Facebook Urged to Ban Srebrenica Genocide Denial

After Facebook announced earlier this month that it is updating its hate speech policy to ban holocaust denial, the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada sent an open letter to the social network’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, asking for a similar ban on the denial of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

“We have increasingly witnessed that your Facebook platform is being used for continuous, organised and systematic denial of the Srebrenica genocide,” the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada said in the letter.

The institute’s director, Emir Ramic, told BIRN that this would do a lot for truth, justice and the culture of remembrance.

“Attempts to deny or mitigate the genocide in Srebrenica should be banned, just like the glorification of violent events including the Holocaust,” Ramic said.

Facebook told BIRN that it could not give an official statement on the initiative to ban Srebrenica genocide denial, but pointed out that it already has policies that prohibit the praise of any hate crime or mass murder, the mocking of victims of such crimes, and the promotion of the organisations or individuals that perpetrated them.

“We also remove attacks against people based on their protected characteristics, including ethnicity and national origin,” Facebook said in response to BIRN’s inquiry.

“The change we announced… is to acknowledge that Holocaust denial is a type of hate speech that goes beyond denying and distorting facts about a genocide and is used to attack and direct hate at the Jewish people,” it added.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the ban on holocaust denial in a post on Facebook on October 12.

“We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murders, including the Holocaust. But with rising anti-Semitism, we’re expanding our policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust at all,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information,” he added.

Numerous groups distorting the facts about the Srebrenica genocide remain on the social network, spreading misinformation, using hate speech in posts and allowing hate speech in comments. The phenomenon is particularly prominent around the anniversary of the genocide in July each year.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, told BIRN that it was positive for Facebook to treat holocaust denial as hate speech and that she hopes that the social network and similar companies will adopt the same approach to content “denying other genocides, including the Srebrenica genocide”.

“However, those companies should not be the only ones making an effort, but governments and judiciary should do their part as well,” Mijatovic said.

“Some countries, like Germany, have already adopted laws tightening the rule on how social network platforms must oppose hate speech and other illegal content. Some countries also ban genocide denial, online or offline,” she added.

The massacres of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica and the expulsion of tens of thousands of women, children and elderly people have been classified by Bosnian and international courts as genocide.

However, Bosnia and Herzegovina itself does not have legislation criminalising Srebrenica genocide denial, and Bosnian Serb political leaders in the country refuse to accept that the massacres constituted genocide.

North Macedonia’s 5G Plans Put China’s Friendship at Risk

North Macedonia on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States on security issues linked with new telecommunications technologies, which is expected to indirectly bar China’s tech giants, Huawei and ZTE from the race in the country to build 5G.

“We have an obligation to align our telecommunications development policies with those of the EU as well as to align the security aspects of the implementation of the 5G network with our strategic ally, the US. This memorandum is of vital importance for the economic development and the security as North Macedonia and the United States accent the importance of encouraging participation of relevant and trustworthy network suppliers of 5G hardware and software”, North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said during the signing ceremony with the US Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and Environment, Keith Krach.

The authorities also say that parliament by the end of this year should change its Electronic Communication Law and other accompanying legislation to embed stricter rules against acquiring 5G equipment from so-called “untrusted” sources.

While leaders of North Macedonia, which only joined NATO earlier this year and is looking to start EU accession talks by the year’s end, say they will strictly abide by the alliance’s security protocols on 5G, the message will not resonate well with traditionally friendly China, whose firms, including Huawei, have a significant stake in its economy.

NATO membership puts security issues under spotlight

Digital security generally, and China’s role in the development of the 5G network and infrastructure specifically, became an issue towards the end of last year, as North Macedonia awaited ratification of its NATO accession protocol.

When NATO membership became reality in March this year, these concerns continued to make themselves felt, especially because the majority owner of North Macedonia’s largest telecom operator, Makedonski Telekom AD, is the Hungarian firm Matav, which in turn is part of Deutsche Telecom – a company that has cooperated extensively with Huawei.

By the start of this year, Makedonski Telekom had started preparing a tendering procedure to acquire 5G equipment, and Huawei was, and seems to remain, an important possible supplier.

As only a minority owner of Makedonski Telekom, the North Macedonian government had only limited influence in any decisions on development of a 5G network.

But this may change, authorities recently hinted, when announcing tougher rules on who might be allowed to supply 5G equipment to operators.

The decision to sign the memorandum with the US was reached at the most recent meeting of the National Security Council last month, chaired by President Stevo Pendarovski and attended by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev. It also saw an action plan laid out in broad terms.

The plan says that North Macedonia should now change its Electronic Communication Law and accompanying legislation, hopefully by the year’s end, so that the state Agency for Electronic Communication, AEK, can launch a tendering procedure for offering 5G bands to telecom operators under the new, stricter rules.

“All operators in this sphere should take into account our national interests and obligations,” the President’s office said, adding that the Memorandum of Understanding with the US is setting the main political path that the country will follow, in other words, expressing a political will.

“Then we will need to operationalise it, and change the Electronic Communications law and a series of other laws, because so far they did not contain such restraining acts.

“We will of course also have to remain in line with the [NATO] alliance’s recommendations in future,” the presidential cabinet said.

Informal pressure on North Macedonia to align itself on 5G with its allies seemed to intensify after neighbouring Kosovo and Serbia signed US-brokered agreements on economic normalisation on September 4 in the White House.

US President Donald Trump on that occasion praised both sides for committing themselves not to use 5G equipment from China, saying they had helped make the region and the world more secure.

This was seen as sending a message to other Balkan countries as well.

While the debate on China and 5G is ongoing within the EU, where some major countries, like Germany, are reluctant to cut ties to China’s technology giants, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has been clear. All member states need to align themselves on the issue and exclude “suspicious” tech companies from the 5G area, he has said.

North Macedonia’s pro-western PM reflected that message last month.

“We are the newest NATO member and will act according to NATO’s security standards. Institutional decisions are yet to follow,” Zaev told the media when asked about the matter.


Silhouette of visitor next to the logo of Huawei at the International Consumer Electronics Fair in Berlin in September. Photo: EPA-EFE/FILIP SINGER

Huawei’s likely success in tender worries government

North Macedonia has no active 5G network in use as yet. Makedonski Telekom and A1, the two main telecom operators, “currently … are only conducting testing of this new technology”, Saso Dimitrijoski, head of the AEK, said.

But the country as yet has no legal restrictions on which equipment telecom operators should use. That is why, when Makedonski Telekom earlier this year launched a tendering procedure for such equipment, Huawei was seen as a prime contender.

This raised concerns in the government, with its 35 per cent stake in the Makedonski Telekom, and among its members on Telekom’s supervisory board.

“We are not the dominant owner but we are still taking this matter seriously,” a senior representative from the Ministry of Information Technology told BIRN on condition of anonymity.

Unofficially, after receiving reports that Huawei was the best-positioned company to win the Telekom tender, the government’s members on the Telekom board last month raised this issue with the company, calling for restraint until the new, expected legislation is passed.

Dimitrijoski, from the AEK, called on the country’s telecom operators “to practice restraint for now and not rush decisions on purchasing equipment, as this might prove counterproductive if they have to replace it”.

He said AEK plans to organise a public tendering procedure to allocate currently available radiofrequencies to operators – hopefully by this year – but only once all regulation in this field is completed.

A government source speaking under condition of anonymity said the new legislation would likely not explicitly exclude China, or any other named companies, but set rules effectively barring companies with dubious images from applying.

“This could be done by simply setting the rules for participation of companies to a higher standard,” the source noted.

“For instance, it could prohibit companies that have conducted themselves unethically in the past, have no clear ownership structure or which come from the countries lacking proper democratic oversight,” the source concluded.


North Macedonia’s Vice Prime Minister Artan Grubi (right) discussed 5G with the Chinese ambassador, Zhang Zuo (left) on September 21. Photo: gov.mk

Ambassador rails against US interference

The task of relaying the potentially unpleasant news to China has fallen on Vice Prime Minister Artan Grubi who discussed this issue with the Chinese ambassador, Zhang Zuo, on September 21.

China has traditionally good political relations with North Macedonia, and some of its companies are involved in key infrastructure projects.

North Macedonia tapped into a Chinese loan of 574 million euros fin 2013, to build two important stretches of motorway, for example.

The Chinese construction company, Sinohydro, is still involved in building 57-kilometre highway from the southern lakeside resort of Ohrid to Skopje via Kicevo.

A short government press statement from that September 21 meeting said only that Grubi had “expressed interest about the … motorway and asked for all obstacles to be overcome for the project’s swifter completion”.

It added: “Grubi and Zuo also talked about the strategic electronic communication, the 5G network and the obligations we [North Macedonia] have as a NATO member country towards strategic partners.”

The government is under pressure to finish the highway rapidly after inheriting this long-overdue project from the previous government, which was accused of making many technical omissions during the planning stage.

In an interview for the daily Sloboden Pecat newspaper on September 21, the day of the meeting, Chinese ambassador Zuo made clear his unhappiness.

He accused the United States of trying to supress China’s development by finding excuses to sanction Chinese companies like Huawei, which, as he recalled, had operated successfully in North Macedonia for almost ten years.

“We are firmly against this [US pressure],” the ambassador warned. “China hopes for cooperation with all the countries, including with North Macedonia, not only for constructing 5G networks but also in the area of network security.”

Kosovo Leaders Condemn Gun Attack on Journalist’s Car

Kosovo civil society and politicians, including the Prime Minister and a former prime minister, have united in condemnation of an attack on a investigative journalist whose car was raked with gunfire on Sunday night just after he parked it.

Shkumbin Kajtazi, from the media outlet Reporteri, said his car “was shot with five or six bullets” at around midnight, after he had parked it in the centre of the northern divided town of Mitrovica, and when he heard shots fired.

“When I approached the place where I had parked, I saw that the car was badly damaged. At first I was convinced it had been hit by something strong, but then I spotted bullet holes and bullets everywhere: in the driver’s seat, on the roof and in the back,” Kajtazi wrote on his Facebook account.

Kajtazi said he had notified the police and attributed the violent attack to his work as an investigative journalist.
Civil society activists, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, leading politicians and also citizens took to social media to condemn the attack.

Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti on Facebook on Sunday urged “law enforcement agencies to treat Shkumbin’s case with high priority and clarify the circumstances of the attack”.

“Freedom of media and expression are guaranteed by law and will be protected in every circumstance,” Hoti added, declaring that “attacks on journalists and the media are direct attacks on democratic values, and therefore will be treated with priority by law enforcement agencies”.

Former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, leader of a junior coalition partner in government, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, shared a photo of Kajtazi on his Facebook account on Sunday evening, slating the attack.

“Freedom is not complete without the freedom of speech,” Haradinaj wrote, adding that this was the second attack on Kajtazi “after constant threats against him”.

Deeming the attack “bad news for our country”, Haradinaj urged the justice authorities to prioritize the protection of journalists, “especially investigative ones”.

The Association of  Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, noted in a press release on Sunday that the police had confirmed starting an investigation. The Mitrovica Region police spokesperson, Avni Zahiti, had told the AJK that “a case has been initiated and is being investigated … At the scene in the damaged vehicle, four bullet shells have been found. There is no data on injured persons”.

Mitrovica Mayor Agim Bahtiri also condemned the act, as did different members of the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, and the Vetevendosje party, civil society activists and citizens.

Governments Continue to Undermine Right to Information Under Cover of COVID-19

The coronavirus pandemic has had a chilling effect on people’s right to information in Central and Southeast Europe, with many countries adopting legal measures which temporarily altered or even suspended obligations regarding the public’s right to information.

Thankfully, many of these measures have since lapsed with the end of the states of emergency and lockdowns, though there are other pieces of legislation in the works that could hinder people’s right to information.

On the annual International Day for Universal Access to Information, BIRN has released data showing dramatic drops in responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests by official bodies, either in time or in their entirety. BIRN keeps track of its FOI requests and produces reports on the topic, because the information gleaned from these requests enables it to produce investigative pieces and expose wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.

“In a world where COVID-19 has caused chaos and complexity, access to reliable and verified information is more important than ever… As these last few months have shown, public health requires transparency – whether this means statistics on the scale of the pandemic, or data on public spending. Access to accurate and trustworthy information ensures accountability for actions undertaken in response to the challenges caused by the virus, as the global community works to ‘build back better’,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, wrote on the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information.

Since the beginning of the year, the data shows that BIRN journalists have sent at least 366 FOI requests to various public institutions in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. So far, just 123 requests, or 33.6 per cent, have been answered, either fully or partially, while the remainder are either rejected or still not answered.

By comparison, between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, with slightly under half (408) approved; 224 were partially approved, meaning the institutions provided only technical information; and 221 requests were either rejected or no answer at all was received, despite repeated follow-ups from the journalists.

At the time, BIRN concluded that while FOI laws in the region are among the most liberal in Europe on paper, implementation of these laws is well below European standards – a situation that has deteriorated with the spread of the pandemic.

Public institutions that so far have been most likely to answer FOI requests are the Trade Ministry and prosecutors’ offices (Serbia), the Judicial Council (North Macedonia), the Kosovo Judicial Council and local municipalities (Kosovo).

BIRN also tests the transparency of public institutions by analysing their compliance with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and subnational governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. So far, four Balkan states have joined the OGP: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Some of the commitments each state proposed in their Action Plans are related to: open data, anti-corruption, public procurement, developing e-governance, adopting laws to support transparency of public institutions etc. But despite their promise to be more transparent and open, these countries are still struggling to meet the commitments.

Albania, the oldest OGP member since 2011, has been shifting the OGP leadership from one institution to another, thus failing to fully implement its own commitments: fiscal transparency, public services, access to information, public administration and anti-corruption.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, which joined OGP in 2014, has not moved a step forward in fulfilling the commitments. Independent published reports note no improvement.

Montenegro, which joined in 2012, is still facing difficulties on internal leadership to deal with OGP and track the developments of the already committed institutions.

Serbia, which joined the partnership in 2013, has the highest number of set commitments. From a total of 14, it failed to develop an IT system to support e-governance, and failed to implement proposed amendments to the laws that were supposed to improve governmental transparency.

All four countries have failed in becoming more transparent and digitally accessible. Publishing the latest updates on their websites, such as financial reports, ministry meetings minutes, or other current and important public documents, seems like too long a process to be ever fully implemented.

COVID measures

Citing the fight against COVID-19, authorities in a number of Central and Southeast European countries extended the amount of time that state bodies had to respond to FOI requests, which media watchdogs warned at the time was part of a worrying crackdown on press freedom since the onset of the pandemic.

“We are concerned that in some cases, the suspension or delay of FOI deadlines is being used to hinder media access to information and thereby shield the government from domestic scrutiny or criticism over its handling of the outbreak,” warned Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute (IPI).

Among those countries extending and suspending deadlines for FOI requests were Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, while Poland passed a law suspending the activity of courts that would rule on issues related to FOI requests.

Most of these laws have since been revoked as the states of emergency and lockdown ended, however experts are warning about other legislation in the pipeline that could have a similar detrimental effect on the right to information.

In Poland, for example, legislation has been proposed by MPs from the ruling party that would exempt officials from punishment for breaking the law if they did so as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Health Organization advises that, instead of absolving of liability, it is important to, among other things, produce conditions for better public oversight of the various public decisions made during the pandemic.

“This… recommendation could be implemented by facilitating access to public information via digitising, obliging institutions to proactively publish information online, shortening dates for information access etc… Yet the current government is not making access to public information easier, but complicating it further on the pretext of battling the pandemic,” Grzegorz Makowski, an expert at the Batory Foundation’s ideaForum, wrote.

In Montenegro, the government has been criticised for pressing ahead during the pandemic with proposed amendments to the Montenegrin Law on Free Access to Information that have raised serious concern among experts, who say that the majority of the proposed changes would have a negative effect and take Montenegro further away from international transparency standards.

Montenegro Police Violated Front MP’s Privacy, Ombudsman Rules

Montenegro’s Deputy Ombudsperson, Nerma Dobradzic, on Friday said police had violated the privacy rights of Democratic Front MP Nebojsa Medojevic and his wife Marina when they posted a video on Twitter of them being moved to quarantine. 

The police directorate posted the video on March 17, which was then aired on the country’s public broadcaster, RTCG. 

Deputy Ombudsperson Dobradzic said the police had failed to provide any objective reason that justified publication of the video. “Publishing a video or delivering it to the media without consent is an interference with the right to respect of a private life,” Dobradzic said.

Police defended their action, saying the event was filmed in a public space and that the faces in the video were kept blurred in order to protect the privacy of Medojevic and his wife. 

But the Deputy Ombudsperson noted that the Police Directorate published Medojevic’s and his wife’s names in full in a press release, which they did not do when Navy chief Vesko Tomanovic, the mayor the resort of Tivat, Sinisa Kusovac, and an athlete, Srdjan Mrvaljevic, violated their self-isolation health measures.

The Ombudsman’s office has intervened before on complaints related to the pandemic. On April 1, Ombudsperson Sinisa Bjekovic noted that various citizens were complaining about the constitutionality and legality of the government implemented health measures. 

On July 23, the Constitutional Court annulled a government decision to publish the names of citizens ordered to self-isolate during the coronavirus, though it did not rule that the government violated the human rights of citizens in doing so. 

The government published the names on March 21 despite warnings from opposition parties and civic society organisations that it risked violating constitutionally guaranteed human rights.

The government said it had a right to publish the names because some citizens were not respecting self-isolation obligations. It also said it had approval for its actions from the Agency for Personal Data Protection. 

It stressed that the security forces could not control every citizen who should be in self-isolation, adding that anyone who failed to self-isolate posed a threat to the entire community.

The Democratic Front is a constituent part of the For the Future of Montenegro coalition which, alongside two other coalitions, Peace is Our Nation and Black on White, narrowly won parliamentary elections held on August 30, ending the decades-long rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

COVID-19 Provides New Material for Russian Anti-EU Disinformation

Russian disinformation in the Western Balkans and ‘Eastern Partnership’ countries has taken “a new turn” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying the European Union as overwhelmed and unable to support its neighbours, Romanian expert Nicolae Tibrigan told BIRN in an interview.

Tibrigan, a researcher at the Bucharest-based Laboratory for the Analysis of Informational Warfare and Strategic Communication, LARICS, said Russian anti-Western propaganda had fuelled conspiracy theories about the origins of the novel coronavirus and criticism of the EU’s efforts to support the countries of the Western Balkans and six former Soviet republics in the so-called Eastern Partnership.

“One of the main goals of pro-Kremlin disinformation in the two regions is to create and deepen mistrust between the EU and its partners,” Tibrigan told BIRN in an email interview.

“In the context of the health crisis, these disinformation efforts are taking a new turn, in which the EU is systematically portrayed as overwhelmed by the situation and unable to respond to the needs and calls of its eastern neighbours.”

Russia trying to undermine EU via Balkans

Giving the example of a report by Russian state-controlled agency Sputnik from January suggesting the virus originated in a NATO or US laboratory, Tibrigan said that “online sources with ‘alternative content’ and social networks propagated these narratives as indisputable facts, each time adapting the message to the internal context of each state.”

“Local actors were encouraged by the pro-Kremlin media to multiply the message to contribute to a real regional campaign of misinformation, propaganda and spread of conspiracy theories on the health crisis: secret laboratories explain coronavirus outbreaks, while outbreaks of coronavirus would automatically prove the existence of secret laboratories.”


Supporters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wave flags and show a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin  during the ‘Future of Serbia’ campaign rally in Belgrade, Serbia, April 19, 2019. Photo: EPA/Andrej Cukic

In the Western Balkans, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic was “artificially linked to another hypothesis – that the EU would ‘turn its back’ on the Western Balkans, as it has done with other European countries.”

Tibrigan said Russia sees the Western Balkans as “a vulnerable periphery of Europe,” one which presents “an opportunity to undermine the EU and NATO by exploiting local vulnerabilities.”

Sputnik’s Serbian-language outlet, based in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is the main source of Russian disinformation in the Balkan region, Tibrigan told BIRN, while citing other outlets such as Russia Beyond the Headlines, which translates into Serbian and Macedonian, the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti [Arguments and Facts] and the ‘Ruska Rec’ newspaper supplement.

He said there was a “lack of political will” in the Western Balkans to combat Russian disinformation, while Serbia and North Macedonia have become not just consumers but “exporters” of Russian propaganda.

Tip of the iceberg

In the Eastern Partnership states – Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia – Russian propaganda is more direct, Tibrigan said and does not use one particular state as a platform as Serbia is used in the Western Balkans.


Moldovan President Igor Dodon (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) take part in the flower-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2020. Photo: EPA/GRIGORY SYSOEV

Disinformation has become an essential tool in trying to thwart the European path of these states, where Russian is widely spoken or understood, he said, alongside direct military intervention and the perpetuation of frozen conflicts.

“These propaganda narratives manage to penetrate the information ecosystems of the EaP [Eastern Partnership] states, with the public being ‘warned’ about the ‘lack of sustainability and stability’ of their Western partners,” said Tibrigan.

In Moldova, he said, the government and president actively disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda, while authorities have not taken any measures to limit the influence of Russian-language social networks.

Notably during the pandemic, the Moldovan Orthodox Church, canonically subordinate to the Russian Patriarchy, has echoed the main Russian propaganda themes.

The Kremlin has earmarked 1.3 billion euros for media spending in 2020 is 1.3 billion euros, compared to the shoestring budget of the EU’s anti-propaganda unit, East Stratcom, of five million euros.

Of the Russian 1.3 billion, 325 million will go to state-controlled Russia Today, which broadcasts in roughly 100 countries around the world, Tibrigan said.

“And that’s just the visible part of the iceberg, given that we can’t estimate the exact value of the propaganda operations carried out by proxies or secret service entities.”

Kosovo Lawmakers Play Politics with Personal Data

Personal data and the right of access to public information remain largely unprotected in Kosovo after parliament failed again to elect a Commissioner for the Information and Privacy Agency, IPA, leading critics to accuse lawmakers of playing politics with citizens’ rights.

The Information and Privacy Agency, IPA, had asked the parliament to give its director, Bujar Sadiku, the powers of the Commissioner of the Agency despite the failed recruitment process for the post.

The request was rejected by the parliamentary Committee on Security Affairs as illegal, however, and civil society groups on Thursday publicly asked the Presidency of the Assembly, especially the Speaker, Vjosa Osmani, to be vigilant and ignore such illegal requests.

On August 14, none of the three candidates for the post received the required 61 votes, the third time in two years that parliament failed to appoint a Commissioner, failure analysts attribute to narrow political interests. The British embassy, which has assisted in the recruitment process, said British experts had been withdrawn.

Flutura Kusari, a legal adviser at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, who voluntarily monitored the recruitment process, said the British decision was a good one, but was “bad news” for Kosovo.

“It is not logical financially or politically for an ally to invest this much in a clearly politicised process,” Kusari told BIRN.

In its five years of existence, “the agency has failed from the beginning to protect our personal data,” she said. “If the Commissioner will be politicised, s/he can become a censor of public information, pleasing politicians.”

Starting ‘from zero’


The meeting of the Kosovo Committee on Security and Defence, where the annual report of the Information and Privacy Agency, IPA, for 2019 was reviewed, presented by IPA director Bujar Sadiku, June 16, 2020. Photo: Official Website of Kosovo Assembly.

Without a Commissioner, Kosovo has no institutional mechanism to implement the Law on Access to Public Documents and the Law on the Protection of the Personal Data.

The first two attempts to appoint a Commissioner failed in May and July last year due to the fall of the then government and the dissolution of parliament after the prime minister at the time, Ramush Haradinaj, resigned on being summoned for questioning by war crimes prosecutors in The Hague.

Without a Commissioner, citizens of Kosovo have no institutional means to complain and seek justice if a public or private body violates their rights to protection of their personal data or access to information. Civil society groups say that without an independent overseer, the agency could become biased in fining particular institutions or officials.

British-approved candidates

Twelve people applied for the position, cut down to five after a review of the applications. Each of the five candidates went through a two-day interview process, after which a commission selected three to be submitted to parliament.

They were Bujar Sadiku, Krenare Sogojeva-Dermaku and Muharrem Mustafa. Sadiku and Sogojeva-Dermaku had received the approval of the British Embassy as the best candidates.

The IPA is unable to impose fines on bodies that violate the law due to the absence of certain internal acts that should be signed and submitted to the government by the Commissioner, Jeton Arifi, head of the Access to Public Documents Pillar at the agency, told BIRN.

If a bank, for example, accidentally or intentionally revealed the account details of a customer, that customer would have to take the bank to court, a lengthy and potentially expensive process during which the bank could continue violating the law.

“The persistent failure to select the head of our authority is continuing to cause consequences in the prolongation of internal processes, which should have been concluded within six months from the entry into force of the relevant law,” Arifi told BIRN. The Law on Personal Data Protection entered into force on March 11, 2019.

Politicians can ‘hijack’ process

Without a Commissioner, the IPA is also unable to hire new staff and has had to halt a twinning project with Germany and Latvia.

“Now everything will start again from zero,” said Fatmire Mulhaxha Kollcaku, who heads parliament’s Committee on Security and Defence and led the interview panel for the Commissioner’s job.

“As long as we don’t have an independent institution with a competent Commission, we have two unenforceable laws,” said Mulhaxha Kollcaku, and questioned how the recruitment process would continue without the British involvement.

The British embassy said on August 17 that it would not spend British taxpayers’ money on repeating a process that had been conducted properly but which failed to end in the appointment of a Commissioner. Under the agreement with the embassy, parliament is obliged to endorse an approved candidate.

“The non-appointment of any of them calls into question the stated commitment of political parties to implement the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the British Embassy, ​​but more importantly, it sends a negative signal to independent professionals in Kosovo and their hopes to contribute in Kosovo Institutions,” the embassy said.

“Any public appointment should take into account only the interests of the country and its citizens, and not the narrow party interest.”

Without the British involvement, politicians can “hijack the process and elect politically involved people with no actual skills for the position,” warned Kusari.

Taulant Hoxha, CEO of the NGO Kosovar Civil Society Foundation, which supports the development of civil society with a focus on EU integration, told BIRN:

“It is painful that the Kosovo Assembly has to sign security agreements with foreign embassies in order to be able to elect a Commissioner. It would make sense if only the human, technical, and methodological resources to be provided with funding from the British Embassy because the Assembly of Kosovo is a new institution.”

RFE Launches in Hungary as Problems Mount at Home

On September 8, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) trumpeted its return to Hungary after a 27-year hiatus, marking its third re-entry into an EU member state following the 2019 resumption of services in Bulgaria and Romania. With the news media in much of Central and Southeast Europe being subsumed by governments or oligarchs, RFE/RL’s refocus on countries where media pluralism is under threat is, for those who value a free press, a welcome development.

Yet just two days after the Hungary relaunch, RFE/RL’s recently ousted President and CEO Jamie Fly was warning in testimony to Congress that the independence of RFE/RL is itself under threat from a source much closer to home.

“I would urge Congress to make the private grantees RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) even more independent of the U.S. government. The politicization of their oversight agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the undermining of their corporate boards through the actions of the new CEO of the Agency will only serve to raise questions about their independence and their ability to continue to speak truth to power,” Fly said in his testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment on September 10.

The new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – the independent body that oversees RFE/RL and the other US-funded media programs such as Voice of America (VOA) – is Michael Pack, a Donald Trump appointee, whose right-wing credentials include being a former president of the conservative Claremont Institute (Motto: Recovering the American Idea), as well as a close associate of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, with whom he has made documentary films.

Pack’s appointment to head up the USAGM was by no means straightforward. His nomination for the post was stalled in Congress for over two years as neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed particularly enthused by the candidate.

Then a White House attack on VOA in April in a statement under the headline, “Amid a pandemic, Voice of America spends your money to promote foreign propaganda”, in which it accused the outlet of uncritically relaying Chinese propaganda about its efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, seemed to galvanise Republicans and his confirmation sailed through the Senate largely along party lines on June 4.

Pack up your things and leave

The impact of Pack’s appointment was immediate. Within two weeks, VOA’s director, Amanda Bennett, and her deputy Sandy Sugawara had resigned, swiftly followed by the firing of the heads of RFE/RL and four other grantee and federal organisations under his remit, including Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

This prompted a bipartisan group of senators to write an open letter to Pack warning that the sackings, “without any consultation with Congress, let alone notification, raise serious questions about the future of the USAGM under your leadership.”

For RFE/RL insiders, both past and present, the decision by Pack to replace the bosses of the independent grantees with interim heads promoted from within the organisations is instructive, suggesting that he lacks a masterplan and is putting these organisations “on ice”, possibly until after the November 3 presidential election.

Rather, the focus of Pack so far seems to be on VOA, whose editorial mission – unlike that of the grantees, which are concerned with objective reporting within the countries where they operate – is more about communicating America’s story to a foreign audience, primarily through the coverage of US politics, policy and actions.

This is something Pack, and President Trump, clearly believe got lost during the years of the previous Obama administration. Explaining his own filmmaking to a confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019, Pack said: “Our films tell America’s story – also one of the goals of international broadcasting. The stories we’ve told range from history to politics to culture.”

One of the first editorial changes at VOA since his appointment has been restoring the daily VOA editorials to all its services – something which had lapsed over the last few years. The editorials are crafted by USAGM officials and then cleared by the State Department.

However, insiders believe that more wide-scale changes at all the organisations are likely if Trump wins the presidential election. RFE/RL’s editorial content, like that of the other organisations, is protected from US government interference by federal law. However, few doubt that Trump, who has shown scant regard for observing democratic norms during his time in office, will find ways for his man in charge to slant the coverage in a more favourable political direction, perhaps using leverage points, such as funding or appointing heads with the same world view, that would not violate the statutory firewall.

For example, one former insider says that were Pack to apply the VOA mission of “telling America’s story and explaining its policies and ideals” to the independent grantee organisations like RFE/RL, that would represent “a significant shift in their role”, which until now has often been explaining to their audiences – more than 38 million people in 23 countries, in the case of RFE/RL – what is going on in their own societies.

Impossible job

Insiders say all this sends a terrible signal at a time when, according to the US-based democracy monitor Freedom House’s latest Nations In Transit report, a growing number of leaders in Europe and Eurasia have dropped even the pretence of playing by the rules of democracy, while openly attacking democratic institutions and the press.

The most worrying situation is in Hungary, where RFE/RL’s new Szabad Európa service on various digital platforms intends, in its own words, to “provide objective, fact-based reporting in a country that has witnessed a decline in diverse media voices.”

Since the Fidesz government of Viktor Orban came to power in 2010, it has set about emasculating, co-opting, buying up or killing off critical media outlets. In August, the whole editorial team of Hungary’s most-read news site, Index, resigned in protest citing threats to their editorial independence. And in the same week of RFE/RL’s launch, the last remaining critical radio, Klubradio, was informed that its licence would not be automatically extended.

Even before Szabad Európa’s launch, there were indications that RFE/RL’s “signature commitment to serving the public interest by reporting on the issues that matter most to our audiences” would be difficult to maintain in Hungary.

The Hungarian service was launched almost a year after that of the Romanian and Bulgarian editions, with Congress – which allocates almost 800 million dollars to USAGM each year – only finally approving the funding for it last September.

In an interview with BIRN, the director of RFE/RL in Hungary, Gyula Csak, refused to comment on any decisions taken in the US, but there was clearly some behind-the-scenes wrangling over the Hungarian RFE/RL project. In September, just days before Congress approved the funding, a group of US Senators (all Democrats) sent a letter to the US Ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, warning him not to interfere with the project.

“We applaud the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s (USAGM) decision to return independent news broadcasts to Hungary via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is for this reason that we are so deeply troubled by media reports that you sought to gain assurances from the agency that it would avoid negative stories or investigative journalism regarding Hungary,” the letter read.

Eyebrows were also raised when, back in September, Jamie Fly met with Hungarian officials and tweeted about having had “good meetings” with government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, who regularly labels any criticism of Hungary as fake news.

Further fuelling suspicions about the US Embassy’s ambivalence over declining democratic standards in Hungary under the government of Prime Minister Orban – who Trump once praised for doing a “tremendous job” – was its decision just before the 2018 parliamentary elections to abruptly cancel a 700,000 dollar State Department grant to support objective reporting in Hungary.

“We were very disappointed by the Embassy,” Miklos Hargitai, President of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists (MUOSz), told BIRN. “Previously, there was a lot of coordination with [the Embassy], identifying where independent media would need most help. A lot of journalists and regional media outlets were already working on their applications when the whole project was just dropped. Nobody ever talked about it.”

To many, this was a signal that US priorities towards Hungary, previously stressing media freedom and democratic norms, had changed since Trump took office – a perception that seemed to be borne out by the arrival in Budapest of Ambassador Cornstein in 2018 with a brief to mend ailing US relations with the Fidesz government.

Cornstein appears to have succeeded in his brief. He is known to enjoy excellent personal relations with Orban and other members of his cabinet, so much so that he made international headlines when he boasted to the New York Times about stripping down to his underwear and relaxing on Orban’s plane after a visit to the White House in 2019.

Cornstein conceded in an interview with news site 24.hu that when he learnt about the return of RFE/RL to Hungary, he wanted to ensure that the government’s side would be given a hearing. “I would like Radio Free Europe to be about important American values. Of course, they also have the right to be critical. All I ask is that if they write something critical, they give the Hungarian government the opportunity to react. And if they write about the government doing anything good, give the opposition a chance to speak as well. That’s all I have asked from the head of the organisation. This way I can fully support the project, but if they don’t, I’ll be grouchy.” Cornstein said.

The head of RFE/RL in Hungary is convinced that his outlet’s journalistic independence will not be jeopardised, even after what has been dubbed the “Wednesday night massacre”, when the heads of the grantee organisations were fired, including his boss Jamie Fly.

“There is a legal firewall, a legal guarantee which protects us from any interference either from politics or from the management. Trust me, we all know what journalistic independence means and how valuable it is,” said Csak, who has previously worked for the BBC and various Hungarian news outlets, including public radio. “After all, many of our colleagues at RFE come from countries where they are no longer able to work as journalists.”

In words that will no doubt go some way to mollifying the US embassy in Budapest, Csak stressed to BIRN that, “public service also means unbiased reporting. We will give all sides the chance to express their opinion.”

Ambassador Cornstein won’t be around to hold Csak to that promise, having announced he will be leaving his post on November 1. Even so, Csak’s team of roughly ten journalists will have their work cut out trying to re-establish balanced public service reporting in a country where the pro- and anti-government media inhabit parallel universes and Orban’s Fidesz party grows increasingly intolerant of critical voices.

Without strong backing at home, RFE/RL might find it has an impossible job on its hands in Hungary.

Ditching Dinars: Will the Balkans Take to Cryptocurrency?

Cash may still be king in the Balkans, but growth in online payments – particularly in the era of COVID-19 – is fuelling optimism among those in the region pressing the case for cryptocurrency.

In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, many remember the hyperinflation of the 1990s and trust in traditional financial institutions is still in short supply, giving cryptocurrency a potential edge.

“The ability of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to be censorship resistant is seen as a great advantage,” said Arvin Kamberi, vice president of the Bitcoin Association of Serbia.

“While cash is still king in this area, we are also witnessing that the number of online payments is growing – especially pushed by the current COVID-19 developments.”

According to Kamberi, while cryptocurrency mining remains one of the main activities for users in the region, thanks mostly to the low cost electricity, growth of a cryptoasset industry and IT companies working in this field could provide a welcome fillip to economies across the region.

“Apart from cryptocurrency, the new cryptoasset industry will offer a variety of financial, legal or other services based on decentralised solutions,” Kamberi told BIRN.

“Serbia is preparing the set of regulations in order to address this issue, and this can be a big push forward to a financial industry 2.0, and can give the Balkans a chance to play a much bigger role in this development.”

Laying the foundation


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Austin Distel

Colibra, a Bulgarian startup, recently launched an option for travellers by which they can receive compensation for flight delays in Bitcoin.

In the Croatian town of Sveta Nedelja just west of the capital Zagreb, local authorities have introduced a service which enables shops and local institutions to accept payment in cryptocurrencies, while on the coast, Telos, one of the world’s most active blockchain platforms, together with the Croatia-based no-code DApp development platform Katalyo, will tokenise real estate assets worth approximately 30 million euros.

The tokenisation process, which basically turns real estate assets into digital assets, means that token holders will receive dividends in the form of fiat-based stable coins, generated from rental revenue.

“We are at the dawn of tokenisation revolutionising the real estate industry,” said Douglas Horn, Chief Architect of the Telos Blockchain.

“Telos has been building toolsets to make it easier for developers to create instantaneous, fee-less, transparent and governed tokenised economies as well as the adjacent tools like DeFi (Decentralised Finance), cross-chain transactions, decentralised data storage and oracles that increase their value even further,” he told BIRN.

Ivica Ljubicic, co-founder of Katalyo, said: “With Telos, we have the tools we need to support a sophisticated platform, which helps us welcome investors to the Croatian real estate market.”

Industry insiders say these and similar examples across the region mean that the potential for the development and implementation of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is here to stay. But they can face hurdles.

“A lot of projects aimed to tokenise real estate for years and have failed because of the same reason – they were unable to gather enough properties,” Vlaho Hrdalo, chair of the Croatian Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Association, told BIRN.

“If I were to bet on any one project succeeding, I would go for CrowdEstate by experienced startuper Srdjan Kupresanin, who just rolled-out a similar thing with cars in Austria to success.”

Need for crypto-friendly regulation


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Dmitry Demidko

Knowledge and experience are not enough, however. Regulations are required to ease the burden on companies working in the field, experts say.

“Several companies from this area are working on top notch cryptocurrency projects: like in DeFi, second layer protocol solutions for scaling of payment networks, blockchain based protocol for tokenisation of assets, but again it is hard to keep them here,” said Kamberi.

“We would need proactive, positive regulation in order to ease the burden of such start-ups and IT companies.”

One success story that others might try to emulate is Slovenia.

“Slovenia implemented crypto friendly regulations and this boosted the industry and the use of cryptocurrencies,” said Kamberi. “The country now has more than a thousand places in which you can spend cryptocurrencies – including major retailers like ‘Tuš’ or Burger King Slovenia.”

Serbia also seems ready and willing to adopt a set of crypto-regulations which would address cryptocurrency trading.

Belgrade-based Electronic Currency District, ECD, is a Bitcoin exchange that launched in 2012. Since then, their service has evolved and also opened branches across the region, the company told BIRN.

“We have added five new cryptocurrencies, we set up a network of Crypto ATMs in Serbia, developed application for bitcoin payments and opened branches in [North] Macedonia and Montenegro,” said co-founder and CEO Aleksandar Matanovic.

Currently the greatest potential in is remittances, Matanovic told BIRN.

“Remittances are probably the biggest chance for crypto to be used as money. The Balkans is a huge remittance market and sending money internationally is both faster and cheaper if you use crypto.”

“With a supportive regulatory framework, I really believe this industry could flourish, beneffiting not only those directly involved but also society as a whole.”

Some countries playing catch-up

Unlike Slovenia, Croatia, or Bulgaria, countries like North Macedonia are lagging behind, mostly due to the lack of any regulations whatsoever. And for those in the country looking to do business in cryptocurrency, it’s not straightforward.

“Trading mainly works through several crypto exchanges, most often Binance, and there are no obstacles here. Profit and exchange in denars usually goes through intermediaries, EU or Bulgarian residents,” said Petar Grujoski, a Skopje-based cryptocurrency enthusiast.

“Until recently, Macedonian citizens were not allowed to have accounts abroad, and we still do not have PayPal and Amazon for the same reason,” Grujoski told BIRN.

Cryptocurrency mining, on the other hand, can prove highly profitable in North Macedonia, not least because of cheap electricity supplies. The same applies to the rest of the region. But sometimes, when it comes to cryptocurrency mining and the rest of the infrastructure that can support the use of this technology, there are still some doubts.

“Regarding the infrastructure, if we look at the mining industry, electricity is in abundance and still quite cheap in some areas,” Kamberi said. “But mining can be a real environmental threat and the focus should be moved away from incentivising such an industry.”

“Regarding the use and payments infrastructure, the Internet coverage is still an issue in some areas. Anyhow, the ability to access the cryptocurrency payment networks using mobile devices and 3G connection makes it easier for users even in the most remote parts of the region.”

Rights Groups Urge Albania to ‘Rethink’ Disputed Media Law

Seven international rights organisations sent an open letter to the Albanian parliament on Wednesday, voicing concern over reports that the ruling Socialist Party is pressing on with legislation targeting the online media, despite fierce international criticism from the Venice Commission, among others.

The seven groups, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, Article 19, the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, Free Press Unlimited, FPU, the International Press Institute, IPI, Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, OBCT, and the South East Europe Media Organisation, SEEMO, urged the parliament to drop the current proposals and restart the whole process.

“We are writing to express our grave concern about the apparent plans of the Parliament of Albania to ignore the issues raised in Venice Commission Opinion No. 980/2020 of 19 June 2020, further threatening press freedom and the right to freedom of expression and to information in Albania,” the letter published on the ECPMF website, reads.

“We urge you to rethink the current legislative procedure and instead put in place a transparent process that leads to appropriate legislation that addresses all the Venice Commission’s recommendations, and to include civil society and representatives of the media throughout this process,” the letter adds.

Their letter follows a statement by local media organisations, including BIRN Albania, published last week. In that statement, the signatory organisations observed that the parliament aims to use article 86 of the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, which says parliament should only reconsider issues introduced by the President of the Republic, to get the disputed law through. The organisations said they fear any changes conducted in this way would only be cosmetic, and would fail to address grave concerns expressed over the law.

The legislation, first proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, aims to create an administrative body that will be empowered to order media to take down news reports over issues such as “infringing the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics say the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.

Following parliamentary approval of the new law amid protests last December, it was blocked by President Ilir Meta, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, asked the Venice Commission for its opinion.

The Venice Commission criticised the law in entirety and, among other things, warned that it could be used by powerful people to protect themselves from media criticism.

Unbowed by the criticism, Prime Minister Rama called again this month for speedy approval of the law, claiming defamation on online media had reached an unacceptably high level.

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