Author: Ivana Jeremic

New North Macedonia Online Sex Abuse Scandal Targets Roma Women

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

North Maceodnian police on Monday said they were aware of a case in which human rights activists have alerted that explicit photos and videos of Roma girls and women are being posted on a Facebook group, and are “working to apprehending the persons responsible”.

The police said that they are also working on removing the explicit online content, adding that instances of online sexual abuse have increased over the past two years, since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The case was first reported in the media over the weekend.

“The posts contain private photos and videos of Roma women living in the Republic of North Macedonia but also outside our country,” the Suto Orizari Women’s Initiative, a human rights group from Skopje’s mainly Roma municipality of Shuto Orizari, said on Sunday.

“All the posts on the Facebook page are provoking an avalanche of harassing comments and hate speech from individuals, as well as calls for a public lynching, which violates the dignity of the Roma women whose photos have been published,” it added.

The organisation said the Facebook fan page has been active for some two months, since August 21, and has over 1,600 followers.

Reportedly the Facebook page also contains calls for collecting more photos and videos in order to post them and expose “dishonest women”, along with teases from the page administrators, who ask members whether they would like to see uncensored videos.

The Facebook page was also reported to the authorities last Friday by CIVIL – Center for Freedom, a prominent human rights NGO.

“CIVIL condemns this gruesome act and reported this Facebook page on Friday to the Interior Ministry’s department for computer crime and digital forensics, and to the Public Prosecution, so that they immediately take measures, shut down this page, and uncover and accordingly punish the administrators,” CIVIL said on Sunday.

The recent case was reminiscent of the earlier so-called “Public Room” affair. A group known as Public Room, with some 7,000 users, shared explicit pornographic content on the social network Telegram. It was first shut down in January 2020 after a public outcry, only to re-emerge a year later, before it was closed again on January 29.

The group shared explicit content of often under-age girls.

In April this year, the prosecution charged two persons, a creator and an administrator of Public Room, with producing and distributing child pornography.

These occurrences sparked a wide debate, as well as criticism of the authorities for being too slow to react to such cases and curb online harassment and violence against women and girls.

This prompted authorities to earlier this year to promise changes to the penal code, to precise that the crime of “stalking”, which is punishable with up to three years in jail, can also involve abuse of victims’ personal data online.

North Macedonia’s Interior Ministry has meanwhile launched a campaign to raise awareness about privacy protection and against online sexual misuse, called “Say no”.

Share Your Experience: Children and Youth Safety on TikTok

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

We would like to hear from parents and teachers willing to share their experience with us to help in an upcoming investigation into the safety of children and young teenagers using TikTok. 

Scroll down for more information about how to take part.

The key things we want to know:

  • What steps did parents take to protect their children and young teenagers on the platform?
  • Were there any cases in which children and young teenagers were the targets of bullying, identity theft, privacy issues etc.?
  • If/how the potential danger in the digital environment is harming their childrens’ physical safety?
  • What do teachers know about the network and how do they educate children about it?

We will not publish any documents or names without prior consent and we do not plan to use specific examples, but rather show more general systemic problems. Your responses are secure and encrypted.

Your stories will be used to help us with an ongoing investigation.

How to take part?

To submit your experience, all you need to do is fill out this form. The questionnaire is available in English, but also in Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian and Macedonian.

You can also contact us via email: readerstories@birn.eu.com.

Or you can reach us on social media…

FB: @balkaninsight

TW: @balkaninsight

Internet Freedom Continues to Decline in Turkey: Report

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A new report published by international rights organisation Freedom House on Tuesday says that global internet freedom has declined for the 11th consecutive year.

“More governments arrested users for nonviolent political, social, or religious speech than ever before. Officials suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms,” says the report entitled Freedom on the Net 2021.

The report highlights how countries seeking to restrict users’ rights have clashed with technology companies. One of them was Turkey, which the report lists as ‘not free’.

“It is possible to see increasing digital pressure in the last ten years in the report. This report shows us that the space of freedom is declining not only in Turkey but also around the world,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response Coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, who and one of the authors of the report, told BIRN.

Turkey’s digital rights law, which came into effect in October 2020, says that platforms with over a million daily users are required to remove content deemed “offensive” by the Turkish authorities within 48 hours of being notified, or risk escalating penalties including fines, advertising bans, and limitations on bandwidth.

“The law reduced social media companies’ ability to resist requests from Turkish authorities that are designed to further censor opposition voices, independent journalism, and nonviolent expression,” the report says.

The report also highlights problems with online freedoms in Hungary and Serbia, although both countries are listed as being ‘free’.

It says that pro-government commentators manipulate online discussions in Turkey, Serbia and Hungary.

Blogger or internet users have been arrested or imprisoned, or held in prolonged detention, for posting political or social material in Turkey and Serbia, the report says.

Some have been physically attacked in Turkey, where government critics and human rights organisations have been subjected to technical attacks.

Meanwhile, as the booming surveillance industry has allowed governments around the world to monitor private communications, the report points out that Hungary is one of the countries where spyware has allegedly been used against journalists.

“Pegasus spyware compromised the phones of two investigative journalists who reported on corruption and the Hungarian government’s relations with foreign states,” the report says.

Albania Govt’s Planned Information Agency Accused of ‘Propaganda’ Role

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The Albanian government has come under criticism from the opposition and rights groups after it decided on Saturday to establish a new Agency for Media and Information that will centralise the government’s media messaging, sparking allegations that Prime Minister Edi Rama’s administration is seeking to evade media scrutiny.

The agency will be led by the government’s spokesperson, whose position will be “at the same level as that of a state minister”. It will control the hiring and firing of press officers in all central government institutions, including ministries.

It role will also be to “observe media and mass communication tools, to take note of the perception and views of the public towards the activities of [government] institutions and the public administration”, the government decision said.

“As part of the Agency, in any ministry of central government institution, structures will be created or employees will be appointed for information and media communication, appointed by the Agency to represent the respective institutions in their public and media communications, or to carry out any duty ordered by the director of the Agency,” it added.

Agron Gjekmarkaj, an opposition Democratic Party MP, called the move “an imitation of Goebbelsian tools”, a reference to Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

“This Agency for Information is another instrument of propaganda, control and blackmail,” Gjekmarkaj wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

Aleksander Cipa, head of Albanian Media Union, a rights NGO in Tirana, said the decision was a move that aim to “centralise public information”.

“Such practices create a serious problem regarding propaganda and pre-prepared information,” Cipa said.

The government claims the agency is based on “successful similar models in Italy and Germany”.

Socialist Party Prime Minister Rama has already been criticised by domestic and international rights organisations for closing doors to the media by not holding press conferences, creating pre-prepared ‘news’ reports and by livestreaming his political activities using his own crews of camera operatotrs.

Other institutions have moved in the same direction, by employing media crews and distributing ‘news’ reports to private television stations that are pre-prepared for broadcast, as well as publishing them on social media.

Kosovo Urged to Start Countering Russian Media Disinformation

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A report published on Tuesday by the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, KIPRED, about the potential for Russian media disinformation to undermine Kosovo’s statehood urges the authorities to address UN member states with an appropriate strategy to counter it.

The executive director of the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, Lulzim Peci, told a press conference that the authorities are doing nothing to counter what he called the “Russian diplomatic war against Kosovo”.

“The reactions of Kosovo’s institutions have come without a proper policy on how to act towards Russia and the same institutions have not built any narrative about the Russian state,” Peci said.

The report, entitled ‘Kosovo Observatory: Russian Diplomatic War and Media Disinformation’, analysed statements, press conferences, articles and other documents from Russia that were published from June 1 to August 15 this year.

Peci said the report calculated that “out of 500 news articles that directly or indirectly related to Kosovo, 96 or 19.2 per cent of them contained misinformation”.

According to the report, the largest number of articles containing misinformation were published by Sputnik Serbia (71 items), followed by TASS (nine), Russia Today (four), UNZ (four), Sputnik International (three), Russian Insider (two), The Duran (two) and Newsfront (one).

The report concludes that Russia is trying to undermine Kosovo’s statehood and Western engagement in Kosovo and the region, and to change the narratives about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, thus undermining the foundations of international justice.

Russian media articles have also accused Kosovo of oppressing local Serbs and the Serbian Orthodox Church, and of disrespecting an agreement to establishing an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities.

The report warns that a critical moment has come at the end of a moratorium agreed in Washington for Kosovo not to actively seek membership of international organisations and for Serbia not to campaign against Kosovo’s recognition.

“This moment can be used by Russia to work together with Serbia to implement an aggressive campaign for the derecognition of Kosovo,” the report says.

Montenegro Church Violence Sparks Clashes on Twitter

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

“Cetinje is our light of freedom … we are coming !!!” reads one of the tweets published on the eve of the divisive enthronement of a new Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitan in Cetinje, the former royal capital of Montenegro.

The tweet was one of thousands published between September 4 and 5 as violent clashes between police and opponents of the event rocked the country, and led to accusations that the opposition was fomenting a coup against the new government elected last year.

BIRN noted more than 4,150 tweets published over the weekend containing words “komite”, “ustolicenje” [“enthronment”] or “Cetinje”.

“Komitas” is a nickname for Montenegrins who are especially fierce in their defence of Montenegro’s statehood, the Montenegrin language and Church, their name recalling the resistance to Montenegro’s union with the Kingdom of Serbia in the wake of World War I.

Montenegro remained united with Serbia until it regained independence in 2006.

During the weekend, the word “ustolicenje” was mentioned in tweets 1,374 times, “Cetinje” 3,042 times and “komite” 499 times. BIRN used a browser add-on Tweet archiver to extract tweets mentioning these key words.

The dramatic rise in use of the term “komite” is illustrated by the fact that in the first seven months of this year “komite” was used more than 1,100 times, slightly more than twice the number of mentions over the past weekend alone.

Whether the online dispute contributed to the weekend’s violent events in Cetinje is hard to tell. Nevertheless, the violence that erupted in Cetinje as opposition parties and self-declared patriotic groups battled police while trying to stop the enthronement of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church was clearly echoed on social media. 

The phrase “Cetinje will not fall !!!!!” was tweeted 14 times, while “Next year in Cetinje” [referring to “Dogodine u Prizrenu” often used to illustrate Serbian nationalists’ wish to regain control of Kosovo] was tweeted four times.

The most retweeted and liked tweets were one in favour of the new Metropolitan’s enthronement, and another defending the protesters in Cetinje.

The first was posted by Mustafa Jusufspahic, Muslim mufti of Belgrade, in which he wrote: “I congratulate the [Serbian Orthodox] Church, my clergy, and followers of the SOC, on the enthronement of the worthy Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, Joanikije.” 

The other was posted by Ivan Vukovic, mayor of the capital, Podgorica, blaming Prime Minister Krivokapic for what he believed was unnecessary police violence: “I appealed to, begged @profKrivokapic … In vain. He proved unworthy of his office and entered the history of Montenegro as the one who, fabricating Molotov cocktails, gave the order to run over Cetinje and, as never before, humiliate our state. You rejoice today, but you will be ashamed while you yet llive.”

Many tweeters shared videos documenting the clashes between protesters and police.

A war of words on social media in Montenegro, mainly between pro- and anti-Serbian factions, took off in 2019 and intensified after elections last year ousted the long ruling pro-independence Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS. It peaked this weekend, with more than 4,150 tweets in just 48 hours. 

In August, BIRN published an investigation examining the rise in online hate speech in Montenegro that turned into offline violence on Sunday.

Searching Twitter for six specific terms or hashtags used, BIRN extracted more than 7,000 local-language tweets between November 1, 2019 – when the row over a disputed religious law took off – and July 19 this year.

The six terms and hashtags used were “osvjezilo” [refresh], “#nedamosvetinje” [roughly, “We won’t give up our shrines”], “komite”, “#nikadvise” [“never again”], “FCJK” [“Faculty for Montenegrin Language and Literature in Cetinje] and “#crnogorskoprolece” [“Montenegrin Spring”].

The results showed a continued significant rise in their use over the period monitored.

“Komite”, for example, was used only 20 times in 2019, 830 times in 2020 and 1,104 times in the first seven months of this year. “Osvjezilo” was mentioned only four times in 2019, 161 times in 2020 and 1,091 times until July 19 this year.

The enthronement of the new Metropolitan of Montenegro has angered members of self-proclaimed patriotic organizations, called “komitas”, and members of the opposition parties, who claim that holding an event with strong Serbian connotations in the old royal capital is an insult to Montenegro’s “centuries-long struggle for sovereignty”.

In April, self-proclaimed patriotic organisations were already organising protests against the new government, in which pro-Serbian parties play an important role, accusing it of undermining Montenegro’s statehood.

The outgoing Bishop of Budimlja-Niksic was elected the new Metropolitan of Montenegro at the Bishops’ Council of the Serbian Church in Belgrade on May 29, to succeed the late Metropolitan Amfilohije, who died of coronavirus infection last year.

Montenegro, which declared independence in 2006, is a multi-ethnic society, deeply split between those who consider themselves Montenegrins, those who identify as Serbs and various other smaller groups.

Society is also split on religious lines. According to the last census from 2011, 72 per cent of Montenegrin citizens identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, and about 70 per cent of this number follow the Serbian Orthodox Church and 30 per cent identify with the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which is not canonically recognised by other Orthodox Churches.

Polish State of Emergency at Belarus Border Alarms Journalists

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

At the request of the government, Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday declared a state of emergency on the Belarus border for 30 days which limits the access of unauthorised people to a three-kilometre-wide stretch of land along the border in two eastern counties.

The unprecedented decision in Poland’s post-communist history, “was taken in connection to a particular threat to the security of citizens and public order, related to the current situation on the state border of Poland with Belarus,” the official statement from the President’s office says.

Since early August, over 3,000 attempts to cross the border with Poland were made by migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, according to Polish border guards.

Most experts and governments say the autocratic leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is deliberately fomenting a crisis in retaliation to the EU imposing sanctions on his regime for the rigged presidential election in 2020 and subsequent violent crackdown on critics and demonstrators.

The state of emergency means “a ban on staying in designated places, facilities and areas at specific times” and includes a ban on gatherings.

The provisions also might mean activists that have been present in the border areas offering food and first aid to migrants and documenting pushbacks by the Polish authorities could be denied access.

Two further provisions may limit the right of journalists to investigate the situation at the border. The decree includes “a prohibition of recording by technical means the appearance or other features of specific places, objects or areas”.

It further envisages “limiting access to public information on activities carried out in the area covered by the state of emergency”.

All the BIRN’s coverage of the border situation, for example, has been done from locations within three kilometres of the border with Belarus.

According to the Polish Prime Minister, around 700 migrants have now been apprehended and taken to refugee centres while others “have been prevented” from entering Poland.

Human rights lawyers and opposition parliamentarians, among others, say Poland has been conducting pushbacks throughout August, a claim supported by numerous migrant statements, including those interviewed by BIRN.

NGOs and lawyers on the ground had started documenting individual cases of pushbacks, which are illegal under international law.

The decree, which is already in force, can still be challenged by the Polish parliament.

Genocide Denied, War Criminals Praised on TikTok: Report

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkish Govt Increasing Internet, Social Media Censorship: Report

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twitter Labels Numerous Media Accounts in Serbia ‘State Affiliated’

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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

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

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

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

As noted in Twitter’s rules and regulations, Twitter defines state-affiliated media as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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