about COVID-19 arrived even before the virus itself, said journalist Akos Keller Alant, who monitored the digital environment in Hungary.

Several clickbait fake news sites published articles about COVID-19 victims a month before Hungary’s first confirmed case. The Anti-Cybercrime Unit of the Hungarian police arrested several people for spreading fake news, starting in early February when police raided the operators of a network of fake news sites.

In Kosovo, online media emerged as the biggest violators of digital rights by publishing unverified and false information as well as personal health information. Personal data rights were also violated by state institutions and public figures.

In Montenegro, the most worrying digital rights violations concerned privacy and personal data protection of those infected with the coronavirus or those forced to self-isolate.

The early days of the pandemic, when Montenegro was among the few countries that could claim to have kept a lid on the virus, was a rare moment of social and political consensus in the country about how to respond, said Tamara Milas of the Centre for Civic Education in Montenegro, an NGO.

The situation changed, however, when the government was accused of the gross violation of the right to privacy and the right to the protection of personal data.

Like its Western Balkan peers, North Macedonia was flooded with unverified information and claims shared online with regards the pandemic. Some of the most concerning cases included false claims about infected persons, causing a stir on social media.

In Romania, the government used state-of-emergency powers to shut down websites – including news and opinion sites – accused of spreading what authorities deemed fake news about the pandemic, according to BIRN correspondent Marcel Gascon, who monitors digital rights violations in Romania.

In Serbia, a prominent case concerned a breach of security in the country’s central COVID-19 database. For eight days, the login credentials for the database, Information System COVID-19, were publicly available on the website of a public health body.

In another incident, the initials, age, place-of-work and personal address of a person infected with the virus were posted on the official webpage of the municipality of Sid in western Serbia as well as on the town’s social media accounts.

In the report, BIRN and Share Foundation conclude that technology, especially in a time of crisis, should not be seen as the solution to complex issues, be that protection of health or upholding public order and safety. Rather, technology should be used to the benefit of citizens and in the interest of their rights and freedoms.

When intrusive technologies and regulations are put in place, it is hard to take a step back, particularly in societies with weak democratic institutions, the report states. Under such circumstances, the measures applied in one crisis for the protection of public health may one day be repurposed and used against other “social plagues”, ultimately leading to reduced human rights standards.

To read the full report click here. For individual cases, check our regional database, developed together with the SHARE Foundation.

From Bulgaria, Connecting Refugees to Remote AI Jobs around the World

Posted on November 4, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Two years into the Syrian war, in 2013, Shyar Ali fled his native Aleppo, ending up in a refugee camp in Iraq where he worked as a labourer to make ends meet. Life was hard, the 22-year-old recalled.

His luck began to change, however, in early 2019, when Ali stumbled upon ‘Humans In The Loop’, HITL, a Bulgaria-based social enterprise that links refugees, asylum seekers and others displaced by conflict with work opportunities in the growing industry of artificial intelligence, or AI.

So far, Ali has worked on four data annotation projects via HITL, earning enough money to open a mobile phone repair shop in the camp with a partner. He hopes to open a laptop repair shop one day too.

“It’s tough living in the camp,” Ali said in comments sent to BIRN via HITL, “but my job keeps me going.”

Humble beginnings

Launched without a budget or experience in 2017, HITL now works with more than 300 people across Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, partnering with local NGOs to provide IT and English-language training to ready refugees for remote work with start-ups across Europe and the United States.

Twenty-six-year-old founder and CEO Iva Gumnishka said HITL has found work for ‘conflict-affected people’ across the field of AI and computer vision.

“Our workers have been involved in precision agriculture projects involving segmentation of crops from drone images, insurTech projects related to car damage detection and assessment, facial detection and spoofing detection for CCTV cameras, and many others,” Gumnishka told BIRN.

HITL recently created a specialised team for medical annotation, comprised of Syrian doctors currently in Turkey but who are not eligible to work in the country. Instead, HITL will involve them remotely in medical AI projects in radiology and ultrasound.

“Our supervisor for this team is a Syrian doctor who was at the forefront of medical response teams during the civil war in Syria,” said Gumnishka. “We also have doctors who have cured people with chemical weapon poisoning, and connecting them to work opportunities is something that we are really proud of because they really deserve it.”

“In all of these projects, we involve conflict-affected communities: refugees, internally displaced people and people living in conflict zones.”

‘This job has been my saviour’

Photo: Nacho Kamenov

Registered as a refugee in Sofia since August 2018, Gaza-born Raghda Al-Samman first found out about HITL from a friend who alerted her to one of its English-language training programmes in 2019.

After completing the programme, Al-Samman became involved in a video annotation project for HITL, before Gumnishka offered her the job of supervisor at HITL’s Sofia office.

“I was hesitant initially, but Iva gave me the confidence,” said Al-Samman, who moved to Bulgaria to be with her husband, who is originally from Syria. “When I come across anyone looking for work, I tell them about HITL. It has been great. We are working to make things better every day.”

“Especially in these times of COVID-19, this job has been my saviour. Not only has it continued, but having the option to choose between online and offline work has been an advantage.”

In September, HITL’s work was recognised by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, as one of seven winners in the Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship category of the MIT SOLVE initiative.

Gumnishka said she hoped the support the award brings with it would help HITL reach its target of “employing 3,000 conflict-affected people over the next five years.”

HITL will also receive funding from the Bulgarian Fund for Women, which will finance two editions of the enterprise’s English and digital literacy skills course for refugee women.

And Gumnishka is already looking further afield, with a pilot project in October with Venezuelan refugees in Colombia.

“It’s also a great topic to do a deep dive in, and we are in touch with large organisations working with refugees, which are very interested in contributing to the local response to displacement,” she said.

Montenegrin Jailed for Insulting Defence Minister on Facebook

Posted on October 30, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Montenegrin misdemeanour court on Thursday sentenced Milan Roncevic from Podgorica to 15 days in jail for insulting Defence Minister Predrag Boskovic in a Facebook post.

Roncevic was arrested after he posted a photo of environmental protests against army training exercises on Mount Sinjajevina in Montenegro and said that the minister “is worse than a pig”.

“Roncevic was sentenced to 15 days in prison for violating the Law on Public Order and Peace. This is insulting and insolent behaviour to the detriment of Montenegrin Defence Minister Predrag Boskovic,” the court said.

On October 16, environmental activists and local community members started protests on Mount Sinjajevina, near the town of Kolasin, calling on the government to stop the militarisation of the highland pastures.

Protesters warned that they intended to disrupt a military training session announced for this week, claiming that the explosives used would devastate the local environment.

On October 20, Montenegro’s Defence Ministry postponed the military training exercises on Mount Sinjajevina. On Wednesday, minister Boskovic said that protests were being misused by political parties.

“The protests in Sinjajevina are not environmental. Some people are just trying to threaten our pro-Western policies,” Boskovic told Radio Monenegro.

Since January, there have been several arrests in Montenegro linked to posts on social networks.

On August 26, police arrested a suspect identified by the initials R.R. from the town of Danilovgrad for insulting Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic and ruling Democratic Party of Socialists MP Petar Ivanovic on Facebook.

On April 9, police arrested an opposition Democratic Front activist for posting fake news about the health of President Djukanovic, claiming he had the coronavirus. Radovan Rakocevic, from the town of Bijelo Polje, was put in custody for 72 hours for spreading panic.

On July 20, Montenegrin police questioned a civic activist and member of the Odupri Se (Resist) movement, Omer Sarkic, for a Facebook post about the anti-government protests in Serbia.

In an ironic post, Sarkic called on the pro-Serbian Democratic Front to stage protests in front of the Serbian embassy in Podgorica over police brutality against protesters in Belgrade.

He cited a fictional press release which claimed that the Democratic Front was was vowing to resist police brutality in Serbia as it does in Montenegro.

Serbia ‘Still Investigating’ Police Attacks on Journalists at Protests

Posted on October 27, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Serbian Interior Ministry said in a letter to the Council of Europe’s Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists that it has not yet identified who attacked journalists from N1 TV, the Nova news website and Beta news agency during protests in the capital Belgrade in July.

“Concerning the allegations about the attempt to prevent N1 TV crew and journalist Jelena Zoric from reporting and inflicting injuries to a journalist of Nova portal, we would like to inform that the Sector for Internal Control of the Ministry of the Interior is working on collection information as requested by the competent prosecutor’s office,” said the letter that was sent on October 19 and made public on Monday.

The ministry said that police investigated “allegations related to events of 8 July 2020 (injuries inflicted to Nova portal journalist Marko Radonjic and attack on Nova portal journalists Milica Bozinovic and Natasa Latkovic)” and “established that they were not reported or recorded following the procedure prescribed by the law, and that no further actions were taken”.

“Regarding the injuries inflicted to Beta News Agency journalist, Zikica Stevanovic, we would like to inform that a report on this event was submitted to the competent prosecutor’s office in Belgrade, as well as that additional measures have been taken to identify the perpetrator of this criminal offence,” the letter added.

The protests erupted in July in Belgrade and other cities after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that a curfew would be reimposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Protesters clashed with riot police, who used tear gas and cavalry. BIRN mapped major violent incidents that occurred in first two days of protests.

Several journalists were on the receiving end of attacks from both police and protesters.

Some of them, like Stevanovic from Beta, claimed they identified themselves as journalists and showed identity documents to police, but that did not stop officers beating them. Domestic and international journalists’ organisations urged the authorities to find the perpetrators.

According to the Interior Ministry’s letter, police have found the people who attacked journalists from public broadcasters Radio Television of Vojvodina in and Radio Television of Serbia in the cities of Novi Sad and Nis.

In Novi Sad, police filed criminal charges against two people who participated in breaking glass in the front door of the Radio Television of Vojvodina offices, and caught the person who attacked Radio Television of Serbia journalists Milan Srdic and cameraman Lazar Vukadinovic.

In Nis, the ministry said that Radio Television of Serbia journalist Lidija Georgijeva and cameraman Ivan Stambolic had decided not to file a complaint.

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