Ivana Jeremic, Author at BIRD

Online Petition Urging Netflix to Recognise Kosovo Gains Momentum

Posted on February 12, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

An online petition calling on the US online streaming platform Netflix to recognise Kosovo as separate from Serbia has received over 23,000 signatures since its launch on Tuesday and caught public attention in the country.

“When Kosovars log in on Netflix, their location appears as if they were in Serbia, even though they use Netflix from the Republic of Kosovo,” the organiser, Sovran Hoti, wrote in the petition.

Kosovo-based Netflix users “cannot even verify their phone number because Kosovo does not appear on the list of countries with their phone entries,” he added.

“Netflix is a US company, and since the US recognises Kosovo, shouldn’t Netflix add Kosovo as a country on their streaming service as well?” he asked.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February 17, 2008 but its statehood remains contested.

The country has been recognised by more than 110 countries so far but Serbia has vowed never to recognise it and is supported in this by powerful allies, including Russia and China. Five EU member states have also withheld diplomatic recognition.

“The propaganda by Serbia to undermine Kosovo in the international arena continues, especially in major online platforms. This needs to change. Serbia has no jurisdiction in Kosovo and its institutions, and our independence cannot be undermined by them,” Hoti said in his petition.

The petition has caught the attention of leading politicians and cultural figures in Kosovo itself. Acting President Vjosa Osmani went on Twitter to support the initiative.

Kosovo citizens “deserve to be recognised for this [streaming Netflix]. It’s about time you put the Republic of Kosovo on your map”, she said, referencing the company directly.

Other personalities such as former Deputy Prime Minister Haki Abazi and the co-founder of the Prishtina Film Festival, Fatos Berisha, have also joined the call.

Greek Police Accused of Violence at Education Bill Protests

Posted on February 11, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Police in Greece have been criticised after videos circulated on social media of officers violently pushing and shoving photojournalists covering a protest against a new bill for universities on Wednesday.

The photojournalists’ union said riot police beat up a member of the union who had been reporting on the protests.

It added that one day before, police tripped up photojournalists covering another protest, this time in support of Dimitris Koufontinas – another union member, jailed on November 17 last year – now on hunger strike demanding transfer to another prison.

The new bill among other things allows police to maintain a presence on university campuses. A law withdrawn in 2019 long prohibited police from entering university grounds in Greece, in memory of those killed in 1973 when the military regime violently crushed an uprising at the Athens Polytechnic.

Niki Kerameus, the Education Minister, says the problem of security on Greek campuses has become acute and current lawlessness is forcing Greek students to study abroad.

Outside the Greek parliament, during the debate on the bill, a group of some 200 people, drawn from the main protest of some 5,000 protesters, clashed with riot police, who used tear gas to disperse them. Police took 52 individuals into custody.

Konstantinos Zilos, a photojournalist covering that protest, complained to BIRN of the police’s “dangerous repression” of citizens and media professionals.

Besides the incident involving the beaten-up photojournalist, he added, “the police a number of times have prevented our work, cutting our access without reason and blocking our cameras with their hands or bodies”.

Alexandra Tanka, a reporter for in.gr, told BIRN that a 21-year-old photography student “was surrounded in a glimpse of an eye by the riot shields and suddenly cut off from his colleagues”.

University students clash with riot police in front of the Greek parliament, during a protest against the new draft bill on higher education in central Athens, Greece, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/YANNIS KOLESIDIS

The immediate intervention of photojournalists and reporters resulted in the police letting him free. “A photojournalist asked them why they were not arresting that person who seemed to also be a photographer, pointing to a policeman holding a camera recording the demonstration,” Tanka recalled.

But not everyone was as lucky as the photography student, she said. “Students were beaten up and had to spend the night behind bars. According to reports, a girl was beaten up so badly that she was injured in the head and had to be hospitalized to get stiches.”

Nikos Markatos, former dean of the National Technical University of Athens, told the private radio station Real FM that police “were jumping on pavements with their motorbikes” and that one of these motorbikes had injured a girl, sending her to hospital – “the same hospital as my son, who was pushed, fell down and twisted his shoulder”.

Markatos said a third student who was hit on the chin with a fire extinguisher by a police officer at the protest, breaking his chin bone and some teeth, was sent to the same hospital.

Pictures shared on social media showed police violently attacking the protesters, sometimes hitting them after they had already been arrested.

Mera25, the party of former government minister Yanis Varoufakis, said Sofia Sakorafa, an MP for the party and vice-president of the Greek parliament, was also attacked by riot police outside police headquarters in Attica, where she was present when protesters were brought there on Wednesday evening.

The photojournalists’ union condemned attacks on journalists by police, saying that this was tending to become “a habit” and adding that the government had “a duty to inform us if freedom of press still exists”.

On January 21, the Minister of Citizens’ Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, presented new national guidelines for policing demonstrations.

According to these rules, journalists covering protests now have to do their work from a certain area specified by the authorities, with the minister adding this was being imposed to protect the journalists themselves.

However, rights groups disagree. On February 2, the international Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, in a report, warned that the new guidelines in Greece were “likely to restrict the media’s reporting and access to information”.

Commenting on the new guidelines, the former head of the photojournalists’ union, Marios Lolos, said that “in 99 per cent of such cases”, attacks on photojournalists covering protests do not come from protesters “but from the police”.

Independent Radio Silenced in Hungary

Posted on February 10, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Hungary’s last independent radio broadcaster Klubradio lost its battle to stay on the air on Tuesday, as the Metropolitan Court of Budapest confirmed the decision of the government-controlled Media Council not to renew its licence, meaning the radio will be forced to move online from February 14.

The move is seen as the latest step to curb critical voices in the Hungarian media by the autocratic government of Viktor Orban, which since coming to power in 2010 has set about co-opting or killing off critical media outlets, shrewdly concealing most as neutral business decisions. This has drawn sharp criticism from the European Union and media freedom watchdogs.

Klubradio has long been in the crosshairs of Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party. The last time its licences had to be renewed, it had to battle for two years through the courts.

Due to its critical tone, the radio does not receive any state advertising and so largely survives on donations from its listeners. It has a loyal audience of around 200,000, mostly in Budapest, as it can only be heard in the vicinity of the capital after being systematically stripped of its frequencies in the countryside, leaving Hungarians outside of Budapest with no independent radio to listen to.

Klubradio’s licence expires at midnight on February 14 and its journalists have been doing “survival exercises” in the last few weeks to train their largely elderly audience to switch to the radio’s online platform.

Klubradio called the verdict a political, not a legal, one. Andras Arato, president of the broadcaster, told Media1 that the verdict encapsulates the sad state of the rule of law in Hungary, which is such that a radio station can be silenced based on fabricated reasons.

Arato said it would challenge the verdict at the Supreme Court, while the CEO of the broadcaster, Richard Stock, would not rule out taking the case to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Opposition politicians slammed the government for yet another blatant move to restrict media freedom in Hungary. The chairman of the Democratic Coalition, former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, posted a quote from Orban in 2018 telling the European Parliament in Strasbourg that, “we would never dare to silence those who disagree with us”.

Gyurcsany retorted: “This government prefers silence – we have to end this paranoid system to regain free speech.”

The head of the International Press Institute (IPI), Scott Griffen, said before the court’s decision that, “these efforts by the Fidesz-controlled Media Council to block Klubradio’s license renewal are part of a far wider and calculated attempt to eradicate the station from the airwaves and muzzle one of the few independent media outlets in Hungary.”

Russian Peacekeepers Detain Moldovan Journalists Near Transnistria

Posted on February 10, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Two Moldovan journalists working for the TV8 television station, Viorica Tataru and Andrei Captarenco, were stopped on Tuesday by Russian and Transnistrian separatist peacekeeping troops at the Gura Bacului checkpoint and ordered to erase all the footage they had filmed and surrender their technical equipment.

“We are here at the peacekeepers’ post. We have been detained, the car has been seized, and we cannot get out of the vehicle. They told us we have to hand them the material we filmed, otherwise we can’t get out of here,” Tataru told BIRN by telephone.

She added that four armed men with a Russian flag emblem on their uniforms were guarding their car.

She said they had contacted the police and representatives of the Joint Control Commission, a combined military command structure involving Moldova, Transnistria and Russia that has operated in the separatist-controlled territory since the war in the country in 1992.

“We’ve been waiting for the police for an hour. I also called the Joint Control Commission. They said they would come, but so far no one has come,” Tataru said.

The two journalists have been filming a weekly TV show for more than a year in villages that are controlled by Moldova but are located on the eastern bank of the Dniester river – in an area that is mostly controlled by the breakaway Transnistrian authorities.

To reach the villages, the journalists have to pass through the Gura Bacului checkpoint.

Transnistria does not allow its checkpoints to be filmed or photographed.

This is not the first time that the two Moldovan journalists have accused the Russian and Transnistrian peacekeepers of targeting them.

In July 2020, peacekeeping troops chased them into Moldovan controlled-territory and asked them to surrender footage they shot on Moldovan soil.

The Transnistrian ‘frozen conflict’ has seen no armed violence between government forces and Russian-backed separatists since 1992. The de facto border has remained open, and populations on both sides of the river have come to depend on each other economically.

No Quick Fix to North Macedonia Telegram Scandal

Posted on February 4, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Authorities in North Macedonia face an uphill battle to confront the dangers of online harassment, experts warn, following a public outcry over the reappearance of a group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram in which thousands of users were sharing explicit pictures and videos of women and girls, some of them minors.

The group, known as ‘Public Room’, was first shut down in January 2020, only to re-emerge a year later before it was closed again on January 29. Reports say new groups have since popped up, their membership spreading to neighbouring Serbia.

Authorities in the Balkan state have mooted the possibility of banning Telegram altogether and criminalising the act of stalking, making it punishable with a prison sentence of up to three years.

The case, however, has exposed the many layers that authorities need to address when it comes to preventing online harassment and sexual violence. And experts in the field say it will not be easy.

“This type of danger is very difficult to handle, given that many countries in the world have had the same or similar problems as North Macedonia,” said Suad Seferi, a cybersecurity analyst and head of the IT sector at the International Balkan University in Skopje.

Seferi cited blocks on Telegram in countries such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus and China, but cautioned against following such a route given the risk of it being construed as censorship by those using the app for its primary purpose of simple communication.

“The government could try and reach an agreement, or communicate with Telegram to close specific channels or seek cooperation in prosecuting the perpetrators of such acts,” he told BIRN.

Law not being applied

An image showing the Telegram messenger app. Photo: EPA-EFE/MAURITZ ANTIN

The phenomenon has triggered heated debate in North Macedonia; a number of victims have spoken out publicly about how some of the 7,000 users of Public Room shared explicit, private photos of them or took pictures from their social media profiles and shared them alongside the names and phone numbers of the victims.

One of them, 28 year-old Ana Koleva, met Justice Minister Bojan Maricic over the weekend to discuss her own harrowing experience after her pictures began circulating in the Telegram group and elsewhere and she was bombarded with unwanted messages and phone calls.

Some victims, including Koleva, said they appealed to the police for help but were bluntly dismissed. One reason given by police was that they were unable to act unless the victim was a minor.

Critics say the group’s re-emergence exposes the failure of authorities to stamp it out in the first place.

“The ‘Public Room’ case revealed the inertia and inability of the authorities to act in such cases of violence and harassment of women and girls,” said Skopje-based gender expert Natasha Dimitrovska. “Although there are laws, they are not implemented.”

North Macedonia’s law on prevention and protection from violence against women and domestic violence also defines sexual harassment and especially online sexual harassment.

“This is in line with the Istanbul Convention, which states that all forms of sexual violence and harassment should be sanctioned,” said Dimitrovska. “In addition, endangering someone’s security and sharing and collecting other people’s personal data without permission are crimes that are already regulated by the Criminal Code.”

She told BIRN that it was imperative that authorities grasp the fact that whatever goes on online has repercussions offline.

“There is no longer a division between offline and online,” she said. “What happens online also has profound consequences in real life. Girls and women who are sexually harassed online are also restricted from accessing and expressing themselves freely in public.”

“What’s even worse is that everything that is online remains there forever and is widely available, so with online harassment it’s even more frightening in the sense that it will remain there for a long time and haunt the victim.”

‘Scary viral dimensions’

Illustration. Photo: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

Cybersecurity experts caution that it is extremely difficult to control or monitor content on platforms such as Telegram, which has become notorious for similar scandals.

In the US and the UK, there are laws against ‘revenge porn’, in which people share explicit pictures of their former partners as a form a retaliation. Six years ago, only three US states has such laws in place. They have since spread to at least 46.

Privacy and data protection expert Ljubica Pendaroska said some public ‘supergroups’ can have up to 200,000 members, which massively increases the chances of privacy violations.

“Usually, in the communication in such groups, the spectrum of personal data related to the victims is supplemented with address of residence, telephone number, information about family members, etc, Pendaroska told BIRN.

“So the invasion of privacy gets bigger and usually goes out of the group and the network, taking on really scary viral dimensions.”

Importance of raising public awareness

To combat such acts, experts advocate raising public awareness about privacy and how to protect it – particularly among parents and children – and punishing violations in a timely manner.

“From experience, young people know a lot about the so-called technical aspects, capabilities and impacts of social networks and applications, but little about their privacy and especially the potential social implications of what is shared in the online world,” said Pendaroska, who also serves as president of Women4Cyber North Macedonia, an initiative to support the participation of women in the field of cybersecurity.

“Our concept is to avoid occasional action but commit to consistent and continuous education of women about the potential risks that lurk in the online world,” she told BIRN, “because that’s the only way to achieve long-term results and to raise awareness.”

“Therefore, our plan is within each project or activity that we implement, to include exactly that component – through various activities and tools to educate women, because awareness is key.”

North Macedonia Threatens to Block Telegram Over Pornographic Picture Sharers

Posted on January 29, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

North Macedonia’s authorities on Thursday threatened to block the messaging app Telegram over the activities of a group of more than 7,000 users who have been sharing and exchanging explicit pictures and videos of girls – some of whom are underage.

Some users even wrote the names and locations of the girls. Others have shared photoshopped images taken from their Instagram profiles.

Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said the authorities would not hesitate to block Telegram if they had to – and if the messaging app didn’t permanently close this and similar groups.

“If the Telegram application does not close Public Room, where pornographic and private content is shared by our citizens, as well as child pornography, we will consider the option of blocking or restricting the use of this application in North Macedonia,” Zaev wrote in a Facebook post.

The group, called Public Room, was first discovered in January 2020. The authorities then said that they had found the organisers and had dealt with the matter.

However, a year later, the group has re-emerged, sparking a heated debate in North Macedonia over police inaction.

Several victims whose pictures and phone numbers were hacked and used have complained about what happened to them – and about what they see as lack of action of the part of the authorities in preventing it.

“I started receiving messages and calls on my cell phone, Viber, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram,” one 28-year-old victim, Ana, recalled in an Instagram post.

“I didn’t know what was happening or where it was coming from. The next day, I received a screenshot of my picture, which was not only posted in Public Room but shared elsewhere. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked, I was scared, I’d never experienced anything like that,” she added.

But the woman said that when she told the police about what happened, they told her they couldn’t do much about it, since she wasn’t a minor.

North Macedonia’s Minister of Interior, Oliver Spasovski, said on Thursday that the police had arrested four people in connection with the revived group and had launched a full-scale investigation.

“We have identified more people who will be detained in the coming period, so we can reach those who created this group, and also those that are abusing personal data within the group. We are working on this intensively with the Public Prosecutor,” Spasovski told the media.

However, following closure of the group on Thursday, there have been reports that some of its users are opening new groups where they continue the same practices.

Prime Minister Zaev said users of this and similar groups needed to heed a final warning.

“I want to send a message to all our citizens who are sharing pictures and content in that group [Public Room] … to stop what they are doing that and leave the group,” said Zaev on Facebook.

“At the end of the day, we will get the data, you will be charged and you will be held accountable for what you do,” he concluded.

Online Impersonation is a Crime, Romanian Court Rules

Posted on January 26, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled on Tuesday that pretending to be someone else on Facebook is an offence punishable under the country’s criminal law.

The ruling arose from the case of a man sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for blackmail, digital fraud and breach of privacy for posting intimate images of his ex-girlfriend on a social network and opening pornography site accounts in her name.

According to the indictment, the man created the false social network account after threatening his former girlfriend in December 2018 that he would publish several videos of them having sex, as well as pictures in which she appeared naked, if she did not resume the relationship with him.

The case reached the High Court after the Court of Appeal in the Transylvanian city of Brasov in central Romania asked for its opinion about whether “opening and using an account on a social network opened to the public” to publish real “information, photographs, video images, etc.” could be considered digital fraud as defined by article 325 of the criminal code.

The High Court concluded that “opening and using an account on a social network open to the public, using as a username the name of another person and introducing real personal data that allows for that person’s identification” meets the requirements to be considered as digital fraud.

The Brasov court referred the case to the High Court because other Romanian courts had previously reached different and contradictory conclusions in similar cases.

Fakebooks in Hungary and Poland

Posted on January 25, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Poland and Hungary have seen the launch recently of locally developed versions of Facebook, as criticism of the US social media giants grows amid allegations of censorship and the silencing of conservative voices.

The creators behind Hundub in Hungary and Albicla in Poland both cite the dominance of the US social media companies and concern over their impact on free speech as reasons for their launch – a topic which has gained prominence since Facebook, Twitter and Instagram banned Donald Trump for his role in mobilising crowds that stormed the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6. It is notable that both of the new platforms hail from countries with nationalist-populist governments, whose supporters often rail against the power of the major social media platforms and their managers’ alleged anti-conservative bias.

Albicla’s connection to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is explicit. Right-wing activists affiliated with the PiS-friendly weekly Gazeta Polska are behind Albicla, whose name is as obscure to Poles as it is to the international reader, although Ryszard Kapuscinski from the Gazeta Polska team claims it is an amalgamation of the Latin phrase albus aquila, meaning “white eagle”, a Polish national symbol.

The activists say Albicla is a response to the “censorship” of conservative voices by the global internet giants. “We have disturbed the powerful interests and breached the walls of the ideological front that is pushing conservative thinking to the sidelines,” Tomasz Sakiewicz, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska, wrote on Thursday, the day after the new portal was launched.

“Not all the functionalities are ready because we wanted to launch the portal in the last hour of the rule of the leader of the free world,” Sakiewicz continued, referring to Trump’s last day in office on January 20. “It is now up to us to ensure this world continues to be free, particularly online.”

Busy bees

The origins of Hundub – forged from the words “Hungarian” and “dub”, which also means “beehive” in ancient Hungarian – are less clear. Until recently, Hundub was owned by Murmurati Ltd, an offshore company registered in Belize, but it pulled out last week and Hundub’s founder, Csaba Pal, announced it would be crowdfunded from now on.

The December 6 launch of Hundub received little attention until the government-loyal Magyar Nemzet began acclaiming it as a truly Hungarian and censorship-free alternative to Facebook, which, the paper argues, treats Hungarian government politicians unfairly. Prime Minister Viktor Orban was one of the first politicians to sign up to Hundub, but all political parties have rushed to register, starting with the liberal-centrist Momentum, the party most favoured by young people.

Pal – a previously unknown entrepreneur from the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen – said his goal was to launch a social media platform that supports free speech, from both the left and right, and is free from political censorship. “The social media giants have grown too big and there must be an alternative to them,” Pal told Magyar Nemzet, accusing the US tech company of deleting the accounts of thousands of Hungarians without reason.

While it’s unclear whether there is any government involvement in Hundub, its launch is proving handy for the prime minister’s ruling Fidesz party in its fight against the US tech giants. Judit Varga, the combative justice minister, regularly lashes out at Facebook and Twitter, accusing them of limiting right-wing, conservative and Christian views. Only last week, she consulted with the president of the Competition Authority and convened an extraordinary meeting of the Digital Freedom Committee to discuss possible responses to the “recent abuses by the tech giants”.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) and the chief editor of Gazeta Polska Tomasz Sakiewicz (R). Photo: EPA/EFE LAJOS SOOS

Future of Farcebooks

Unfortunately for the Polish and Hungarian governments and their supporters, rarely have such technology ventures succeeded.

Eline Chivot, a former senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, said government-backed ideas such as the recent “French Airbnb” are destined to fail from a lack of credibility, because they are based “on politically biased motives and a misguided application of industrial policy, [and] seek to dominate a market that is no longer up for grabs”.

Indeed, Albicla became the butt of jokes immediately upon its launch as users pointed out the numerous security and functionality flaws. Among them, some of the regulations of the new website were apparently copy-pasted from Facebook, as they included hyperlinks to Mark Zuckerberg’s site; more concerning, it was possible to download the entire database of users the day after launch.

Trolls immediately took advantage of the site’s shortcomings to ridicule it, with countless fake accounts set up for Pope John Paul II, Trump and PiS politicians. Despite it being set up as an “anti-censorship” space, many users have complained of being blocked for unclear reasons in the few days since launch.

“Albicla is an ad hoc initiative by the Polish supporters of Trumpism in direct reaction to the banning of Trump from social media platforms: it’s equivalent to right-wing radicals in the US moving to Parler and other such platforms,” Rafal Pankowski, head of the Warsaw-based “Never Again” anti-fascist organisation, told BIRN.

Pankowski points out there have been similar initiatives before, including stabs at creating a “Polish Facebook”, that were unsuccessful, though there exists a local alternative to YouTube, wRealu24, which the expert describes as “virulently anti-Semitic and homophobic” and whose popularity cannot be ignored.

Likewise, Hundub has been roundly mocked. Critics point out it is just a simplified version of Facebook that looks rather embarrassing in technological and layout terms. It has the same features as Facebook – you can meet friends, share content, upload photos and videos, and, as an extra feature, there is also a blog-format where you can publish your own stories uncensored. Even the buttons are similar to those Facebook uses.

Hvg.hu recalls that Hungarians actually had their own highly successful pre-Facebook called iWiW (an abbreviation of “International Who Is Who”), which was launched in 2002 and became the most popular website in Hungary between 2005 and 2010 with over 4.5 million registered users. Alas, competition from Facebook forced it to close in 2014.

It is unlikely that Hundub will be able to challenge Facebook’s dominance, but media expert Agnes Urban from Mérték Research said in an interview that Hundub could be used by Orban’s Fidesz party to rally supporters before the 2022 election and create an enthusiastic community of voters.

Founder Csaba Pal also explained that his aim is to create a social media platform for all Hungarians, meaning ‘Greater Hungary’ with its ethnic brethren in parts of Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia.

Hungarian politicians, from left and right, are very active on Facebook and, to a lesser extent, on Twitter. Prime Minister Orban, initially wary of digital technology, now leads with over 1.1 million followers on Facebook and has even chosen to announce a number of policy measures during the pandemic on his page.

Justice Minister Varga and Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, notwithstanding their frequent outbursts, are both avid users of Facebook. It is not known whether any of their Facebook activity has been censored or banned; the business news site Portfolio recalls that the only political party to have been banned is the far-right Mi Hazánk party, whose leader, Laszlo Torockai, also had his account deleted. No doubt they will able to start afresh on Hundub.

Albicla also stands to benefit from its close connections to the Polish government, which since coming to power in 2015 has bolstered the pro-government media via mass advertising by state-controlled companies.

According to research conducted by Kantar this summer, the 16 state companies and institutions analysed by the consulting firm increased their advertising budgets to Gazeta Polska by 79 per cent between 2019 and 2020 – a period during which most media have lost advertising due to the pandemic. Gazeta Poska Codziennie, a daily affiliated with the same trust, has seen similar gains. And the foundation of Gazeta Polska editor-in-chief Tomasz Sakiewicz has also benefitted from state funds to the tune of millions of zloty.

By contrast, since PiS came to power, the media critical of the government, such as Gazeta Wyborcza, have seen their revenues from state advertising slashed.

In 2019, Gazeta Polska made international headlines when it distributed “LGBT-free zone” stickers with the magazine, in a period when PiS counsellors across Poland were starting to push for the passing of resolutions declaring towns “zones free of LGBT ideology”.

Despite the hiccups at launch, Albicla was immediately endorsed by high-level members of the government, including Piotr Glinski, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and Sebastian Kaleta, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice.

Kaleta is also the man in charge of a new draft law on the protection of freedom of speech online, announced in December by the Justice Ministry, which would prevent social media companies from being able to remove posts or block accounts unless the content is in breach of Polish law.

The International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH), an Amsterdam-based foundation set up to combat discrimination online, has argued that “over-zealous” policing of harmful speech is not an issue in Poland and that the new Polish law might mean, for example, that online attacks against the LGBT community – which are not covered by national hate speech legislation – might go unpunished.

And where might those online attacks against the LGBT community be disseminated? Albicla, perhaps.

Serbia Eyes Artificial Intelligence in Courts, but Experts See Dangers

Posted on January 25, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The wheels of justice in Serbia sorely need speeding up. But when President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters last month that it would be “very important” to introduce artificial intelligence into the courts, not everyone was reassured.

Vucic’s remark about ‘predictive justice’ and the advent of “new, real and important changes” came in the context of a year-end press conference covering the full gamut of government policy, so he did not dwell on the details.

Now some digital rights activists and legal experts are sounding the alarm about the need to put the issue to full public debate, after an extensive Chinese-built network of surveillance cameras was rolled out in the capital, Belgrade, in 2019 to the surprise of unaware residents.

From identifying likely re-offenders to catching welfare fraudsters, predictive justice is a fast-growing phenomenon, alarming rights organisations that warn that such software can encourage racial profiling and discrimination and threaten privacy and freedom of expression.

Lawyer Djordje Krivokapic, co-founder of the Belgrade-based digital rights NGO SHARE Foundation, said AI has uses in courts in terms of case-management, automation and assistance in decision-making. But its introduction needs to be properly debated, he said.

“This represents a serious change in our society and some public debate and public discussion on this issue in general should be initiated regardless of the level at which it is discussed – except perhaps at the first level when some types of predictive algorithms are used in case-management to speed up the justice system and make it more efficient,” Krivokapic told BIRN.

He warned of the potential for discrimination. “Artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms have a lot of specifics that can lead to increased discrimination – or new forms of discrimination – and special attention must be paid to this.”

The justice ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Uses and abuses

Serbia is already laying the ground for the use of AI in its public sector. In December 2019, the government adopted a strategy to develop the field over the period 2020-2025 and an Action Plan to enact the strategy was passed in June 2020.

Under the plan, the government will establish an Artificial Intelligence Council in the first quarter of this year. Neither document, however, discusses in detail the use of AI in the Serbian court system, which is notoriously slow and prone to political interference.

Besides a legislative framework, Serbia has also begun to automate case-storage and institutional communication in the judiciary.

Lawyer Milena Vasic from the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights-YUCOM, said AI was becoming “a kind of inevitability in almost all areas of life”, and criminal justice could not be an exception.

“In particular, we should keep in mind simpler cases, such as, for example, we now have thousands of lawsuits against banks for loan processing costs that have practically buried the judiciary, or mass lawsuits that most often occur due to a mistake by the state,” Vasic told BIRN.

“Certainly, the use of artificial intelligence could make it easier to manage such cases, but since it is software, we should also talk about potential abuses or artificially raising the number of resolved cases.”

Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, executive director of the NGO Partners for Democratic Change Serbia, also warned of potential issues around discrimination of marginalised groups.

“Regarding the use of AI in the judiciary, it raises a number of other issues such as the impact on access to justice and the right to a fair trial, or free judicial conviction, even when AI is used to support decision-making, and especially if it is AI that would possibly replace judges,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.

Some forms of predictive justice simply cannot yet be applied in Serbia, YUCOM’s Vasic said.

“In our law, case law is still not a formal source of law and we have a lot of problems with harmonisation of case law,” she said. “What is crucial, however, is to harmonise the position on case law at the ‘human’ level before resolving cases with new methods involving artificial intelligence.”

“Such systems can be easily imagined in countries of the common law system,” Vasic noted, but “even there they suffer serious criticism for violating the right of citizens to a fair trial and are still in the so-called test phase.”

Lack of transparency

Part of map of smart cameras in Belgrade, view on city center. Screenshot: hiljade.kamera.rs

Serbia is already pursuing greater automation, for example in terms of parking in Belgrade.

In August last year, authorities went live with a system named ‘Falcon Eye’ involving 20 specialised cars equipped with cameras that can identify improperly parked cars and take photos, resulting in fines for the registered owners sent by post. Then there’s the Chinese ‘Safe City’ network of surveillance cameras with the potential for licence plate recognition and facial recognition.

There has little or no public debate about the use of such technology, the introduction of which has been criticised as lacking transparency.

Toskic Cvetinovic warned that the “flaws” of AI would be magnified in Serbia given the country’s poor record of protecting human rights.

“In addition, the protection of citizens’ privacy has so far not been in focus when planning or implementing projects that involve mass processing of personal data,” Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN.

“What worries me most is the fact that the most flagrant violations of this right came from institutions that have public functions, so the trust in new similar projects has been shaken, and with good reason.”

“There is no transparency in decision-making, nor any wider social discussion about whether we need such projects and what are their advantages and what are the possible consequences. A special question is – who manages these systems? How they are protected? Can be abused, etc?”

Krivokapic of SHARE Foundation said Serbia does not have the proper means of monitoring how such technology is used.

“We don’t have state bodies… that do any monitoring of the success in implementing the information system in the public sector, and in general all those tools that are procured, paid for and so on. There is no monitoring,” he said.

Serbia Bans Sale of Shirts Celebrating Srebrenica Massacres

Posted on January 15, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Serbia’s Market Inspectorate on Friday banned the Belgrade-based 011 Shop from selling and advertising sweatshirts and T-shirts with a slogan praising the 1995 Srebrenica massacres, which its website had been promoting online.

The Trade Ministry said that a criminal complaint had also been filed to the Serbian prosecution accusing the company of “the advertising of products that incite national, religious and racial hatred”.

The garments featured the slogan “Noz, Zica” (“Knife, Wire”) – a reference to a popular Serbian football hooligan chant at matches, “Knife, Wire, Srebrenica”, which celebrates the mass killings of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995.

“The advertising and sale of such products not only violates the law on advertising and the criminal code, but is in direct conflict with the constitution of Serbia, because it encourages the incitement of national, religious and racial hatred, which is explicitly prohibited,” said the secretary of state at the Trade Ministry, Uros Kandic.

Kandic said that a criminal complaint against the online retailer had been filed to the Prosecutor’s Office for High-Tech Crime.

Shop 011 apologised for the incident on its Facebook page, claiming that the message on the garments had been “misinterpreted” and “taken out of context”, and that they had been withdrawn from sale.

“It was not our intention to spread any kind of hatred or bigotry towards anyone,” the shop’s statement said.

Its website, registered to the Belgrade-based company Souvenir Shop, went offline on Friday morning.

Shop 011 advertises its garments as “Serbian street wear” for men, women and children. Some items also celebrate the Serbian nationalist Chetnik Movement and its World War II-era leader Dragoljub Mihajlovic, as well as notorious 1990s paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan.

The company also has retail shops at locations in Belgrade.

Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after seizing the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995, in a series of massacres that international courts have classified as genocide.