Censorship Archives - Page 4 of 6

Press Freedom Groups Urge EU to Act over Hungary Media Violations

Posted on September 2, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A number of press freedom, freedom of expression and journalists’ organisations urged the European Commission on Wednesday to act on several complaints that the Hungarian government has violated EU state aid rules as a means to undermine media pluralism.

The joint letter from 16 organisations – including Reporters Without Borders, the International Press Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists – comes after a decade of attacks by Viktor Orban’s government on the independence of the country’s media. This has resulted in “a degree of [state] media control unprecedented in an EU member state”, according to Reporters without Borders, and the country falling to 89th place out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index.

The letter calls on Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager to act on complaints that the Hungarian government has violated EU state aid rules by manipulating the media market through the weaponization of state resources “to punish critical media and reward government mouthpieces.”

The letter’s authors highlight their serious concern that the European Commission has not acted on two State Aid complaints (No. 53108 and No. 45463) lodged in 2018 and 2016.

State Aid complaint No. 53108, lodged in November 2018, alleges bias in the distribution of state advertising to media outlets in Hungary. By way of example, the signatories cite the case of Index.hu, Hungary’s largest independent and most popular online news site, which in the years prior to last month’s mass resignations over threats to its editorial interference received virtually nothing in state advertising, despite being a market leader, while its main competitor, the pro-government Origo.hu, benefitted heavily.

State Aid complaint No. 45463, lodged in 2016, concerns the Hungarian public service broadcaster (PSB), which the signatories claim has long since ceased to meet the definition of public service broadcasting, with news coverage presented in a way that shows deliberate and clear bias in favour of the ruling Fidesz party.

The European Commission’s failure to act on these complaints, the letter notes, “allows for the further decimation of independent media in the country”.

Hungary’s government has, indeed, an impressive track record of killing critical media outlets, shrewdly concealing most as some kind of neutral business decisions. The process of co-opting state media into government mouthpieces, the centralisation of all regional daily newspapers, and the takeover or closure of several government-critical news sites and newspapers culminated in almost all government-loyal media outlets being centralised in KESMA (the Hungarian acronym for Central European Press and Media Foundation).

This merger, which was clearly in breach of all the country’s competition laws, could not be investigated by the Competition Authority, as it was branded of “strategic importance” by the government. This move was later ruled legal by the country’s pliant Constitutional Court.

“The creation of the KESMA foundation in late 2018, which united pro-government media and was exempted from normal competition review, further undermined media pluralism in Hungary and has facilitated a centralized system of content control,” the letter said. “By the end of 2018, according to independent research, an estimated 80 percent of the market for public affairs news was being financed by sources determined by the FIDESZ party. This means KESMA now controls over 470 media outlets in Hungary.”

The letter concludes by urging the European Commission take action to defend the right of the Hungarian public to access free and pluralistic sources of news. “This must include responding to all complaints related to the misuse of state aid in Hungary. Addressing these issues is essential to defending media freedom, media pluralism and the rule of law both in Hungary and within the EU as a whole,” it said.

Freemuse Launches Campaign to Tackle Online Violence and Censorship

Posted on July 31, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The #KnowArtisticRights campaign, launched this week, focuses on online violence and censorship while striving to educate people about artistic rights online and the online threats facing artists around the world. Through the campaign, the organisation is providing artists with a step-by-step guide on how to behave in situations where their rights are violated online.

“The largest number of cases of violation of artistic rights and freedoms registered by Freesumse are occurring online,” says Jasmina Lazovic, Program Coordinator Global Monitoring at Freemuse, an independent international organisation based in Denmark, advocating for and defending freedom of artistic expression.

“Online platforms provide perpetrators of online threats the opportunities to choose false names, fake accounts, and can remain faceless. This makes it incredibly difficult to assess or ascertain, with any accuracy, the gravity or the intention behind the threat. In addition, content controls and community guidelines restrict artistic expressions under the guise of indecency wherein expressions from swearing to paintings of nipples are censored.”

The illustrative document which explains the campaign in detail says: “Digital technology has transformed the way artists find themselves censored or persecuted. Increasingly private corporations, organised hate groups and states use data to harass, censor or persecute artists.”

Freemuse has also launched its first comprehensive Digital Toolkit. The Toolkit is a first of its kind for artists and will serve as a point of departure for individuals to navigate the censorship and harassment presented to them online.

The Toolkit, produced by Freemuse’s Artist Relations Team in collaboration with digital safety experts, contains practical information and advice for artists on navigating the aforementioned digital challenges on the following topics: securing information and devices online; securing access online; encrypting online communication; handling harassment and life-endangering threats; and engaging with social media community guidelines and content controls.

Turkish Ruling Party Announces Strict Controls on Social Media

Posted on July 21, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The Justice and Development Party, AKP announced on Tuesday that it will bring in a long-awaited new law to regulate social media more strictly and potentially impose large fines and bandwidth reductions on companies that do not comply with government demands.

“Closing social network providers is not our first priority. We have five levels of sanctions,” Ozlem Zengin, the AKP group deputy chairperson, told media.

She added that other countries such as the US, Germany and France are eyeing similar regulations but said that “there is still not an agreement on social media regulations [in international law]”.

“Violations of the right of privacy require sanctions,” Zengin added.

The new law will require social media companies to appoint an official representative in Turkey who will answer the government’s demands including the removal of “harmful content” in a timely manner.

If an official representative is not appointed or the demands are not answered, there are a series of potential penalties.

A company will first face a fine of 10 million Turkish lira fine (1.27 million euros) and then of 30 million lira (3.80 million euros).

If it still does not comply, it will face an advertisement ban for three months.

As a final sanction, its bandwidth will be halved and then cut by 95 per cent.

Citizens also can apply to social media companies if they claim their rights have violated and in this case, the fine will be 5 million lira (636,000 euros).

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of harsh new regulations several weeks ago after he was angered by insults to members of his family on social media.

“Such platforms don’t suit this country and our people. That’s why we want these social media platforms completely shut or controlled after bringing the issue to our parliament,” Erdogan said on July 1.

Opposition parties and human rights groups see the new law as the president’s latest attempt to control media platforms and silence his critics.

The Turkish government has earlier asked social media companies to move their servers to Turkey.

The new regulations might result in these companies quitting the Turkish market, experts have warned.

The draft law on social media was introduced in April but was then postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The law is expected to come to parliament soon, before the summer recess.

Hungarian Police Accused of Abusing Powers to Arrest Critics

Posted on May 13, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Police in Hungary on Wednesday at 6am detained an opposition politician, János Csóka-Szűcs, in Gyula, a small town in Békés County, the media outlet Magyar Narancs reported.

Csóka-Szűcs is the local leader of an opposition movement called the Kossuth Circle and a supporting member of the Momentum party.

Police raided his home and seized his mobile phone and computer, and he was detained and interrogated at the local police station.

Csóka-Szűcs was told that he was being questioned because of a Facebook post from April 20 that he published in a local group “Uncensored chatroom of Gyula,” which was suspected of fear-mongering.

He may face charges under a recent amendment to the criminal law that introduced punishments of one to five years in jail for spreading “falsehoods” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct the efforts to combat the pandemic.

This amendment was the part of the controversial Coronavirus Bill, which critics said gave almost “dictatorial” powers to the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

In response to the arrest, the opposition Democratic Coalition said it was organising an “online demonstration”.

Katalin Cseh, an MEP from the Momentum movement, asked people on Twitter https://twitter.com/katka_cseh/status/1260528932392259587 to share the story of Csóka-Szűcs. She accused the police of abusing the law to detain critics of the Orbán-led government.

On April 20, when anti-government demonstrations were held in Budapest, and in the town of Gyula, Csóka-Szűcs shared a call for the demonstration, adding that “1,170 beds were emptied in Gyula as well” to deal with the pandemic.

His post referred to the country-wide anti-pandemic measure during which 60 per cent of all hospital beds were freed up to deal with COVID-19 patients.

In fact, in the local hospital, about 1,200 beds had been duly freed up. But, with this sentence, Csóka-Szűcs had allegedly “obstructed efforts to combat the pandemic”.

Csóka-Szűcs spent four hours in detention at the police station and had to walk home; police did not take him home despite the fact that he is disabled.

This was the second arrest in Hungary for fear-mongering in two days. On Tuesday, a 64-year-old man was detained by police near Szerencs in Borsod county.

He was questioned over a Facebook post he published on 28 April in which he had criticized the government’s anti-pandemic measures, claiming it had deliberately lifted the curfew restrictions at the peak of the pandemic to cause mass infections. He also addressed “Our dear dictator, our dear leader”, saying: “You are a cruel tyrant, but remember, all dictators have failed so far.”

The man, called András, talked later to 444 media outlet about his interrogation.

According to a statement on 5 May, police in Hungary had initiated 83 proceedings on suspicion of fear-mongering and 26 on suspicion of threatening public danger since the pandemic started.

For more information on the state of digital rights and violation amid the pandemic, check BIRN’s digital rights monitoring database.

Pandemic Measures Further Restrict Turkey’s Beleaguered Civil Society

Posted on May 11, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Already under unprecedented pressure since a failed 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, civil society groups in Turkey say their ability to draw attention to human rights violations has been further curtailed by government restrictions on public gatherings and events to tackle the spread of COVID-19.

Four days after registering its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, on March 15 Turkey banned all public events and subsequently halted all travel between the country’s major cities and imposed movement restrictions on those under the age of 20 or over the age of 65.

Non-governmental organisations, like much of the rest of society, have moved almost all activity online; while some organisations say this has resulted in an increase in output, most say restrictions on travel and scrutiny of state institutions have hurt their work.

With almost 40 branches across the country, Human Rights Association, IHD, general secretary Osman Isci told BIRN: “We had to cancel all our events, inter-city travel and press conference, which were crucial for our work and for spreading awareness about human rights violations across the country.”

“There has been a significant decrease in reports on human rights violations because of the restrictions,” he said.

Civil society sidelined

Third anniversary of the failed coup attempt at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

Enes Ozkan, the editor-in-chief of Daktilo84, a non-governmental academic platform bringing together academics and experts, said the restrictions had increased output.

“Now, everyone has to stay home and this made everyone more accessible,” he said. “We started to increase our webinars, writings and other online events because of the increasing demand as well as accessibility of our members,” Ozkan told BIRN.

Already working largely online, Daktilo84 was less affected, he said, “but organisations that focus on psychical events suffer the most.”

Social Democracy Foundation, SODEV, for example, said staff members were now working from home and board meetings were held online. All regular events and conferences were cancelled, said director Murat Uner.

“We can continue our work somehow but we hope that this situation will end soon,” he said.

Uner said SODEV had received notice from the Turkish Interior Ministry that even all online events had been banned as part of the government’s measures against the pandemic. Uproar among civil society groups forced a U-turn, with the government saying it the order had been the result of a mistake.

Isci of IHD said it was indicative of the government’s approach to civil society, particularly since Erdogan put down a coup in 2016 that he blamed on U.S.-based cleric and former ally Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denied any involvement, but the government nevertheless launched a crackdown on his followers as well as large parts of the public sector, security forces, media and civil society.

“When any extraordinary situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic occurs, civil society organisations become more vulnerable and fragile because of security-oriented policies,” Isci told BIRN.

“In order to overcome the difficulties which civil society organisations face the government should respect the requirements of civil society,” he said.

Isci complained that the government had made no effort to involve civil society groups in the fight against the coronavirus.

Like other “authoritarian governments”, he said, Turkey’s has pursued legislation that creates “a suitable atmosphere to close the space for civil society movement,” for example by restricting access to parliament and prisons and excluding medical unions from crisis-management efforts.

Post-putsch crackdown

A man with a face mask in Istanbul, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU

Since the failed coup, 1,767 associations, foundations and labour unions have been closed down by the government and hundreds of others had to cease activities citing government pressure.

Ozkan said civil society groups in Turkey were seriously dwindling in number.

“Most of the remaining civil society organisations are embedded to the state or they are countrymen associations which are simply nothing more than meeting points for people living in large cities who are from same village or town,” he said.

“If you are critical, very vocal and influential, the government wants to control and to shape you via audits and fines,” Ozkan told BIRN. “If you have funding from abroad the situation becomes worse.”

Isci said the government had framed much of political life in terms of security, creating a deeply polarised “us and them” atmosphere. “You face certain problems if you are critical,” he said. “This is why we see that so many civil society organisations have been closed down.”

Security placed above freedom

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Ozkan compared the response of the Turkish government to that of Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Donald Trump’s US administration and Poland under the Law and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Freedom becomes subordinated to security, he said.

“Authoritarian regimes use everything to become more authoritarian; they try to use everything for their favour and the coronavirus crisis is a perfect example of that,” he said. “Autocrats use the pandemic to maximise their power.”

“There should be a balance between security and freedoms. However, everyone now focuses on staying home safe and fulfilling their main needs. When freedoms come in second place, this provides more space for authoritarian regimes.”

On April 13, before parliament voted a new package of laws including greater government control over media, civil society, academia and social media, Erdogan declared, “Some media and politicians are more dangerous than the virus. They attack and criticise the government instead of supporting it in these hard days, but our country will get rid of media and political viruses very soon.”

The law on social media, which would further restrict digital rights, was eventually postponed to make way for COVID-19-related legislation.

Ozkan said such laws were made possible by a situation in which people are ready to trade away rights and freedoms for greater safety.

“And civil society organisations are excluded from all the process,” he said. “What we say is not heard, we are not involved in decision-making processes and the government never listens us.”

Hungary Censoring Information on COVID-19, Report Says

Posted on April 27, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Hungarian government has centralized communications about the pandemic and is filtering the release of information about COVID-19, a new report claims.

It says alternative sources of information, especially healthcare workers, are afraid of being fired if they talk to the press, and that the new “Coronavirus bill” will lead to more self-censorship among journalists.

These are the main conclusions of a report compiled by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, HCLU.

It surveyed editors and journalists of 19 independent media outlets on their experiences of how the government and other state institutions handled information about the COVID-19 outbreak in the first month of the crisis.

The main body handling the pandemic in Hungary is the so-called Operational Group, OG, it notes, which holds a daily press conference.

Hospitals, ministries, professional organizations and other state institutions are not allowed to talk to the press about the pandemic, and all questions related to it must be submitted to this body.

Moreover, only a few weeks after the outbreak started, the OG moved its press conferences online, so that journalists can now only email questions, making it impossible to re-submit unanswered questions.

Also, questions chosen for answering are highly selected, certain outlets are neglected and many sensitive questions remain unanswered, according to the report.

While local municipalities have become more open to the press about the outbreak, mayors also suffer from a lack of information, the report says.

According to the surveyed journalists, alternative sources of information have become scarce. “Even if anonymity is guaranteed, nobody dares to speak to journalists, as they are afraid of retaliation. Healthcare workers are the most intimidated, while their voice is missed the most, to know the reality,” the HCLU report says.

The report quotes one journalist who said a physician friend told him: “Don’t write this because I’ll be fired and you’ll go to jail.” They were referring to the new “Bill on protection against coronavirus” that Hungary’s parliament passed in March.

The controversial bill allows Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to rule by decree without any time limit. It also amends criminal law to introduce jail terms of one to five years for anyone convicted of spreading “falsehood” or “distorted truth” about the pandemic.

The HCLU says the new legislation effectively forces journalists to self-censor their work.

“Due to the wording of the bill, it is very uncertain what could be proven in front of a court. Now, it seems, a trustworthy source will be not enough; we’ll need to present every piece of evidence. We are vulnerable to the judges’ goodwill,” it quotes one journalist as saying. Another added that, owing to the lack of non-government sources, they have few chances to check incoming information.

Last, the report states, defamation of independent media outlets has become more regular in the state and pro-government media, which routinely call articles critical of the government “fake news”.

On March 15, according to the report, for example, when Zoltán Kovács, Secretary of State for International Communication, attended the daily press conference, instead of answering a question about Hungary’s testing protocol, he rebuked the journalists in a condescending and humiliating way.

The HCLU report says the newspaper Magyar Hang’s articles are constantly labeled “fake news” in the public media, after it published an internal letter from the vice-president of the Hungarian National Blood Transfusion Service asking co-workers not to wear protective masks.

“The scope of such reports is clearly the public defamation and discrediting of independent media outlets,” the HCLU said.

North Macedonia Accused of Dodging Media Scrutiny in Crisis

Posted on April 14, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

After drawing flak from journalistic and media associations for employing an unsuitable register of online media to select which outlets should get permits to work during curfews and ask questions at press conferences, the Information Society Ministry says it had rectified any omissions.

This ministry, which is in charge of issuing these online permits, says media outlets are now being checked directly through the country’s central registry of firms, not through a register of online media created for a different purpose by the country’s oldest and biggest media union.

Amid complaints from the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, ZNM, that the ministry had more or less hijacked its register and misused its purpose, the ministry told BIRN that its only intention had been to prevent the spread of “fake news” in the health crisis.

However, some pro-opposition online media outlets still accuse the authorities of discrimination and “silent” censorship, saying they are put in an unequal position compared to others at virtual press conferences.

Use of media register drew flak

The dispute started in late March, when the ministry issued a statement saying that only those outlets listed on the ZNM’s register of professional online media, Promedia, would be eligible to apply for permits to work during the daily curfews.

The same rule applied to outlets wanting to ask questions at government press conferences, which were already being held without the physical presence of journalists, who were only able to ask direct questions through a video conference call, or submit them online to the government press service and wait for them to be read out by the spokesperson and answered by ministers.

The ZNM and the Council of Ethics in Media, SEMM, a self-regulatory journalistic body, accused the government of using the register to select favoured online media.

The ZNM’s executive director, Dragan Sekulovski, told BIRN that the purpose of Promedia had been misused. The register of some 120 online media outlets “was intended to promote self-regulation and professional standards, help citizens distinguish professional online outlets from propagandists and fake news sites and incentivise businesses to advertise in professional outlets”, Sekulovski explained to BIRN.

“The OSCE, the US embassy and the European Union praised us for our efforts to put some order in the online media sphere. It was not fair of the state to interfere [with it] and use the [health] crisis as an excuse,” he said.

He noted that the register was never intended to be an all-encompassing media source. Media participate in it voluntarily; those who wish to be listed on it first apply and are then their basic professional and ethical standards are checked.

While Promedia lists 120 listed outlets, the state’s central business registry lists more than 400 online media outlets.

The Promedia registry notably does not include many pro-opposition outlets that formerly defended the ex-government of Nikola Gruevski, which fell in mid-2017, and continue to promote the standpoints of his now opposition VMRO DPMNE party.

Most of these are now grouped in the country’s other journalistic union, the Macedonian Association of Journalists, MAN, which was formed during Gruevski’s time in office and has also accused the current Social Democrat-led government of using double standards.

Ministry says it had no ill intent

Journalist, members of North Macedonia’s government and guests in the government press room. Archive photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

After prolonged silence in the face of this criticism, the State Secretary at the Information Society Ministry, Adem Avziu, told BIRN on Friday that its intention had not been to discriminate against any particular online media but only to “prevent the spread of fake news and panic in this extraordinary situation.

“We all know we have many unregistered portals that are spreading all kinds of false info amid this crisis, so our intent was to prevent this,” Avziu said.

He claimed that any mistakes made earlier had now been fixed. “Control measures have now been significantly boosted. All media now apply and fill in forms on one address, at uslugi.gov.mk, and permits are issued after their data has been checked through the database of the central business registry,” he said.

Opposition outlets still cry foul

The enduring divisions between media in North Macedonia are a legacy of Gruevski’s authoritarian government’s decade-plus in office.

On one side are media that gravitate towards the ZNM, and are trying to restore professional standards and strengthen self-regulation in the media sphere. Some of them are now outlets that defend the Social Democrats-led government.

On the other side are Gruevski’s former megaphones, who received large sums in the form of government advertisements while he was in power and who formed the parallel journalists’ association MAN, which at the time was seeking to overshadow the ZNM. Most of these media have continued to support the VMRO DPMNE party in opposition and attack anyone that the party deems an enemy.

These media were asked to sign the journalistic code of ethics and join the media register created by the ZNM but have not done so.

Kurir is among the most prominent of such online outlets, and managed to survive Gruevski’s downfall in 2017, largely thanks to its recent takeover by Hungarian firms linked to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s PR machinery, and the subsequent inflow of Hungarian advertisement money.

In 2018, the company Adinamic Media, owned by a Hungarian national called Agnes Adamik, acquired ownership of the Kurir and Republika website and a share of the ownership of the Netpress website.

But despite the ministry’s insistence that it has now fixed the problem with the permits, the editor-in-chief of Kurir, Ljupco Cvetanovski, said that his outlet still feels discriminated against.

Cvetanovski told BIRN that the current form of censorship was “maybe not so evident and public as was first intended with the registry [of online media], but we still feel some form of censorship”.

While conceding that his site no longer encountered any problems with getting permits to work during the curfews, he said the way press conferences are being held did not allow them to ask direct questions through video link, like some other media, while questions submitted electronically often never get answered.

“We submit several questions daily [to the government press service] but only one of our questions has ever been read out at press conferences and answered,” Cvetanovski claimed.

He added that in this way the government was elegantly dodging “tough” questions – or at least giving itself more time to prepare suitable answers in advance.

Continue reading “North Macedonia Accused of Dodging Media Scrutiny in Crisis”

Montenegro Detains Opposition Activist Over Fake News About President

Posted on April 10, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Civic society groups in Montenegro have criticized the arrest on Thursday of an opposition Democratic Front activist for posting fake news about the President’s health.

On Thursday, authorities put Radovan Rakocevic from the town of Bijelo Polje in custody for 72 hours for the offence of spreading panic. Rakocevic had shared an article on Facebook from a Belgrade tabloid, Alo, which claimed that Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic had been infected with the coronavirus.

“The prosecutor believes that Rakocevic would be able to repeat the criminal offence if he was released and would continue to publish statements that would cause panic among citizens. So he was ordered into detention,” the prosecutor’s decision said.

While the Democratic Front called on the authorities to release Rakocevic, the head of the Civic Alliance, Boris Raonic, warned that the government cannot fight fake news with arrests. He said the authorities should be more transparent and inform the public about everything related to COVID-19.

He said a guest on the national public broadcaster had also “presented a conspiracy theory that could cause panic, but there was no reaction either from the prosecution or the [broadcasting] management. That gives us a new element to this story – selective justice,” Raonic told the daily newspaper Vijesti.

He was referring to a guest speaker on the public service prime time show “Corona stay home” who presented a theory that COVID-19 was a biological weapon. Economic analyst Predrag Drecun, considered to be close to ruling DPS party, has claimed the coronavirus was produced in the US by the Defense Ministry.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak became more severe in Montenegro, there had been arrests for spreading panic about it. On March 13, the Basic Court ordered 30 days in custody for Milivoje Brkovic for posting a message on Facebook that said state officials were hiding the real number of people suffering from the coronavirus in Montenegro. The country confirmed its first two cases on March 17.

On March 23, a Russian citizen was put in custody for posting on Instagram that more than a thousand people had caught COVID-19 in Montenegro. To date, Montenegro has confirmed 252 coronavirus infections, two of whom have died.

Bosnia Trying to Censor Information About Pandemic, Journalists Say

Posted on April 9, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The rights organisation Transparency International, TI, in Bosnia and Herzegovina has called on Zeljka Cvijanovic, President of the Serb-led entity, Republika Srpska, to withdraw a decree banning the spread of panic and disorder during a state of emergency, saying that the Bosnia’s constitution does not allow the entities to suspend the right to freedom of expression and opinion.

In Republika Srpska, a decree with the force of law prohibiting the spread of panic and disorder during a state of emergency came into force on Tuesday.

The decree, which follows the introduction of the state of emergency in the entity, stipulates fines of 500 to 4,500 euros for individuals and companies that spread panic and fake news through the media and social networks. Opposition parties in the RS describe the regulation as controversial.

The Board of Directors of the Association of Bosnian Journalists has meanwhile called on both Bosnian entities to ensure unhindered access to information and decisions regarding the COVID-19 epidemic in a safe and free manner, without imposing any restrictions, censorship or restrictions on journalists.

“Such an approach calls for the urgent withdrawal of decisions and regulations with legal force concerning the restriction of freedom of expression and opinion in the media and on social networks, as well as the abolition of the power of individuals, police and other security agencies to censor the media and citizens, with rapid investigations or the imposition of very high fines, as in Republika Srpska,” the Association said in a press release.

The current RS decree is almost identical to the earlier ruling banning panic and fake news that the RS government adopted on March 19.

One of the first individuals fined for violating the decree is a medical doctor, Maja Stojic Dragojevic, who is also a member of the Presidency of the largest opposition party in the RS, the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS. She was fined for writing on Facebook that there were not enough ventilators, beds, or intensive care services in the RS, and for claiming that the RS was unprepared for what is to come.

The Association of Bosnian Journalists has also warned that the government of Bosnia’s other entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, through its Ministry of the Interior and cyber-crime units, had begun monitoring information on social networks, and that five criminal proceedings had since been instituted for allegedly spreading false information and panic.

“Regardless of the emergency, it is against all democratic values to impose institutional censorship and restrictions on freedom of expression and information and to give broad authority to individuals engaged in crisis staffs or police and security agencies to interpret and ‘regulate’ journalistic rights and media freedoms according to their standards,” the association said.

The Journalists’ Association has said it will invite international organisations and European institutions for the protection of freedom of expression to respond to the censorship of information about COVID-19 in Bosnia.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, recently said measures to combat misinformation should not be abused to hinder media freedom. She warned that freedom of the media was being suppressed in several countries under the pretext of combating misinformation about the coronavirus.

Serbian Reporter’s Arrest Over Pandemic Article Draws PM’s Apology

Posted on April 2, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Serbian authorities have promised to withdraw a new regulation concerning the information flow about the pandemic after a journalist was arrested for reporting poor conditions in an important hospital.

Ana Lalic, who was released from custody on Thursday, was arrested on Wednesday and placed in 48-hours of police custody following publication of her article about conditions in the Clinical Centre of Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern province.

Her media outlet Nova.rs published the text, “KC Vojvodina about to crack: No protection for nurses”, on Wednesday. The article claimed the institution lacked basic equipment and had “chaotic working conditions at the time of the pandemic“.

Lalic claimed she tried to get comments on this from hospital officials and also from the provincial secretariat for health, but none of them responded.

The hospital issued an angry press release following the article, denying her report and announcing that it had informed the prosecutor’s office and the police “due to public disturbance and damage to its reputation”.

Lalic was detained on the first day of the application of new rule that says all information from local institutions about the pandemic must go to central Crisis Staff in Belgrade, led by Prime Minister Ana Brnabic. This alone can can further share information with the public. The government’s decision also applies to the work of the media.

“Information on health measures taken and other information related to the treatment of COVID-19 … given to the public by unauthorized persons, cannot be considered accurate and verified,” the measure says, noting “the possibility of applying regulations relating to liability and legal consequences for the spread of misinformation in a state of emergency.”

However, on Thursday, Brnabic said the government would withdraw the decision, blaming herself for any confusion caused.

“It is my fault that we brought in something like this and it is also my stupidity that when we brought it in, I did not explain it,” Brnabic told to Radio Television of Serbia, concerning the regulation.

Only hours after Nova.rs published Lalic’s article, police came to her home in Novi Sad. Her lawyer, Srdjan Kovacevic, said she was ordered to stay in Novi Sad police station for 48 hours “on suspicion that she could repeat the crime, publishing texts that cause panic and disorder”.

“They searched her apartment and kept a laptop and two mobile phones – official and private. They then brought her to the police station”, Kovacevic told to Nova.rs. He then said Lalic would stay in custody until her hearing.

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