Huawei’s Innovations and Development Centre was opened on Monday in the presence of Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and the Chinese ambassador to Belgrade, just a week after Serbia signed a controversial agreement in Washington which appeared to target Chinese involvement in the development of 5G in Serbia.
Brnabic said the centre will significantly help further digitalisation in Serbia and that despite the Washington agreement, the country was working on many other technologies with Huawei that are a precondition for the introduction of 5G.
“Many things are being prepared with Huawei, which will only be visible in the next few months or a year,” Brnabic said.
She insisted that cooperation with Huawei on the introduction of 5G network in Serbia does not contravene the agreement signed in Washington.
“Serbia is not interested in unreliable technologies either, on the contrary, it is in the interest of the tender for the introduction of the 5G network to be open and transparent, while respecting international standards, which includes the agreement from Washington,” she said.
Li Mengqun, president of Huawei Western Balkans, told media that he expects cooperation with the Serbian government to increase.
“We hope and believe that the Serbian government will continue to create an open and fair business environment for ICT [information and communications technology] infrastructure construction. Together, we can make Serbia a world leader in the digital era with ubiquitous connectivity, digital platforms, and pervasive intelligence,” Li said.
The agreement signed by President Aleksandar Vucic and separately by Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti at the White House last week in the presence of Donald Trump, committed Serbia and Kosovo not to use equipment supplied by “untrusted vendors” in their telecommunications networks.
No firms were named, but the Trump administration has been campaigning internationally to roll back China and Huawei’s role in telecommunications in Europe.
The ninth point of the agreement said: “Both parties will prohibit the use of 5G equipment in their mobile communication networks, which is delivered by an unverified seller. Where such equipment is already present, both parties will commit to its removal and other efforts at mediation to do so in a timely manner.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the public auction for the 5G spectrum in Serbia has been postponed for the first quarter of 2021.
However, Huawei has had a presence in Serbia for a long time, increasing its participation in big projects in the last couple of years.
The company has a 150 million euro contract with state-owned Telekom Srbija for the procurement of equipment, services and works for landline network modernisation and has also been named as a partner in developing the 5G network with privately-owned Telenor.
Huawei and the Serbian interior ministry also have a partnership agreement for the introduction of Huawei’s ‘eLTE’ wireless broadband technologies and ‘Smart City’ public security systems including a large-scale surveillance network that is to be installed in Serbia’s capital.
The interior ministry has told Radio Free Europe that details of the agreement are secret, however.
The Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Telecommunications signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei for the ‘Smart City’ project in 2019, and a strategic partnership agreement for development of the broadband network in Serbia in 2017.
It has said that the White House agreement has no effect on such cooperation.
Combined with other Chinese investment projects under way or in the pipeline, some experts have suggested that Serbia has emerged as the most important country in the Balkans for China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
A Turkish court in Istanbul on Wednesday set jail sentences of three to four years for five journalists who reported on the funeral of a Turkish intelligence agent killed in Libya.
However, the same court released three of them, Baris Pehlivan, Hulya Kilinc and Murat Agirel, after taking into account that they had spent more than six months in prison already.
These three were the only remaining ones from the group still in prison. The others in the case were previously released in June.
“There was no guilt in this case. The government aimed to end our journalistic lives. We will continue our journalism as we did before,” Pehlivan said defiantly on Thursday after his release.
Prosecutors in Istanbul previously launched an investigation against the journalists for exposing the identity of a field officer with the National Intelligence Agency, MIT, who had served and died in Libya, where Turkey is supporting the Tripoli government against a rival faction.
Prosecutors said the journalists had revealed important information on intelligence activities and documents, and had put intelligence officers’ families and colleagues in danger.
However, lawmakers in Turkey’s parliament had already revealed the name of the MIT agent.
The journalists arrested in February were known to be critical of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Istanbul court acquitted the journalists of charges of “revealing information about the state’s security and political interest” but found five of them guilty of “exposing information and documents that were obtained by intelligence activities”.
Aydın Keser, editor of Yeni Yasam daily newspaper, its executive editor Mehmet Ferhat Celik and Murat Agirel were sentenced to four years and eight months each.
Baris Pehlivan and Hulya Kilinc were sentenced to three years and nine months. Oda TV news director Baris Terkoglu and municipal press officer Eren Ekinci were acquitted. Another journalist from Birgun newspaper, Erk Acarer, had his case separated from the main case.
Human rights groups and opposition parties had called on the Turkish government to release the journalists.
The country is now one of worst jailers of journalists in the world. According to the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, 72 journalists and media workers are currently behind bars. Media watchdog Reporters without Borders ranks Turkey in 154th place out of 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index.
Since a failed coup in 2016, the authorities have closed 70 newspapers, 20 magazines, 34 radio stations and 33 television channels as part of a brutal crackdown on critics.
The rapid spread of the internet and growing use of social media in Albania has significantly affected the behaviour of existing or traditional media as well as native digital media. The emergence of online media outlets has dramatically changed the media landscape.
BIRN Albania’s latest report, “Internet Governance in Albania and Its Role In Media Freedom”, explores a number of topics where Internet governance and regulation intersect with online media, market conditions, financial regulations, access to information and data protection, and copyright and cyber-security.
The report aims to provide a clear overview of the rights and responsibility of online publications in the Internet environment and the governance of this environment by public institutions, while encouraging a multi-stakeholder debate with the goal of supporting and strengthening freedom of expression and the professional practice of journalism on the Internet.
Freedom of expression and media freedom under threat
Photo: Raphael Nogueira
Although there is no specific law on online media in Albania, constitutional principles on freedom of expression and freedom of the press do extend their rights and restrictions to online outlets, while the regulatory environment on Internet governance, both domestic and foreign, influences how these outlets operate and do business.
Newly proposed regulations and amendments on the subject met strong resistance from the journalistic community and rights organisations in Albania and abroad. These moves were also contested by the European Commission and the Council of Europe.
In spite of the government’s attempts to shrink the space for professional journalism, freedom of expression and media are clearly defined in the Albanian constitution as well as in the international treaties and agreements that the country has ratified.
While Albania’s broadcast media and the press are controlled by a handful of powerful families, which have affiliated businesses in regulated markets, online media outlets are more diverse.
Many are start-ups owned by journalists, and allow more diverse viewpoints and reporting angles.
But, even though online media have become one of the main sources of information in Albania, Albanian legislation currently provides no definition of online media. Nor does the audio-visual media law or the e-commerce law.
Access to the internet is vital to free speech
Access to the Internet as a means of communication to exercise freedom of expression and information is guaranteed in Albania in the context of the domestic legal framework.
A survey conducted in 2019 on the use of information technology by families and individuals conducted by the Albanian National Institute of Statistics, INSTAT, showed that 82.2 per cent of all households now have access to the Internet, compared to 80.7 per cent a year earlier, and 66.4 per cent in 2016.
INSTAT found that 68.8 per cent of all individuals aged between 16 and 74 in Albania had used the Internet within three months of the survey being conducted, 87.1 per cent of whom used it daily.
Article 1, of the Law on Electronic Communications in Albania, no. 9918, of 19 May 2008, refers to net neutrality under the principles of the law – but it contains no specific provisions on how to enforce it.
Emerging from the same problematic principles that underpin net neutrality, The Electronic Communications law does not regulate zero rating; it is left to the companies to negotiate or offer such services.
One service previously excluded by data caps from ISPs in Albania has been Facebook Zero. The lack of clarity from the government regarding zero rating is concerning, as it is particularly relevant to journalism and media organisations.
Domain registration is linked to press freedom
Domain name management and administration is central to broader Internet governance, and directly affects press and media freedom within a country.
Domain registration in Albania for the ccTLD .al is regulated in the Electronic Communications law. It stipulates that domain names are registered “to serve the general interest of the public” and “to ensure especially the protection of intellectual property”. Web hosting companies are also mainly regulated by the the Electronic Communications law.
The main institution administering the .al ccTLD and its subdomains is AKEP. This maintains and updates a list of reserved and forbidden names and collects data and documents from the physical persons and legal entities that register.
The BIRN report states that blocking domain names is a key form of censorship imposed around the world, and is often used to prevent access to information and silence dissent.
Social media companies have unfair tax advantage
Online media in Albania operate on the same financial rules and tax regimes as other businesses registered in the country. No specific tax or financial rules, subsidies, or incentives are designed specifically for online media outlets.
Albania’s legal framework does not provide for any form of subsidies for journalism and the media, either for legacy or online media outlets.
Social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, along with other online media not registered in Albania, should have a registered agent in the country and pay a tax rate similar to native online media outlets.
The BIRN report notes that the lack of taxation of their advertising products gives them de facto an unfair advantage to local online media outlets; these are taxed at the rate of 20 per cent.
Online media in Albania have often been the target of verbal abuse by politicians at the highest levels of power. Research conducted by BIRN also indicates that the biggest factors influencing the Albanian media’s editorial line are the political and economic interests of media owners, which in turn place pressure on many journalists to self-censor.
Thus, media outlet ownership transparency is important for the public to identify any political and economic bias that might influence the coverage of a certain topic or issue, as well as recognise conflicts of interest.
However, Albanian legislation does not provide any specific provision for the public disclosure of the ownership of media outlets.
Restrictions on freedom of expression online
Photo: Unsplash/Laura Lee Moreau
Although the Albanian constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights recognise fundamental rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the media, they also provide for proportional restrictions.
Defamation in Albania remains a criminal misdemeanour, punished by fines, while the main legal instrument against hate speech is the provision of several anti-hate crimes and misdemeanours in the criminal code. Hate speech is also addressed, albeit indirectly, in Albania’s anti-discrimination law.
In the context of the infringements, copyright violations are considered one of the biggest problems facing the online media, followed by the lack of quality information and financial difficulties.
Criteria and conditions for copyright protection are listed in the report. Despite the legal protection granted to audio and visual products via copyright, the country’s copyright law (Article 12.1) does not protect news and press information, both offline and online, which are simply informative in nature.
Journalists safeguard the public’s right to know
The growing number and influence of online media have certainly given journalists more space and freedom to express their views and report on different issues in ways that might not always be welcome in traditional media.
Journalists have the right to inform about news of public interest, preserving the essence of information, but they are also obliged to avoid references to personal data when possible. All actions taken by journalists should be shaped by the public interest.
The report lists two sets of special instructions and considerations (Protection of minors and court and crime reporting) for journalists on how to protect personal and sensitive data.
The most recent Code of Ethics for Journalists was drafted in 2018. This was done by the Albanian Media Institute, AMI, with the support of the project Reinforcing Judicial Expertise on Freedom of Expression and the Media in SouthEast Europe, JUFREX – a joint initiative led by the European Union and the Council of Europe.
According to a set of Ethical Guidelines for Online Journalism , online journalism must respect all professional code of ethics and the core values of journalism, irrespective of the forum or format it uses.
No clear rules for content removal
Recognising that content moderation and removal policies are widely debated – and divisive – on the global level, the report provides a non limited list of potential solutions that may contribute to a healthier online environment.
In Albania, no specific law explicitly regulates the filtering and blocking of illegal Internet content. However, the provisions of several laws regulate illegal Internet content. The Electronic Communications law empowers the AKEP to enforce its requirements.
There is no official or published list of what is considered illegal and/or harmful content, or of the competent authorities that can ask the ISPs to remove illegal content. For this reason, the key institutions mandated by law to order the removal of illegal content are listed below, based on the caseload developed by AKEP.
Judicial and law enforcement agencies can request the removal of illegal content based on the relevant articles in the criminal code. One of the most problematic requests from law enforcement agencies, passed on to ISPs through AKEP, was the blocking of the domain of the popular online media Jeta Osh Qef (Joq.al) following the deadly 26 November 2019 earthquake in Albania.
The report also mentions other relevant agencies and bodies dealing with content removal, such as the Audio-visual Media Authority, AMA, and the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection.
Progress in cybersecurity legislation
Albania has made significant progress in recent years in developing the ICT sector and the use of information technology, IT.
Albania ratified the Convention on Cybercrime – known as the Budapest Convention – on 25 April 2002, with Law no. 8888. Its criminal code is mainly in line with this important international instrument, containing several specific articles dedicated to fighting cybercrime.
Although not directly related to cybersecurity, the criminal code also details the consequences of engaging in various anti-social electronic and/or online activities.
Another important law governing cybersecurity is Law no. 2/2017, “On Cybersecurity”; the entity responsible for applying this law is the NAECCES.
The law’s main aim is to achieve a high level of cybersecurity within Albania by defining security measures, rights, and obligations, as well as mutual cooperation between entities operating in the field of cybersecurity.
With a full-time job and a family, Safija Vucenovic, now 67, from the central Bosnian city of Zenica, could rarely find time to commit to music and sewing – her two great passions – when she was younger.
It was only when she was pensioned and her children grew up that she started singing in a local female choir, performing solo at music events and designing her own dresses for them.
But her newfound pleasure was shaken this spring by the arrival of COVID-19, tying her to her home without social contacts or performances.
To banish the feeling of uncertainty and anxiety that overwhelmed many of her peers, she began recording herself with a smartphone while singing her favourite “sevdalinke” songs and making clothes, sharing the videos with her friends via Facebook and Viber.
“It helped me, and the others, to keep our spirits up,” Vucenovic recalls.
Even though it is not mandatory to stay inside any more, many older people still spend most of their time at home, especially since the number of COVID-19 cases began rising in early July.
People aged 65 years and older make up about 14 per cent of Bosnia’s population, according to the 2013 census, and their share in the overall population is increasing.
The UN estimates that this age group will represent more than 30 per cent of the population of Bosnia by 2060. Many seniors live on the edge of poverty and are socially excluded. Average pensions of around 200 euros a month often cannot cover even basic expenses.
Several reports, including those published by Caritas BiHand the Institution of the Human Rights Ombudsman of BiH, have noted that the lack of activities in which elderly people can take part makes them isolated and prone to mental illnesses, particularly depression.
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, media have reported that the elderly are the most at-risk group from COVID-19, although the evidence shows that the disease can be deadly to anyone.
At the same time, regular health care services, slow and inadequate even under normal conditions, have now become almost inaccessible to many seniors now because of the special COVID-19-related working regime.
For Safija and other members of the Zenica-basedNas most (Our Bridge) association, the only way to keep up with their peers, rather than depressing news, was to turn to technology.
From their own homes, they have been engaging in collective creative work and socializing – the same as they had been doing during the gatherings held in Our Bridge’s art centre before the pandemic – but this time over the Internet.
Virus puts centre’s work on hold
The Our Bridge local association has organised artistic and cultural activities for seniors and persons with disabilities in Zenica since the beginning of 2013.
It has staged numerous arts and crafts classes, art exhibitions and music and theatre performances involving the elderly – mostly women – in order to foster their social inclusion.
While other bigger cities in Bosnia have government-supportedcentres for healthy ageing to aid the socialization of the elderly, Our Bridge’s work is mainly funded by members’ own fees and is based on the volunteer work of senior activists.
The number of its activities and its members has steadily grown in the last two years but, as the association closed in March due to the pandemic, all of its initiatives have been halted.
But, soon after the initial shock caused by the crisis, the association began organising Facebook-based creative challenges and live streams of art workshops, art classes on Viber and online art residencies for international artists.
“We wanted to stay connected and motivate each other to create arts and crafts so that we can distract ourselves from our worries,” says Zdena Saric, president of Our Bridge. “It’s been really a blessing that we have the Internet and smartphones to do so.”
Saric, a locally renowned artist and art activist helping women, seniors and persons with disabilities to overcome mental health struggles through art, began giving online painting classes via Facebook live streams in April.
Her first live-streamed video class on the so-called encaustic technique – using molten wax that is then ironed – has been viewed over 1,000 times.
Many of Saric’s Facebook friends began contacting her about additional tips and tricks on how to use the iron as a painting tool, which is why she decided to continue to hold live streams once a week until the end of May.
Some of her virtual “students” even sent her the photos of the paintings they made during the lockdown that have been inspired by her online classes.
She also began regularly posting on Facebook her art works created in isolation at home, trying to encourage others who felt depressed and apathetic to lift their dark thoughts through the bright colours of paint and start painting themselves.
Meliha Bico Druzic, 65, one of Our Bridge’s volunteers, was one of those who needed such a stimulus.
She was having a hard time adjusting to the new reality of not being able to leave her home for weeks.
As an Our Bridge activist, she had been busy for years with the association’s activities. She also loves to paint but couldn’t find any inspiration. Suddenly, after being stuck at home, she realised she had a lot of time on her hands and didn’t know what to do with it.
“I wanted a [real] spring to come, which is why the first painting I made in isolation was a vase full of lilacs,” said Bico Druzic, who after some days of persuasion accepted Zdena’s virtual creative challenge.
She began painting at home and posting her works on Facebook, and challenging her Facebook friends to follow her lead.
Bico Druzic has since exhibited her paintings created during the lockdown at the “My Quarantine” (“Moj Karantin”) art show held at the Our Bridge centre in July. The exhibition included art works of other Our Bridge members as well.
Shifting from offline to online activities
Last year’s offline creative activities for seniors in Our Bridge. Photo: Ajdin Kamber
The response from their online creative communities encouraged Bico Druzic and Saric to continue painting and sharing works on Facebook. As other Our Bridge members began doing the same, their Facebook news feeds have become full of photographed paintings and other handicrafts.
To continue these efforts, but in a more varied and structured manner, they gathered Our Bridge’s members in an art-focused Viber group.
The initiative, called “There is some secret connection” (“Ima neka tajna veza”), has been designed in collaboration with the Serbian association Art Aparat, whose co-founder and music teacher, Maja Curcic, started producing video singing lessons in Belgrade and sharing them with the members of the Viber group in June.
Apart from singing, the women teach each other how to paint, design bags and do handicrafts via video messages. The Viber group also serves as a channel of everyday communication.
The project was originally designed to bring together seniors from Zenica and the Serbian capital Belgrade through music and painting classes.
In both countries, the elderly suffer from an absence of systemic protection of their rights, not only related to health and social protection, but to their cultural needs as well, according to Curcic.
Apart from cultural programmes in homes for the aged and the activities of local pensioners’ associations, seniors have limited options to participate in cultural initiatives.
Similar to the centers for healthy aging, Serbia also has daily centres for seniors that provide some cultural activities, but these are limited in their number and capacities.
That is why Art Aparat and Our Bridge established a partnership, though the initial idea had to be adjusted due to the pandemic and transformed into a remote creative exchange, focused only on Zenica.
“Projects like this one encourage seniors to use new technologies and learn how to adapt to the new times,” Curcic says. She believes it helps the elderly to overcome barriers such as physical distance or inability to move, and restore a sense of belonging to their community.
This is the first time Curcic, who has been using music as a tool of social integration for vulnerable groups of children and youngsters in Serbia for a decade, has worked with seniors. Judging by the feedback from the members of her Zenica online choir, she has succeeded.
“I can’t wait to meet Maja in person and sing with her,” Vucenovic says. Bico Druzic agrees, adding that Maja’s choice of the song for the lessons – which is Imagine life in the rhythm of music to dance to (Zamisli život u ritmu muzike za ples – a song of from the popular Yugoslav band Film – fits her taste perfectly: “I love music, especially the songs that are closer to my younger age, and that have a soul.”
Bico Druzic is also participating in another Our Bridge international collaboration that was re-shaped from an art residency in Zenica into an online artistic platform when the pandemic broke out.
The project called “Urban Herstories – The female face of Zenica” – aims to document social, political and urban changes in Bosnia since the 1950s through the eyes of Zenica’s elderly women, and Bico Druzic’s story, related to her elementary school, is part of it.
Artists from Slovakia and Ukraine were about to visit Zenica in mid-March and work with Bico Druzic and five other women just when Bosnia – and Europe – began to close down. The stories will, however, still serve as a female audio guide to the city and as a basis for online-based art residencies of Slovakian and Ukrainian artists.
‘It’s nicer when you can see a person live’
Our Bridge members learning how to use Viber and social media on smartphones during training. Photo: Facebook/Nas most Zenica
Although new artistic ideas have arisen from the necessary adaptations of the “Urban Herstories” project to the online sphere, physical encounters between the women in Zenica and the Slovakian and Ukrainian artists – which could not take place – are an irreplaceable part of the experience, says Katarzyna Zielińska, manager of the Polish cultural institution Strefa Kultury Wroclaw, one of Our Bridge’s partner organisations on the project.
“I had a feeling that we have lost the human aspect due to the lack of the real, person-to-person contacts with the storytellers [women] and the lack of a first-hand experience of the place we were supposed to work in [Zenica],” Zielińska says.
Curcic from Art Aparat shares that sentiment, warning that it can demotivate people who never before attended an online education class to follow the instructions of a teacher who they can see only on a screen.
“It’s nicer when you can see a person live, encourage him or her or explain [in more detail] what you wanted to say. The pre-recorded rehearsals are not the same as the real contact,” Curcic adds.
Working with people not used to communication platforms like Viber or social networks like Facebook is another major challenge. Adjusting to the new ways of socialization and collaboration has been difficult for most of the Our Bridge’s membership, whose average age is 60.
The association ran several offline training sessions on how to use smartphones once the strict epidemiological measures had been lifted. But a few women still felt discouraged by the amount of information they needed to absorb, and haven’t continued to participate in smartphone-based activities.
Despite the shortcomings of such initiatives, the online-based creative programmes might remain the safest – and possibly the only – way to work with the elderly during the pandemic.
“Organisations like Our Bridge, which facilitate online creative connections, are of great importance for the elderly,” says Zenica-raised psychologist and psycho-therapist Dzelila Mulic Corbo. “In that way, they [elderly] stay in touch with the outside world, have contacts with others, and make their days meaningful.”
Recalling that adjusting to the “new normality” imposed by the pandemic has been hard for practically everyone, Mulic Corbo says that for the elderly, whose flexibility in new circumstances is naturally lower, the adaptation process is much harder.
Our Bridge will keep developing online-based activities as long as the risk of COVID-19 infection continues, according to Saric. In the meantime, it is looking for other innovative ways to help motivate seniors stay connected through their mobile phones and so mentally overcome the challenges of the pandemic.
“Nothing would make us more happy than to be able to freely gather in our space. But, until then, our [mobile] phones will have to play their role,” Saric concluded.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of BIRN and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
In what many in the local media consider a surprising verdict given the weight of evidence presented in the court, the three-member senate said there was insufficient evidence to convict Kocner and Zsuzsova, who were suspected of ordering the murder of the investigative journalist and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova.
A third defendant on trial with Kocner and Zsuzsova, former soldier Tomas Szabo, was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security prison. Szabo was a cousin of Miroslav Marcek, who admitted to shooting Kuciak and Kusnirova at the beginning of the trial. Another man was sentenced to 15 years last year for involvement in the murder-for-hire.
The prosecution is expected to appeal the decision of the special court at the Supreme Court. Right after the verdict, Dennik N daily reported that the senate was divided in their opinions, with two of the judges outvoting the chair Ruzena Sabova. Disputes among the senate were suspected back in August, when the original date of verdict hearing was moved to September 3.
Slovak media have described the verdict as “shocking” given the mountain of evidence against Kocner and Zsuzsova that was presented during the trial. The families of the victims listened to the verdict in tears, leaving the courtroom immediately after hearing the acquittal of Kocner.
The killings of Kuciak and his architect fiancée Martina Kusnirova confirmed many people’s worst fears about the existence in Slovakia of a nexus of organised crime, oligarch power and political mafia which had corrupted much of the country. Mass protests across the country in 2018 led to the resignation of the then-prime minister, Robert Fico.
Facebook’s security department has shut down several accounts belonging to a publication that presents itself as an independent global news organisation primarily based in Romania, “for violating our policy against foreign interference”.
The accounts were operated by people associated with the Russian government who used fake accounts and spread anti-Western propaganda.
Their use of environmental concerns and pacifist arguments to discredit Western democratic institutions has been described as reminiscent of the tactics used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which funded front organisations in Western countries to influence public opinion against democratic governments.
“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA),” the social network said in its August security report.
The network, which gravitated around the news website Peacedata.net, targeted audiences from “on the left of the political spectrum”.
It posted global news and comment on current events “relevant to left-leaning communities”, including social and racial justice issues in the US and UK, NATO and EU politics, alleging Western war crimes, corruption and environmental issues.
One of the articles shared by Peacedata charged the British government with creating “a myth of a migrant crisis to distract from its failures”.
Another article published on Facebook by the same network accused France of following neo-colonial practices in its former African colonies. The third example given by Facebook officials of content distributed in the disabled accounts had the title: “Boogaloo Movement: USA Far Right is Growing Thanks to Donald Trump”.
Another item published by Peacedata.net called the Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya “a Western regime change puppet”.
The network consisted of 13 accounts and two Facebook pages with a following of 14,000. According to the social network, it was in the “early stage” of building a wider audience.
It produced content in English and Arabic and “focused primarily on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, in addition to other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.”
They also “recruited unwitting freelance journalists to write on particular topics”.
Peacedata.net website is still on air and has rejected Facebook’s accusation that it is a tool of the Kremlin in a lengthy statement that calls The New York Times and The Washington Post “brainwashing machines”. It also called Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg an “adversary of freedom and democracy” who “proudly walks alongside such monstrous figures as Donald Trump”.
Slovenia is among the few countries in Europe that have experienced a swift downturn in press and media freedom, according to the latest report of the International Press Institute, IPI, a global network of journalists, editors and media executives defending press freedom.
Jamie Wiseman, Advocacy Officer at IPI, stated in the in-depth report published on Tuesday that the Slovenian government led by Janez Jansa was contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists.
The IPI report noted that, according to some observers, Jansa has launched “vitriolic attacks on reporters on Twitter, enabling a wider increase in digital harassment from online trolls and contributing to an increasingly hostile climate for watchdog journalism”.
Jansa, an ally of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the coronavirus. He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January.
The change of power coincided with what the IPI said is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.
Jansa has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters, tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19, has retweeted anonymous attacks on the investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.
As IPI recalled, in mid-March, a government account retweeted a claim that Zgaga was an “escaped psychiatric patient”. Shortly after that, the reporter began receiving numerous online death threats and smears, drawing condemnation from international organisations.
Observers and journalists told IPI that “animosity from officials has enabled increasing harassment of journalists online”, from which neither foreign journalists nor public television journalists were spared.
Despite reasons for worry, Wiseman wrote that “concerns that Slovenia will become another illiberal democracy akin to Hungary are, for now, premature”.
”Nonetheless the exporting of Hungarian methods to Slovenia and other states in Central and South-Eastern European countries should worry EU leaders,” he continued, urging the EU and other organisations to follow developments in Slovenia closely and react strongly if need be.
“In the coming weeks, all eyes will be focused on the end of the public consultation into the legislative amendments to the public broadcaster and press agency,” the report noted, referring to plans by Slovenia’s government to amend public service media legislation, which some experts see as an attempt to rein in state media.
On the other hand, the Slovenian Culture Ministry told BIRN in July that nothing in the set of laws indicates that public media will be put under direct state influence. “The laws are not changing corporate or programming governance of RTV Slovenia, nor do they have provisions to do that,” it pointed out.
On August 25, the government responded to an alert on the Council of Europe’s platform, which monitors press freedom, issued in May, attaching Jansa’s own essay, “War with the media”, and offered additional explanations, insisting that “freedom of expression is a right that belongs to every individual”.
“Negative criticism of an individual journalist, publisher or broadcaster by the prime minister, does not automatically render it an attack or an encroachment on media independence,“ the letter said.
“Finally the World Press Freedom Index, published annually by international non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, ranks Slovenia 32nd, which is two places better than in 2019 and the same as in 2018,” the government observed.
In March this year, as COVID-19 shut down North Macedonia, Ivana Ramadanova was working from home on a story about textile workers being laid off when she got her own marching orders from the news portal Lokalno.mk.
Management told Ramadanova, 36, and three other journalists they would not be needed from the beginning of April. Ramadanova complained to the Labour Inspectorate, arguing she had been fired based on a termination agreement she never signed. But when the company was ordered to take her back, it did so on worse terms. Ramadanova found somewhere else to work.
“It’s a horrible feeling,” she told BIRN. “When someone needs you, you’re good, but at the very first sign of a crisis they get rid of you.”
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, advertising revenues in the media sector have nose-dived around the world, triggering a wave of job losses.
North Macedonia is no different, but the precarious financial state of many media outlets in the Balkan country even before the pandemic means some face a fight to survive. Coupled with new work practices to adhere to social-distancing regulations, the pandemic has the potential to reshape the sector like never before.
“We have a decline in advertising of about 70 per cent,” said Atanas Kirovski, director and editor of Telma TV and head of the Macedonian Media Association, MMA, which represents five television broadcasters with national frequencies.
“It is happening all over the world, and we are no exception,” he told BIRN. “Our business directly depends on the situation. If it takes two years, I do not believe that all media in the country will survive. If it ends earlier, they still have a chance.”
Aid package ‘helpful at the moment’
Two years is the timeframe the World Health Organisation has put on efforts to rein in the novel coronavirus, providing a vaccine proves safe and effective.
Few in North Macedonia believe the state has the resources to keep media outlets alive that long.
According to a survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union of Journalists, 73 per cent of respondents said they needed financial assistance, and 30 per cent said they knew someone in the sector who had lost a job in recent months due to the crisis.
Since March, the state has provided three million euros in aid to the media sector, in the form of direct injections and tax breaks. Of that figure, 1.7 million went to 116 broadcasters, including 500,000 euros to the public broadcaster.
For a period of three months, the state took on the burden of health and pension contributions for employees of media companies that had managed to avoid any layoffs.
Media outlets also benefitted from a blanket aid package for all companies in the country by which the government covered up to 14,500 denars [235 euros] of each employee’s monthly salary.
Kirovski said the measures had cut Telma TV’s financial burden by about 20,000 euros and that the company was able to make regular salary payments.
“The government measures are helpful at the moment,” he said.
Infographic: BIRN
Dangers of state support
That the likes of respected global media giants The Guardian and the BBC have announced job losses since the onset of the pandemic has sent shockwaves through the global media industry.
“When practically two symbols of quality journalism show that they cannot cope with the crisis, what remains for others?” asked Brankica Petkovic, head of the Centre for Media Policy at the Peace Institute in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana.
While it is only normal in such circumstances that public and private media should turn to the state for help, Petkovic told BIRN, it is crucial that they guard their editorial independence.
This is particularly pertinent in North Macedonia, where the current Social Democrat-led government has yet to fully address the clientelism that characterised relations between the state and the media under former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski between 2006 and 2016.
Mladen Chadikovski, head of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, said the aid risked turning into a trap.
“When there is a state of emergency as it is now, whether it is officially declared or not, there are dangers of passing solutions that are problematic,” Chadikovski told BIRN. “We would not like to use this period to establish a media fund that would remain and create risks of influencing editorial policy.”
He said media would be better off receiving aid in the former of tax breaks rather than direct transfers from state coffers.
Aid can’t last long
Some media experts believe the recession triggered by the pandemic and the widespread closure of businesses may do what no government or regulator in North Macedonia has dared – cut the number of media outlets.
North Macedonia confronted the pandemic with an unreformed public broadcaster, 115 commercial broadcasting companies, 12 newspapers, hundreds of Internet portals and an advertising pie of about 15-20 million euros.
“The media scene is already in big trouble – many media outlets and a small advertising market,” said Chadikovski. “If the crisis continues, these problems will increase.”
Goran Mihajlovski, owner and editor of the portal Sakam da kazham (sdk.mk), said online journalism was particularly vulnerable. Registered as a non-governmental organisation, his portal also benefits from donor-funded projects.
“If we were dependent on advertisements, we would have not existed either,” he said.
Dejan Georgievski of the Media Development Center, which provides legal and advocacy support to media workers in North Macedonia, said the aid provided by the state was not a long-term solution.
“The aid cannot last more than a few months, half a year at most,” he said
Georgievski is one of only a few media experts in the country to say a reduction in the size of the media sector would not necessarily be a bad thing.
“Those who are lucky to survive will have more resources at their disposal that will help their sustainability and help them offer better content, better information, but also be less dependent on public money and free of any economic and other types of pressure,” he told BIRN.
Working practices changed
Illustration: Unsplash.com
The pandemic has not changed only the financial outlook for media outlets.
Social distancing measures have dramatically altered how journalists do their jobs.
“We have introduced work in shifts, so that if a colleague becomes infected and others have to go into isolation, the other shift can cover the work,” said Telma TV’s Kirovski. “But that meant that we always worked at 50 per cent capacity, while the other 50 per cent was on standby.”
Journalists at most Internet portals and some print media worked from home, encountering the same problems as those in other professions in balancing work and childcare. Smaller newsrooms struggled to adhere to government requirements that the parents of children under 10 years of age be exempted from work.
“I had to be a journalist, a babysitter and a mother at the same time, and the editor was not interested,” said one journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “If I wasn’t online for 15 minutes he would immediately ask where I was.”
Movement restrictions and limited access to data and interviewees have hurt the quality of output, both in terms of content and technical quality.
“Of course it had an impact on the quality of work – the shifts are smaller, there are fewer journalists, editors, cameramen, editors available,” said Chadikovski.
Mihajlovski of Sakam da kazham said: “It’s not easy when you can’t go into the field, talk to people, but instead you have to work from a distance.”
Those who could not work from home or online paid a different price.
“We have to attend all the events, because of which we are constantly under stress, having even panic attacks,” said a journalist of a regional radio station who declined to be named.
Another, in Skopje, told BIRN: “I was talking to a mayor, who shook my hand to say goodbye. I returned the greeting so as not to be rude. A few days later, when he announced that he tested positive for the virus, I was in a terrible panic for the next two weeks.”
“Obviously one moment of carelessness is enough,” said Hristina Belovska, a reporter at TV 24 Television who tested positive during North Macedonia’s July parliamentary election.
“Our work is fieldwork and that cannot be changed. We were provided with protective equipment, we also had training on how to protect ourselves and recommendations not to put ourselves at risk. However, I ended up positive. I discovered it by accident and I do not know how it happened. It just shows how serious the situation with the virus is.”
In the survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union of Journalists, 22 per cent of respondents said they had not been provided with protective equipment.
Nothing will be the same
Ironically, given the financial strain on media, audiences have grown during the pandemic, with television broadcasters reaching twice or three times their usual number of viewers per day between January and June, compared to the same period of 2019 and 2018, according to surveys conducted by the Agency of Audiovisual Media Services.
For example, the percentage of respondents who said they had watched Kirovski’s Telma TV the day before, grew from 12 to 32.
“Undoubtedly, the fact that many people stayed at home and that something completely new was happening that affected everyone and that affected our daily lives, such as the spread of the coronavirus, contributed to a significant increase in media interest,” said Magdalena Davidovska Dovleva, head of the Agency’s Sector for Research and Long-Term Development.
It remains to be seen which of these changes will stick long-term, but all of BIRN’s interlocutors agreed the media landscape will be altered for good.
“The coronavirus has deepened the problems in the media sphere, but it may also help us find faster solutions,” said Petkovic of the Peace Institute in Ljubljana.
This project is financially supported by The Royal Norweigan Embassy in Belgrade. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of The Royal Norweigan Embassy, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.
In the 30 years that he lived in Switzerland, Valon Asani says he never had an Albanian friend.
“There weren’t many Albanians in the town I grew up in,” said Asani, who traces his roots to Kosovo. The Albanian diaspora is big, he said, but “is very small compared to the total number of people in the countries these Albanians live in.”
So a year ago, Asani co-founded dua.com, a mobile phone app created to connect members of the sprawling ethnic Albanian diaspora around the world. And roughly 200,000 Albanians have since signed up.
Currently, only the dating arm of dua.com – due.love – is live. But 31-year-old Asani and his team plan to launch dua.help and dua.biz in early 2021.
“Dating represents only a small percentage of our goals,” he said. The ultimate goal is to create a connected global community of Albanians, uniting a diaspora scattered across the globe over the past several decades.
Via dua.help, “Albanians who travel abroad as tourists, students, or even seeking employment opportunities, can connect with Albanians who have been living there for longer and seek assistance in filing taxes, applying for a residence permit, finding a place to live and being able to adapt faster.”
Dua.biz, meanwhile, “will allow Albanian businesses in the world to connect with proper businesses run by Albanians in the Balkans and invest, which will bring revenue, create new jobs and hopefully a product-driven economy” in Kosovo and Albania as well as North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia where Albanians also live.
‘A company of Albanians’
Valon Asani, co-founder and CEO of dua.com. Photo: Courtesy of dua.com
Dua.com – dua means love/want in Albanian – is headquartered in Zurich but has offices also in Pristina, where employees are encouraged to dress casual, take naps when tired and share in cake on special occasions.
The company has plans to open offices in the Albanian capital, Tirana, and elsewhere in the Balkans where Albanians live.
“Though we’re Kosovo Albanians, we don’t want to be known as a Kosovar company but as a company of Albanians,” said Asani.
He said there was a false perception of Albanians abroad as sticking to their own, when in fact the only Albanians that many Albanian children growing up in the diaspora spend time with are their cousins or friends they make on trips back to the countries their parents emigrated from.
Taulant Abazi, the chief sales officer at dua.com had a similar experience growing up in Germany and then moving to the US for his studies.
“In my five years in Detroit, where I moved for my studies, it was not possible to meet Albanians,” said Taulant Abazi, chief sales officer at dua.com.
Adapting in the US but also in Germany, where he grew up, would have been easier had he had “the technological means to meet people of the same origin,” Abazi told BIRN.
Within months of launching, 200,000 users from more than 100 countries had created accounts on dua.com, “and 150,000 matches have been made,” Asani said.
“It’s free to sign up and 100 swipes are available over 12 hours in the free version of the app. If users want to have more swipes and to be able to change their location several times, they will need to sign up for premium.”
‘We will do it’
In the two decades since it broke away from Serbia in war and 12 years since it declared independence, the information and communication technology industry in Kosovo has taken big steps forward, but receives little state support.
According to the Central Bank of Kosovo, the country exported 31 million euros-worth of information and communication technology services between January and May 2020, slightly up on the same period of last year.
Abazi said that Dua Solutions, which he manages, is providing its technology to other industries too, having already signed contracts with firms in Croatia and Romania and entering talks with a company in Turkey.
“The technology developed by dua.com programmers can be used for every group that wants to connect worldwide,” he told BIRN, citing the example of a group of online gamers who contacted Dua Solutions to discuss the possibility of an app that would connect online game fanatics around the world.
“Kosovo is an import-dependent country,” said Asani.
“With the dua.com team we are trying to use what we are good at – developing and maintaining a technology that can be used to connect communities with different interests and backgrounds – to change the narrative and bring revenue via exports”.
Asani said Albanians in the Balkans had to get away from the oft-heard expression, hajt se bohet, meaning ‘it will be done’. “If we continue like that, it never will [be done],” he said. “So, we said, ‘po e bojm na’ – ‘we will do it’.”
When it comes to the digitalization of the public sector in the Western Balkans, not that much happened until COVID-19 came along.
But as the pandemic has continued, certain public services have had to become digital by a force of nature, while the pace of others that started on this road in the last few years has accelerated. The same goes for businesses and industries – those that started this process earlier are now ahead of the curve. One industry likely to emerge strengthened by the challenges that the pandemic has brought is financial technologies, fintech as it is known – as more institutions and businesses opt for “digital-only” services.
With an ICT market growing exponentially each year, Croatia is widely seen as the next fintech destination in Southeast Europe.
Some estimates say the country has close to 60,000 active ICT professionals already. It also has many fintech companies with a presence in global markets as far as Southeast Asia.
“Croatia has seen a tremendous improvement of its fintech scene in the past few years, mostly due to people developing their digital skills independently,” Vlaho Hrdalo, chair of the Croatian Association for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, UBIK, told BIRN.
“A recent Eurostat survey showed Croatian young people to be the leading Europeans in the category of digital skills,” he added.
“These young people realized what skills they needed and then acquired them on their own, as no institutional support was available; and it still isn’t.” Hrdalo continued, noting that while global investors are beginning to turn their attention towards Croatia, the local fintech scene still needs further investment.
Success stories, and hurdles up ahead
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Alexandre Debieve
Croatia’s biggest success story when it comes to fintech and the digital payments sector, arguably, is Microblink, a software company that develops computer vision technology.
When it started in 2013 as a local company, it relied only on the financial resources of its founders. Now it has a global presence in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, developing AI-powered scanning and data extraction products that more than 100 million end-users use.
Microblink’s products have opened up business opportunities for the company, which has been recognised by the fintech industry. It was listed among Europe’s fastest growing companies for 2020.
The company isn’t planning on stopping now, either. It plans to launch new innovative products that revolutionize the fintech industry.
“Two weeks ago, we launched a first-of-its-kind identity document scanner made to be used directly in a web browser. And we firmly believe in-browser ID scanning holds the potential to reshape the way we onboard financial services for the better,” the company told BIRN in a statement.
Another company to watch is Elektronički računi, a company that primarily provides digital business services. It was founded in 2013, when digital invoicing was beginning to become an important segment of business modernization.
“Since 2014, we have introduced the e-Invoice to tens of thousands of companies,” Josip Kovacec, a member of the board of the company, told BIRN.
“It gave us a foothold in the market in EU member states at the time when the mandatory electronic issue of invoices in public procurement was introduced,” he added.
“The idea was to make the e-Invoice available to everyone, with special emphasis on the SME sector, which usually does not have the financial resources to digitize operations,” Kovacec continued.
He said the company had now positioned itself as the largest private information intermediary on the market, sending about 200,000 e-Invoices a month to the Croatian government service that receives all electronic invoices addressed to public entities.
While there are other successful fintech startups and scale-ups in Croatia, what is lacking, however, is a sense of cohesion that would make the Croatian fintech scene a more powerful trend, experts say.
“There have been meetups and conferences, but the situation around COVID-19 has made such events impossible,” Ivan Brezak Brkan, the founding editor of Netokracija.com, told BIRN.
“For experience and knowledge to compound for the whole community, there has to come a point where they all need to work together to create a ‘fintech scene,’” he added. “A rising tide lifts all fintech – and an active community would help create interest among developers, new companies, and so on.”
Regulation remains a grey area
Illustration: Unsplash/Clifford photography
Besides hosting companies that are developing high-quality fintech products, Croatian towns are also implementing some of those technologies locally.
At the end of June, the town of Sveta Nedelja became one of the first in the whole of the EU to introduce a payment service that includes cryptocurrencies.
Built by another Croatia-based company, the cryptocurrency brokerage Electrocoin, the service enables shops to accept payments in cryptocurrencies for free, converting them into the national currency, the kuna.
However, as financial technologies enter more and more segments of Croatian society, regulations about the way fintech companies conduct their business remain a grey area.
“Not much has happened in this area, as there still are no laws governing fintech, blockchain, or artificial intelligence,” UBIK’s Hrdalo explained.
“UBIK held numerous meetings with Croatian regulators to bridge the gap between galloping industries and dormant laws. This was successful, as the approach of the regulators did change from initial scepticism to acceptance,” he added.
“But without exact rules in place, digital companies in Croatia have to discover where they touch the regulatory perimeter on their own, which isn’t always the best way forward,” he continued.
Experts say general business-related laws affect these companies the most. “For example, high taxes on employment make these companies less competitive than rivals in other markets, and a business-unfriendly administrative system makes it literally uneasy to do business,” Netokracija’s Brkan said.
“While the recently re-elected Prime Minister, Andrija Plenkovic … has said he will make the country more business-friendly, most entrepreneurs remain skeptical,” he noted.
Bureaucratic hurdles and the presence of numerous regulatory bodies pose a challenge for all companies in Croatia.
“Take consumer protection – almost every branch or type of service has its own regulatory agency, and in parts where two branches potentially overlap, there are discrepancies in their procedures,” Kovacec pointed out.
“During the pandemic, most business with the state was digitized, which gave some hope that Croatia could aspire to reach Estonia’s level of digitalization at least. But, with the fall in the number of infections and the reopening of the economy, suddenly everything needs paper again.”
Beacon for the rest of the Balkans
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Christian Wiediger
As “digital-only” services become the new normal, Croatia’s progress ha the potential to set a trend for the rest of the Western Balkans.
With ICT industries in most Western Balkans countries also among their most prosperous, the potential to be explored is vast.
“We have top IT experts recognised everywhere in the world. But we have not yet realised that this sector can be one of the most important industries in Croatia,” Kovacec claimed.
Recently, North Macedonia took a step towards developing its own digital economy, signing an agreement with financial giant Mastercard. The deal on implementing digital identities would allow its citizens to open bank accounts without being physically present at banks, for example.
This country also has companies that are becoming serious players in the fintech industry, and could potentially follow the Croatian path. “We have one startup that works with storing the digital data and tokens of wealthy people from the Arab world, which the whole insurance industry is talking about,” Skopje-based business consultant Igor Izotov told BIRN.
“Maybe tomorrow we can say the digital tokens and bitcoins of a reality or Hollywood star were stored on a Macedonian software solution,” he mused.
However, for these and similar companies from the region to fully realise their potential, more marketing skills are needed, experts warn.
“As with the rest of the Eastern European startup scene, business skills and scaling are proving most valuable. One low-valued skill in the post COVID-19 era is content creation, inbound marketing and thought leadership,” Brkan explained.
“Self-taught content marketers aren’t given the budgets or the freedom to experiment, so B2B sales for fintech are definitely one of the biggest hurdles – and the strategic use of content for B2B is one of the skills that is lacking,” he concluded.
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