Ivana Jeremic, Author at BIRD

Hackers Attack Croatian Daily, Post Kremlin Propaganda

Posted on March 23, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Croatian police are probing Tuesday’s hacking of the daily Slobodna Dalmacija website by an unknown assailant. The paper reported that “a couple of older articles in Slobodna Dalmacija were replaced with articles promoting Russian propaganda in the war with Ukraine”.

Around ten articles were replaced, it wrote. “Our services spotted the attack on time and are working on solving the problem. The articles have been removed and the attack was reported to the police,” it added.

“Western Deception Machine”, “Which Side Are You On?”, and “The United States of America Admitted They Have Hidden Laboratories in Ukraine”, are just some of the fake articles that the hackers posted online.

Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, condemned the attack. “We condemn this attack and hope the investigation will reveal where it originated from and who was behind it. Unfortunately, something like this is not unexpected in conditions of war. We call all institutions to get involved in the case and all media to report similar incidents immediately, if they happened,” Zovko said.

He added that the incident was reported to the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ. Ricardo Gutiérrez, EFJ secretary, said: “We strongly condemn this act of piracy and call on all Croatian judicial bodies to identify and process the perpetrators. This way, media become a hostage! This is very serious. This is the first time we encountered this type of manipulation of opinion. We believe this type of cyber-attacks might become more and more common.”

The police’s cybercrimes unit is investigating the matter.

Editor-in-chief Sandra Lapenda Lemo told Croatian news agency HINA that the investigation is ongoing and that the articles in question had been deleted. The daily apologized to its readers for “seeing content which at no circumstances reflects the editorial policy of Slobodna Dalmacija”.

The daily newspaper is published in Split. Its first issue was published on June 17, 1943.

Turkish Journalist Who Revealed Islamist NGO’s Murky Ties Faces Prison

Posted on March 22, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Metin Cihan, an independent investigative journalist faces three to six years in a Turkish prison over his investigation revealing the ties between the Turkish Youth Foundation, TUGVA, a political Islamist NGO, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and family.

“The case was not a surprise. As we’ve got used to, they do not punish the people who commit crimes but the ones who reveal them,” Cihan told BIRN.

The prosecutors’ office in Istanbul has asked for a jail sentence of between three years and nine months and ten years and six months for Cihan and Ramazan Aydoglu, a former TUGVA member who allegedly shared documents with him.

The indictment said Aydogdu accessed the files of the foundation, thought to have been acquired from the TUGVA’s computers, “without consent or the right to do so”, and then sent these files to Cihan, manipulating and changing them.

Documents shared by Cihan, who is currently based in Germany, reveal that TUGVA, which has members of President Erdogan’s family on its board, used its influence with Erdogan to appoint its members to posts in the state, police and military.

Documents that BIRN has also seen also show that pro-government businesspeople, municipalities and governor offices finance TUGVA.

Cihan said that TUGVA wants to send a message with this court case.

“They want to show that they are still strong in the judiciary with this indictment. According to my information, the prosecutor was chosen for this case deliberately. Secondly, TUGVA administration received reactions from its own members after I revealed the documents. TUGVA then promised that the people who leaked and shared documents will be punished,” Cihan said.

According to Cihan, “This case is just the continuation and consequence of the illegality of the parallel state created by TUGVA within state institutions. In future, this case alone will be a topic for a legal investigation,” he said.

The leaked documents include the names of people affiliated with TUGVA, their phone and ID numbers, their university of graduation and the names of the ministries, police and army branches to which they would like to be appointed – plus the dates of their interviews and the names of their “references,” who are usually members of TUGVA, or Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP.

Another list also reveals that institutions closed and seized as part of a government crackdown on critics, accused of supporting the failed coup attempt in 2016, were handed over to TUGVA and five other Islamist NGOs with close ties to Erdogan’s party and government.

Thanks to generous government support, TUGVA has 37 student dormitories and more than 570 city and district offices in Turkey. The Islamist foundation organises events, conferences and projects with the aim of “raising a generation who stand for the right and for justice”.

If the indictment is accepted, Cihan and Aydogdu will stand trial before the İstanbul Criminal Court of First Instance.

Propaganda and Hysteria Flourish in Russo-Ukrainian War

Posted on March 21, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The beginning of March saw numerous digital violations, mainly related to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has electrified the digital environments in the region, and pro-Russian propaganda, misinformation and fake news are skyrocketing. The conflict has also inspired hysteria and panic among the public in North Macedonia and Romania related to energy fears.

Cybercrimes and online fraud confirmed their endemic nature, with Hungary and Croatia remaining at the top of the list of countries where such violations occur most often. Routine digital violations continued to weigh on the Serbian, Macedonian and Bosnian digital environments.

One-sided war narratives, disinformation, and fake news

The Ukraine conflict continued to provoke a wave of disinformation and fake news across the region. And the hostilities will, most likely, continue to have a huge impact on the online environments for some time. Pro-Russian propaganda, partisan manipulative episodes and massive disinformation campaigns are now at a high level in several countries following the outbreak of the war.

Due to the rapid increase in incidents of fake news, disinformation and pro-Russian propaganda related to the war, Romania started to implement some tech countermeasures.

One is the development of an IT platform to identify pro-Russian propaganda narratives on social media resulting from the collaboration between several NGOs and the Department for Emergency Situations.

However, the initiative has also attracted criticism. This is because the government has proposed a number of key terms to be associated with the algorithm which, if applied, would equate cases of “corruption” or “incompetence” related to the Prime Minister or President to pro-Russian disinformation.

In Hungary, on March 5, a pro-Russian Facebook page Orosz Hírek (‘Russian News’) published a video with Hungarian subtitles that has been watched more than 587,000 times.

In the footage, Ukrainian MP and former Socialist Party leader Ilya Kiva claimed that Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, was on the run. However, the news was false. President Zelensky has not left the country or the capital, Kyiv.

In North Macedonia, a case recorded on March 2 saw a Twitter user spread panic by claiming officials were recruiting soldiers for the war in Ukraine.

Fake news, misinformation and disinformation on the war have circulated widely in Croatia as well. On March 1, following a social media story that went viral, celebrating a Ukrainian fighter pilot for shooting down six Russian planes, a number of Croatian media published fake news about a so-called “Ghost of Kiev”, which turned out to be just an urban legend about a fearless Ukrainian pilot protecting the skies above Kyiv. Many users of the social network on March 7 shared a photo from a Serbian film that was falsely attributed to the war in Ukraine.

Bosnia and Herzegovina reported a case of exploitation of the Ukrainian conflict for political ends, on March 8.

Commenting on the war, the leader of the right-wing Dveri movement in Serbia and member of Serbia’s parliament, Boško Obradović, told Belgrade television that it would be “justified for the Serbian Army to get involved” in Bosnia, “to protect Serbs in [the Bosnian Serb entity] Republika Srpska, if aggression is launched against them”.

He said this Serbian military intervention would be “an obligation, both moral and historical and every other”. The video went viral, and many media published it on their pages.

Panic in North Macedonia and Romania over energy

The Ukrainian conflict has also triggered energy panics in many countries that rely heavily on gas and raw materials from Russia.

Data from the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators shows that North Macedonia, Bosnia and Moldova are the most dependent countries in Europe on Russian gas.

North Macedonia, which receives gas from Russia via the TurkStream pipeline through Bulgaria, imports 100 per cent of its national gas from Russia.

This has led to episodes of mass hysteria and panic.

A man drives his motorbike next to the screen with the new prices of petrol and diesel at a petrol station of Lukoil in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia, 02 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

On March 3, fake news on social media about shortages prompted thousands of North Macedonians to queue at gas stations. The rumours were refuted by authorities, which said there was no crisis in the supply of oil and oil derivatives.

In Romania, images of Bulgarians queuing up for petrol and buying huge quantities of cooking oil caused a panic over alleged shortages of gas there as well.

First, Romanians started panicking over buying cooking oil, and later, they formed massive lines outside gas stations.

Adrian-Ionuț Chesnoiu, Romania’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, reassured the population, stating: “We have enough cooking oil stored in our warehouses. We have no shortage. There are a lot of oil factories in this country, we aren’t dependent on imports.”

Cybercrimes and online fraud remain endemic in many environments

Online fraud, scams, data breaches and cybercrime continue to occur frequently in many countries.

Hungary and Croatia remain at the top of the list of countries where such violations occur most frequently, with 37 and 26 cases of computer fraud recorded in our annual report, “Online Intimidation: Controlling the Narrative in the Balkans”.

A woman walks in front of Headquarter of Erste Bank in Zagreb, Croatia, 24 January 2017. Photo: EPA/ANTONIO BAT

The digital environment in Serbia saw challenges on digital rights and freedoms in the area of information security. A popular private bank warned its customers and citizens about phishing email fraud. One of the fraudulent emails had “Payment from Russia” written in the subject field.

Another episode involved singer Ana Djuric “Konstrakta”, who said her official Instagram and Facebook accounts had been hacked. Having recently won the national competition to represent Serbia at this year’s Eurovision, she has become very popular.

On March 8, the National Cybersecurity Institute of Hungary warned that several organisations had received email requests that appeared to be from the European Commission, on the “Situation at the EU’s borders with Ukraine”, but which contain harmful links and malware file attachments.

The Croatian digital environment was also affected by two different cases of computer fraud, both recorded on March 6.

In the first case, Erste bank, the third largest bank in Croatia, warned its customers about a fake internet page in its name. The bank told users not to input any personal data on the page. Similarly, RBA bank warned of fake SMS messages, which are “trying to discredit the bank and its stability”. The bank reported the incident to the Interior Ministry.

In Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia, routine digital violations

Threats to independent journalists and free media, political friction driven by a climate of instability, and ethnic tension, are just some of the factors behind routine violations.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer (C), members of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Sefik Dzaferovic (L) and Milorad Dodik (R) arrive for their meeting, during Nehammer’s visits in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

Miljko Stojanovic, Danas newspaper’s correspondent from Zajecar, received threats via Facebook because of an article he wrote about a Ukrainian taking refuge in Serbia. Serbian police found the person suspected of threatening Stojanovic.

On March 11, during an official visit to the UK, North Macedonia’s Defence Minister, Slavjanka Petrovska, was targeted by hate speech from users, posting derogatory remarks about her looks on Facebook and Twitter.

In Bosnia, ethnic and political tensions continue to provoke online violations. On March 7, Milorad Dodik, the Serbian member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency and head of the main Bosnian Serb party, the Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, received threats via social media. A video in which a masked man offered a million euros for Dodik’s murder was published on the social network TikTok.

Fake allegations also spread on social networks and online media about possible riots at a rally of the right-wing Serbian nationalist Ravna Gora Chetnik movement in Visegrad, eastern Bosnia, on March 13.

Online media claimed riots were to be expected because of the arrival of some people from Bužim. However, several associations from Bužim denied the rumours, saying that no one wanted such incidents in these times.

SLAPP Cases Targeting Many Public Actors Besides Journalists – Report

Posted on March 17, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A new report by the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe, CASE, “Shutting Out Criticism: How SLAPPs Threaten European Democracy”, published on Wednesday, says although journalists are most likely targets, these lawsuits also target activists, human rights defenders and academics.

“Journalists are targeted with SLAPPs because they bring information to light while activists, civil society organisations, and academics are confronted with SLAPPs because they challenge the status quo,” the report says.

Its data also show that the number of so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation in Europe is growing, and that claimants are “becoming increasingly creative”.

The report recalls the example of Elitech against Friends of the Earth, FoE, Croatia and the civic initiative, Srdj je nas (“Srdj is ours”).

In 2013, the citizens’ initiative, together with the Croatian Architects Association, requested the Constitutional Court to assess the legality of the construction of a luxury resort and golf course on Srđ hill by the multinational manufacturing company Elitech. FoE Croatia placed a billboard criticising the project in a public place.

“FoE Croatia subsequently faced two different lawsuits: civil defamation against the organisation, with a request for a gagging order; and the president and two vice-presidents of FoE Croatia were criminally prosecuted for libel,” the report recalls, adding that this case “shows how SLAPPs are used as a means of silencing those speaking out about a shared concern”.

The report stresses the “chilling effect” that SLAPPs have, meaning the financial burden, the time defendants have to take to prepare their legal defence, the effort to remember details of events that often took place years previously, as well as the mental and emotional toll.

“Many described the process of dealing with the SLAPP as more taxing and intimidating than actually receiving the legal threat,” the report adds.

The paper quotes data compiled by the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, which recorded a total of 905 active court cases against journalists and media outlets in the country in 2020 – not all of them SLAPPS – and at least 924 cases in 2021.

In Poland, the biggest daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza has been targeted by more than 60 civil and criminal cases over the past few years, many of them initiated by the governing Law and Justice Party’s politicians, the paper stressed.

The Coalition Against SLAPPS in Europe, CASE, is an umbrella group uniting a range of watchdog organisations.

In January, it published a comprehensive study noting a sharp rise in SLAPP cases across Europe over the last four years – with 539 across Europe today, a fifth of that number lodged in 2021 alone.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are civil claims filed against individuals or organisations. Businesses and government officials often file them against those that oppose them on issues of public concern, with a view to silencing them. They are widely seen as a tool of “modern censorship”.

A SLAPP can be based on a range of legal theories, including defamation, data protection, privacy, business torts and data protection, and often exploit gaps in procedural protections that are often highly specific to the jurisdiction in question.

Turkish Journalist Walks Free Despite Sentence for Insulting Erdogan

Posted on March 11, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A Turkish court on Friday ordered the release of the well-known independent woman journalist Sedef Kabas who was sentenced to jail for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Kabas was released from prison at the first court hearing under a super-fast judgment after being sentenced to two years and four months in prison for insulting the President by reciting a famous proverb.

Kabas told the court, where the hearing was followed by rights groups, unions and opposition parties, that she will continue to express her opinions in public.

“I will continue to tell the truth despite the experiences the current leadership is making me and others go through,” Kabas said.

Police raided her home the morning after Kabas recited a proverb on a TV show and shared it on Twitter. She was sent to prison on January 22 and had been held there ever since.

“There is a very famous proverb that says a crowned head becomes wiser. But we see it is not true. A bull does not become king just by entering the palace; the palace becomes a barn,” she said on TELE 1 TV channel.

The Supreme Board of Radio and Television, RTUK, the state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and TV broadcasts, stopped five shows and the channel may have to hand over 8 per cent of its profit as an administrative fine.

According to official figures, by the end of 2020, more than 160,000 people had been investigated for alleged insults against President Erdogan and more than 38,000 people were tried in court for the same reason during Erdogan’s time as Prime Minister and then President since 2002. Turkey has come under international pressure to change the insult law.

Kosovo Media Regulator Struggling to Recover from Cyber-Attack

Posted on March 10, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Kosovo’s media regulatory body on Wednesday said it was subjected to a severe cyber-attack in January that has resulted in a loss of data and access to official email addresses and internal systems for almost two months.

Faruk Rexhaj, acting head of the Independent Media Commission, IMC, confirmed that many electronic services had been disabled because of the attack in January.

“We have not restored [the lost material] yet because we need to go through procurement procedures to hire an expert on restoring the servers. Procedures took some time but we are almost at the end,” Rexhaj told BIRN.

According to Rexhaj, the IMC is working to restore the system after the attack and blamed delays on the procurement procedures needed before hiring an expert to deal with the issue.

“We are in procedure to restore equipment, materials and systems to normalcy. We are working on it,” he added.

The IMC is an independent institution responsible for the regulation, management and oversight of the broadcasting frequency spectrum in Kosovo.

It licenses public and private broadcasters, establishes and implements policy and regulates broadcasting rights, obligations and responsibilities of individuals and entities who provide audio and audiovisual media services.

Rexhaj said police were informed about the attack. “We informed the police, and the Department for Cyber Crimes has taken all data they need. They have concluded that the attack was similar to some other cases and it is not related to anything specific. This kind of attack happens all over the world,” Rexhaj said.

EU Presses Montenegro to Pull Plug on Russian Media

Posted on March 10, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Union urged Montenegro on Wednesday to suspend broadcasting of Russian Today and Sputnik in line with the bloc’s restrictive measures on Russia.

On March 1, Montenegro said it had joined European Union sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war, but most of the restrictive measures, including a ban on Russian media, remain on hold.

“We urge the government to … provide a legal basis for the competent national authorities, including the Electronic Communications Agency, AEM, to be able to take the necessary decisions,” the EU press release said.

On March 2, the EU, which Montenegro wishes to join, suspended the broadcasting of Sputnik and Russia Today in Member States, accusing them of spreading disinformation and manipulating information as an operational tool of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrel, said that Russian state-owned media were essential to bringing forward and supporting Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Montenegro also committed itself also to ban Russian overflight of its airspace and access to its airports and to ban transactions with the Russian Central Bank and several other banks.

But so far, banning Russian flights is the only measure actually confirmed by the government.

On March 3, the Minister of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media, Tamara Srzentic called on the government to suspend Russia Today and Sputnik broadcasts.

The proposal was postponed reportedly because it was suspected that such a decision would not have enough support from within the coalition government.

“Montenegro will follow EU measures against Russia, and therefore restrictions related to stopping the spread of disinformation and propaganda through the media, which are recognized for publishing false news,” Srzentic told the daily Vijesti on March 3.

According to Montenegrin law on international restrictive measures, ministries propose measures but the government has to officially confirm them before implementation. After confirmation, the government sends a list of measures to state institutions, which must implement them.

By law, the Electronic Communications Agency can prohibit broadcasts if media promote hatred or endanger state security.

But the Association of Montenegrin Journalists on March 3 opposed the ban, likening it to censorship. “Banning the Russian media in Montenegro is wrong and w expresses fear that the domino effect will lead to censorship of freedom of expression throughout Europe,” it said.

Russia enjoys significant support in multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Montenegro, especially among the large Serbian community which make up just under 30 per cent of the population.

Ukraine War Prompts Flood of Misinformation, Fake News

Posted on March 4, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The second half of February was almost completely absorbed by the start of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, coinciding with a significant rise in cases of disinformation and fake news.

In Serbia, Bosnia and Hungary, several cases of disinformation on the Ukrainian conflict were reported. In the latter two countries, online manipulations were motivated by internal reasons, mainly to discredit political opponents.

Nationalist rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina meanwhile continued to fuel online tensions. In North Macedonia, the arrival of members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group gave rise to episodes of intolerance with the local community. Cyberattacks and phishing scams systematically hit public and private IT servers in Serbia, North Macedonia and Croatia.

Misinformation on Ukraine, political attacks, spike in Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, online media and local newspapers have been almost completely consumed by the war.

Social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have become powerful tools of political activism and propaganda that in many cases ended up amplifying misinformation on the Russian invasion.

A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard in downtown Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine, 03 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE

In Serbia, the Twitter account of Youth of JAZAS, an NGO committed to HIV support and prevention, was taken over by an unknown person on February 25. Tweets from the hacked account compared Ukraine to AIDS and claimed that Russia was “the cure”. The next day, after regaining control of the account, Youth of JAZAS apologised for the tweets.

In another episode, several web portals in Serbia made false claims about a change to the Zagreb Philharmonic program. Online media wrongly linked the changes of the program concerning the works of Russian composer Tchaikovsky to the war in Ukraine.

On February 25, Dušanka Majkić, an MP in Bosnia’s parliament from the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrat Party, SNSD, tweeted that Bosnia could suffer the same consequences as attacked Ukraine if it joins NATO. “In March 2021, Moscow promised to react if Bosnia takes any further steps towards NATO. Don’t say you haven’t been warned,” the tweet read.

In Hungary, fake news and falsehoods on the Russo-Ukrainian War led to political clashes and smear campaigns targeting political opponents.

Pro-government media in the country struggle to move away from their former pro-Russian narrative. On the one hand, public media, pro-government media and some pundits uncritically reported untrue statements from the Kremlin about Ukraine. These include that Ukrainian troops entered Russia first, that a Ukrainian nation does not exist, and that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is comparable to Hitler.

Even after the Russian attacks began, some media still claimed Russia had no plans to attack Ukraine. Various Facebook pages linked to the ruling Fidesz party are also still spreading Russian propaganda. On the other hand, both government politicians and pro-government media have falsely claimed that opposition politicians want to send soldiers to Ukraine, plunging Hungary into war with Russia.

Finally, an item of disinformation about the Ukraine conflict has been widely shared online in both Bosnia and Hungary. Hundreds of thousands of users have watched a video on Facebook in less than 24 hours, apparently showing a military plane being attacked by air defence. The post suggests that the video is footage from the war in Ukraine. In reality, the video was from a war simulation computer game. Raskrinkavanje fact-checking portal clarified that the video was from the video game Arma 3, a realistic game released in September 2013 simulating military conflicts.

Religion and nationalism spur online attacks and hate speech in Bosnia and North Macedonia

Ethnic and political tensions, always characteristic of the Bosnian environment are being exacerbated by episodes of nationalist rhetoric in parliament. Aside from Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s secessionist threats, his Croatian counterpart has added to tensions.

President of the presidency of Bosnia and Hercegovina Dragan Covic during the meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (not pictured) in Belgrade, Serbia, 06 December 2017. Photo: EPA-EFE/KOCA SULEJMANOVIC

The main Bosnian Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and its leader Dragan Covic, who in February blocked electoral reform in the country, have now threatened to block the October general election.

In North Macedonia, tensions with the local resident erupted following the arrival of members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, Lev Tahor, in the northern city of Kumanovo in February, despite the authorities’ appeals for tolerance.

Worried about a possible worsening of the situation, the local police escorted 38 members of the sect to an undisclosed hotel, “for their own safety”, police told BIRN.

In another case, from February 22, authorities filed criminal charges against a woman from Ohrid after she disseminated hate speech on Facebook towards Lev Tahor. On social media, she called for the group to be “burned down together with the hotel” they were staying in.

In Croatia, Martina Mlinarević Sopta, Bosnia’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, was attacked and mocked by nationalists on a YouTube video released on February 24 after she criticized HDZ policies in Bosnia. In the video, titled “It’s not Masha’s fault she’s ours”, published on the Facebook page and YouTube channel of the local carnival in the southwestern Bosnian town of Ljubuški, the face of the ambassador appears at the centre of the screen with the Croatian flag and Jesus holding the Croatian coat-of-arms in the background.

Cyberattacks and phishing scams hit Serbia, North Macedonia and Croatia

Online environments continue to be systematically hit by computer frauds, phishing scams and other cyberattacks that put pressure on public IT servers in several countries.

Our annual digital rights report, Online Intimidation: Controlling the Narrative in the Balkans, noted that between August 2020 and August 2021, in Croatia alone, there were about 26 incidents of computer fraud out of a total of 103 cases reported from the region.

The logo of Italian banking group Intesa Sanpaolo is seen at a branch in Siena, Italy, 05 July 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/MATTIA SEDDA

On February 18, the National CERT of Serbia warned Facebook users about a phishing campaign aimed at compromising their account credentials. Users were getting messages asking: “Are you in this video?” which also contained a malicious link. Also in Serbia, on 28 February, the local branch of Banca Intesa warned its customers of fraudulent emails allegedly coming from the bank with malicious attachments. In previous cases, the subject of such emails contained information about an alleged payment in euros.

In North Macedonia, after an incident on February 4 in which the well-known hacker group Powerful Greek Army claimed that it had hacked North Macedonia’s Ministry of Education, another hacking episode by the same group hit several banks.

The hacking group this time claimed they had attacked several banks and that access to the banks’ websites was made difficult or completely blocked. However, the national bank, NBRM, said it had intervened quickly and that the security and confidentiality of its data had been secured.

Finally, Croatia was also hit by an incident of cyber fraud on February 23, when the Regulatory Authority for Network Industries, HAKOM, reported receiving several calls from citizens saying they were getting suspicious calls from “Windows Support Centre”, telling them that their computers with Windows were causing problems.

EU Takes RT and Sputnik Off Air, But Not to Universal Acclaim

Posted on March 2, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The European Commission published its sanction to take two of Russia’s state propaganda outlets off the air in the Official Journal on Wednesday, effectively giving national media regulators the power to silence them. Some worry that the EU is overreacting.

It was on Sunday that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first announced that the Kremlin-backed RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik would be banned from broadcasting across the EU.

“We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU. The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war,” von der Leyen said. “We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

Three days later, after discussions with member states and the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA), the details were published of the media sanction, which will apply to transmission and distribution through satellite, cable, online video sharing platforms, and applications both old and new.

“In view of the gravity of the situation, and in response to Russia’s actions destabilising the situation in Ukraine, it is necessary… to urgently suspend the broadcasting activities of such media outlets in the Union,” the Commission said. “It shall be prohibited for operators to broadcast or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies in Annex XV, including through transmission or distribution by any means such as cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, internet video-sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.”

Even before that, accessing RT and Sputnik content in countries in Central Europe and across the rest of the bloc was becoming increasingly difficult. On February 25, two days before von der Leyen’s announcement, Poland’s media regulator had already deleted a number of Russian channels from the register of permitted TV services in the country. On Tuesday, Facebook and Google’s YouTube slapped their own bans on RT’s content.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it was still possible to access from the Czech Republic RT in Russian, though not Sputnik’s Czech site.

This move by the EU took many by surprise and has not been universally welcomed.

In a rather testy interview with the BBC on Monday, Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell Fontelles said the move was not a case of censoring media or free speech, but to stop the dissemination of “lies and toxic information”. This is not about stopping “free information flow but about massive disinformation flow,” he went on.

While few would dispute that most of RT and Sputnik’s output is drivel and barely disguised Russian propaganda, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) said it fears the effects of this spiral of censorship on freedom of expression in Europe.

“This act of censorship can have a totally counterproductive effect on the citizens who follow the banned media,” EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez said in a statement. “In our opinion, it is always better to counteract the disinformation of propagandist or allegedly propagandist media by exposing their factual errors or bad journalism, by demonstrating their lack of financial or operational independence, by highlighting their loyalty to government interests and their disregard for the public interest.”

While several western journalists working for the Russian media outlets have resigned in light of the invasion, others call the move to ban them anti-democratic, a blatant case of censorship and worry about the impact on people’s jobs at a difficult time.

“Today a darker day dawns at the EU for the freedom of speech and the press,” Vaggelis Kotrozos, administrator of Sputnik Greece, told BIRN. “The attempt to silence a media outlet is anything but democratic but refers to authoritarian regimes. Russia, which is accused by the Western allies of being an ‘authoritarian’ country, has never resorted to such practices except in countermeasures to similar practices of Western countries, e.g. RT licensing in Germany.”

“The Greek office of Sputnik takes all the necessary measures for its smooth operation and the securing of all the jobs against the attempt to silence it,” he added.

Others worry that the banning of the Russian channels feeds into a wider panic about misinformation and disinformation. “RT is by no means the only target for state censorship – and if it’s taken off the air, it will not be the last,” predicted Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked in the UK.

Czechia Mulls Penalising Support of Ukraine Invasion

Posted on March 1, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Publicly backing the Russian invasion of Ukraine might be subject to custodial sentences of up to three years, Czechia’s Supreme State Attorney Igor Striz said in a statement on Saturday.

By the following day, Czech police were already investigating dozens of cases, local news site TN Nova reported. Czech police spokesman Ondrej Moravcik said: “We will carefully evaluate such actions and thoroughly analyse whether they represent such crimes.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed for Czech citizens to stay within the confines of the country’s constitutional and legal restrictions. Although freedom of expression is stipulated in the Czech constitution, meaning everyone has the right to express their views, it also has its limits just as in any democratic state.

This means that “under certain conditions”, anyone publicly supporting or praising the leaders of the Russian Federation regarding the country’s attack on Ukraine could face criminal charges, including at demonstrations or even online, Striz said.

Striz’s statement cited sections 365 and 405 of the Czech Criminal Code, which state that whoever publicly approves a crime or publicly praises the perpetrator can be imprisoned for up to a year, and that anyone who “publicly denies, questions, approves or seeks to justify Nazi, communist, or other genocide” can face a jail sentence of up to three years.

“We have recorded dozens of internet comments expressing approval for the Russian invasion and the activities of the Russian army. We are closely monitoring the online sphere and apologise for not responding to every sign in the posts,” Czech police tweeted.