Media freedom Archives - Page 2 of 18

Croatia Journalists: Govt is ‘Watering Down’ Anti-SLAPP Directive

Posted on July 10, 2023July 19, 2023 by BIRD

Members of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, on Monday unfurled a banner reading: “What are you afraid of?” in front of the Croatian Ministry of Justice and Administration and held a press conference where they expressed concern about the government’s position on the Anti-SLAPP Directive, calling it very “watered down”.

The purpose of regulating SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), is to deter plaintiffs and shorten court proceedings to last only as long as necessary for the court to determine that it is SLAPP, it was said at the press conference in front of the Ministry of Justice and Administration.

The president of the HND, Hrvoje Zovko, said SLAPP lawsuits were an attack on freedom of speech, used by politicians, entrepreneurs and even judges to persecute journalists in litigation and criminal cases.

“Croatia is the worst member state in the European Union [for SLAPPs]. Although the Ministry of Culture and Media has established a working group dealing with the issue … we are not satisfied. For five years, we have been listening to the declaratory promises of the government, which does nothing concrete,” he said.

He added that, although there are no significant obstacles in the Croatian legal system for the introduction of standards that would protect journalists and other SLAPP targets from pending litigation, the government has sided with the general approach of the Council of the EU, which has significantly diluted the proposal of the European Commission.

According to the latest HND research on lawsuits for damage to reputation and honour filed against journalists and the media, 945 lawsuits are active in Croatia, and the longest court case has been going on for 33 years.

“SLAPP lawsuits are a new form of attack on the journalism profession. Today, you no longer have to physically hit or attack someone, it is enough to harass them with lawsuits, and we are talking about compensation claims in the tens of millions of euros,” Zovko said.

The president of the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, and of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, SNH, Maja Sever said they had issued a joint statement of the HND and EFJ just before the parliamentary session in Strasbourg, where the Anti-SLAPP Directive will be discussed.

“In the last month, we have been watching the dilution of documents that should protect journalistic freedoms. … We are here to warn you, fulfill your promises, what are you afraid of?” she said.

Sever said an effective framework for stopping SLAPP lawsuits is not being offered because it is intended to limit the scope of the directive to narrowly defined “cross-border” cases, i.e. cases in which criminal prosecution takes place in another EU member state.

She said the new “softened” approach weakens the mechanism of early rejection of the lawsuit by proposing a restrictive definition of “manifestly unfounded cases”, abolishes the provision on compensation for damages for the targets of SLAPP lawsuits, and excludes civil claims initiated in criminal proceedings.

Members of HND submitted a letter with demands to the Minister of Justice and Administration, Ivan Malenica.

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RWB, in 2022 put Croatia in 48th place out of 180 countries included in the index. RWB said that while the media scene in Croatia has become diverse and dynamic, “the government is failing to protect journalists against legal attempts to muzzle them, and against organized crime”.

“The government itself represents a threat to press freedom,” says the RWB report, emphasizing that “defamation is a criminal offense in Croatia, and regularly invoked by politicians and business people to discourage journalists’ questions about their activities.”

Croatian President’s Ban on Newspaper Attending Conference Slated

Posted on July 5, 2023July 19, 2023 by BIRD

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has been criticised for banning the daily Jutarnji list on Tuesday without any explanation from his press conference.

Hanza Media is the owner of several Croatian daily and weekly newspapers, including Jutarnji list, Slobodna Dalmacija and many others, which Milanovic has called “a cartel”.

“It’s not a media company, it’s a cartel. The government finances them, they have no shame, they organize a gypsy wedding in Split, not a Roma one. It’s not a media, so whoever writes there is not a journalist for me,” Milanovic said in response to a question asking why Jutarnji list was not allowed to attend the press event.

Milanovic was referring to the celebrations in Split of the 80th anniversary of Slobodna Dalmacija, which took place last month and was attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

“I was shocked by the email message from the spokesperson of the President’s Office, Nikola Jelic, who simply wrote to me that my accreditation to follow the press conference of the President was not approved,” journalist Kresimir Zabec told Hina news agency.

“This is the first time that something like this has happened in my many years of journalistic work. No president, prime minister, minister, or state institution has ever done this, no matter how much they may not have agreed with my views,” Zabec added.

He added that he was worried by the President’s statement that he, Zabec, was not a real journalist. Who a journalist is, he said, should be judged by newsroom editors, not politicians.

“It is a terribly dangerous thesis for our work and for the whole of society that politicians say who is a journalist for them and who is not,” he said.

“During his mandate, President Milanovic has systematically attacked institutions, uses inappropriate vocabulary and encourages exclusivity and division in society. This kind of attack on independent media from a position of power deserves every condemnation,” the Minister of Culture and Media, Nina Obuljen Korzinek, said on Tuesday.

The President’s spokesman, Nikola Jelic, said on Tuesday that he was shocked by the message that Obuljen Korzinek had sent to journalists and the public.

“I am shocked by the message that the minister in charge of the media sends to journalists and the entire Croatian public when she assists the public political wedding of Plenkovic’s government and Hanza Media. From the position of decision-making power on (non)funding of the media, only the HDZ [the ruling Croatian Democratic Union] can defend the independence of the media so falsely,” Jelic wrote on Twitter.

Along with this message, he attached a photo from the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of Slobodna Dalmacija with Plenkovic and members of the government.

Maja Sever, president of the European Federation of Journalists, on Twitter, called the President’s ban “a completely unacceptable, undemocratic move … It is your job and your duty to answer to the public and the press.“

The president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, Hrvoje Zovko, also called it an unacceptable practice.

Kosovo Govt Condemned for Suspending Broadcaster’s Business Certificate

Posted on June 15, 2023June 29, 2023 by BIRD

Local and international media organizations accused the Kosovo government of attempting to curb media freedom after the Ministry of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade suspended the business certificate of the private broadcaster Klan Kosova.

The ministry on Wednesday suspended its business certificate and initiated a criminal complaint against the company, responsible persons within it, and officials from the Business Registration Agency, on suspicion of misuse of official duties as well as misuse of economic authorizations.

According to a decision shared by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, the ministry suspended Klan Kosova’s business certificate because the owners’ residential address is allegedly registered as “Peje-Serbia and Gjakove-Serbia… [which is] in violation with the basic principles of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo”. Both of these towns are in Kosovo, not Serbia.

The TV channel remains on air while the Independent Media Commission, IMC, an institution responsible for the regulation, management and oversight of the broadcasters, said it was analyzing the case.

Klan Kosova called the decision illegal and “unfair, arbitrary and with autocratic premises … and an attempt to violate the freedom of the media”.

Klan Kosova said the claim that their owners’ address was given as Peje-Serbia and Gjakove-Serbia “stemmed from a speculative article from an online portal, only a day ago”.

The AJK called the decision “unprecedented in the recent history of Kosovo, and a direct attempt to dictate and control the media content of Klan Kosova”.

It expressed concern for the staff of Klan Kosova who will be directly affected by “this arbitrary decision,” and claimed that the decision “was taken to send a message to other media, and is indisputable proof that freedom of the media and expression has never been more at risk than they are currently”.

Ricardo Gutierrez, General Secretary of the European Federation of Journalists, also expressed concern.

“Withdrawing a business certificate of a media company is an extremely serious act. Especially when we’re talking about a country’s leading private broadcaster. Shame on [Prime Minister] Albin Kurti and his government,” Gutierrez wrote on Twitter.

Ex-MP of Ruling Party to Lead Albania’s Public Broadcaster

Posted on June 13, 2023June 29, 2023 by BIRD

The board of directors at Albania’s public broadcaster appointed Alfred Peza, a former MP of the ruling Socialist Party, as General Director on Tuesday, local media reported, raising fresh questions about the independence of the service.

The chairman of the board, Leka Bungo, told BIRN that Peza’s appointment does not violate the law, which forbids any member of a political party or anyone who served as an MP in the last two parliamentary mandates from heading the Albanian Broadcasting Service.

Though his MP mandate expired in 2017, 56-year-old Peza remained a director of the Socialist Party until September 2021.

“He has supplied to us a document that he is not member of the [Socialist] Party,” Bungo said.

As head of the richest media group in the country, Peza will take charge of an annual budget of more than 20 million euros, collected mainly from taxpayers. Peza previously worked in private media before entering politics with the Socialist Party in 2013, the year the party returned to power.

His appointment comes after the Socialist-controlled parliament in 2021 elected the party’s former spokeswoman, Armela Krasniqi, as chairman of the Audiovisual Media Authority, Albania’s nominally independent broadcasting regulator.

Kosovo Journalists Left Unprotected in Violent Protests in North

Posted on June 2, 2023June 6, 2023 by BIRD

Two BIRN journalists were among several journalists from both Albanian and Serbian-language media stuck for hours in a café in the Serb-majority municipality of Zvecan on May 30, after the protests became violent.

While NATO peacekeepers from KFOR and ethnic Serbs clashed in protests against the town’s newly elected ethnic Albanian mayor, the journalists remained for three hours inside the café.

“The situation inside the café was quite alarming; even when we were inside it, we were attacked,” said Shkodrane Dakaj, who together with cameraman Naser Fejza was among the journalists stuck in the café.

She recalled that every time they tried to take photos or videos, “even when we approached the windows of the café, we were attacked by protesters”.

“The windows of the café broke; they [protesters] threw rocks at it when we approached the windows to film. The situation was very difficult,” she explained.

The journalists managed to leave safely only after three hours, with the help of the owner.

“It was impossible to go inside the municipality building or another place secured by the Kosovo Police, because there was a KFOR cordon in front of the municipality building that we had to pass,” Dakaj said, explaining that KFOR “did not accept the request of the journalists to open the cordon and let them pass through.”

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, told BIRN that it had registered 20 separate attacks against media crews since Friday. Protesters threw rocks and eggs at journalists, pushed them, forced them to delete footage, took away their cameras and verbally assaulted them. Vehicles of media crews were vandalized.

KFOR and Kosovo police rarely interfered, even when they were present during the attacks on journalists.

Adelina Ahmeti, a BIRN journalist who has been on the ground in Leposavic, said that “the main problems are safe spaces for journalists; there is no specific area for journalists to stay and report from”.

“We are exposed from all fronts and the attacks can be very frequent,” said Ahmeti, who together with cameraman Jetmir Hoxha was pushed by masked protesters in Leposavic on May 30.

No strategy to protect journalists

BIRN’s journalist, Shkodrane Dakaj, while reporting live from Zvecan. Photo: BIRN/Afrim Ejupi

Kosovo journalists say reporting on the ground in the recent protests in Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo has been difficult because of the lack of a strategy by the authorities.

Albioneta Ademi, from the AJK, told BIRN that “the authorities responsible for security in the north do not have a plan or strategy for the security of journalists reporting in tense situations, such as these”.

She said: “It is not the first time that similar situations are being repeated in the north”, adding that, nonetheless, “a record number of cases has been recorded in a few days”.

Kosovo Serbs gathered to protest for the fifth day on Thursday in front of municipality buildings in Zubin Potok, Leposavic, and Zvecan, calling on the mayors elected on April 23 in extraordinary elections boycotted by ethnic Serbs not to use the buildings and for the Kosovo Police to leave the area.

The first attack on media crews was registered on the first day of work of the mayors of the three municipalities, on May 26, which also was the first day of the protests.

Ahmeti said KFOR soldiers were very close when journalists were pushed by mainly masked protesters, who also verbally assaulted the journalists, but did not attempt to interfere.

This attack started five meters from the cordon of the KFOR soldiers and none of them came closer to the journalists, for safety; there was no reaction from them,” she said.

BIRN’s journalist, Adelina Ahmeti, while reporting from Leposavic. Photo: BIRN/Jetmir Hoxha

Ahmeti said the police “offered a space at the police station in Leposavic in case something happens, but the station is 300 meters from where the media are positioned.” Meanwhile, “KFOR has not offered any strategy for journalists, at least that’s what we gathered during short communications with them”.

Meanwhile in Zvecan, journalists do not have any direct communication with the police. Dakar said: “Police officials are in the municipal building in Zvecan but we do not have an official contact with them. Very rarely a police official can be seen outside the municipal building, behind the KFOR soldiers’ cordon”.

According to Dakaj, the attacks on journalists in Zvecan have taken place outside the KFOR cordon, and “there has been no reaction from the NATO mission or from the Kosovo Police.”

BIRN asked KFOR whether it has a strategy to protect journalists on the ground and the reasoning behind soldiers not interfering in attacks but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Ademi told BIRN that the police shared the same concerns as the AJK on the threats journalists face on the ground, “but have not had any strategy”. KFOR has not made any response to the AJK’s concerns.

Local Serb Called ‘Traitor’ for Sheltering Journalists

Mladen Perovic from Zvecan owns the café where journalists found shelter during the violent clashes between protesters and KFOR soldiers on May 29.

Perovic told the media on May 31, that “when I arrived at around 10 am journalists were already there, it was a good place to report and naturally when I opened, they all went in the café”. He opened the cafe at around 10 am, “when it was obvious the protest would last”, so people could refreshen themselves and use the bathroom.

After the protest escalated, he said he “ran away from the café” to be safe “but after some time, when the situation stabilised, concerned about my private property, I went back to my bar where the journalists were”.

They had been trapped there for around three hours, from around 2 pm to 5 pm, as it had been the only safe place for them to be.

Perovic helped the journalists leave the café safely. He told the media on Wednesday that he wanted to close his café and had asked the protesters if they would allow them safe passage; they had responded that “nobody will touch them”, meaning the Albanian-language journalists.

Nonetheless, Perovic said he was later pointed out as a “traitor” for having assisted the journalists. “I do not know what I have done to be called a traitor and be targeted,” he said.

Assaults, broken windows and nationalist symbols

BIRN’s car was damaged on May 31, in Leposavic, by unknown protesters. Photo: BIRN/Shkodrane Dakaj

Media crews have been both physically and verbally assaulted by protesters.

Jul Kasapi, from A2, the CNN branch in Albania, told BIRN that on May 29 around a dozen protesters gathered around him and his team and forced them “to delete footage”.

“Alongside the tense situations between the protesters and KFOR created in Zvecan (particularly on Monday when 30 KFOR soldiers and around 50 protesters were injured) and when our (journalists) lives were endangered, another problem … has been Serbian citizens interfering with our live broadcasts,” Dakaj explained, referring to protesters getting in front of cameras and showing nationalist symbols.

In Leposavic, when BIRN journalist Ahmeti asked about the attacks against journalists, Zoran Todic, former Leposavic mayor who has been negotiating with KFOR on behalf of the protesters, answered: “I am sorry, people here are protesting peacefully. Yesterday [on Wednesday] you came to me to express the issue and we have talked. People here are concerned, as I see the problem, about being filmed via phones and not camera. There isn’t any problem at all.”

Protesters have moved in front of cameras holding the letter “Z”, a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and tried to prevent journalists from filming either by moving fully in front of the cameras, or, in the worst situations, by pushing the journalists and trying to get their cameras, or throw them on the ground.

Most of the Albanian-language media that have reported on the ground have had their vehicles damaged with broken windows and blown tires, but also vandalized with nationalist symbols.

Some of the media houses with vandalised vehicles include Albania’s Top Channel, Euronews, A2 CNN, Panorama and Kosovo Albanian-language media RTV Dukagjini, Teve1, Koha, Syri, Periskopi, ATV, Kanal10.

On May 30, protesters threw an explosive device at the taxi the Radio Free Europe crew were traveling with in Zubin Potok. There were no injuries. One day earlier, the car of the media crew of Albanian-language Kosovo broadcaster TeVe1 was set on fire. Two BIRN vehicles were also damaged and vandalized.

The tires of the car in which Ahmeti traveled to Leposavic on May 29 were blown and vandalized with the “4S” symbol, which stands for the moto “Samo sloga Srbina spasava” (Only unity saves the Serbs). The RKS symbol, which stands for the Republic of Kosovo, was covered in the license plates.

Meanwhile, the windows of the car in which Dakaj and the crew had traveled to Zvecan on May 31 were broken.

BIRN has reported the cases to the Kosovo Police. It remains to be seen whether justice will be done.

In May, a BIRN analysis of 62 incidents involving firearms, knives, stones and physical assault since 2017 concluded that police and prosecutors in Kosovo are struggling to solve violent crimes, particularly when they occur in the mainly Serb north, where half of the cases, 31, occurred in the four northern Serb-majority municipalities.

Of these 31 cases, 13 were attacks against journalists which occurred between 2018 and 2022. The court ordered one month’s detention in one case and the police filed a complaint in another.

BIRN was not able to confirm if any other suspects have been identified or arrested in the other cases.

Kosovo Ruling Party Criticised for Electing Supporter to Media Regulator Board

Posted on May 25, 2023June 1, 2023 by BIRD

Local and international media organisations expressed concern on Wednesday after Kosovo’s parliament voted Luljeta Aliu-Krasniqi as member of the board of the Independent Media Commission, IMC.

“We regret to see this development, as it runs counter to the process of IMC’s depolitisation that [the ruling Vetevendosje party] VV had started. This election is a major step towards political recapture, in the very same way it was done in the past,” the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, said in a statement.

Aliu-Krasniqi, in many public appearances on TV debates in recent years, has been seen as supportive of Kosovo’s ruling party, and the ECPMF said that “in no way can she be considered independent”.

“In light of Kosovo’s membership bid, we will immediately initiate exchange with the Council of Europe and PACE to inform them about this unsettling development that will have a major impact on the independence of IMC,” ECPMF said.

Aliu-Krasniqi took the IMC seat with the support of 48 votes in parliament.

Despite Aliu-Krasniqi’s election, the IMC board remains unfunctional because of a lack of enough members to make up a quorum. The vote to elect another board member failed on Wednesday, as none of four male candidates received enough votes from MPs.

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, said that the IMC should preserve its political and party independence “in order to carry out the work of monitoring and regulating the audio-visual scene in Kosovo in an unaffected manner”.

“The election of Aliu-Krasniqi goes in contradiction to this effort and could contribute the anti-media climate that this government has created in many cases during last two years,” AJK said.

“The vote by the ruling party, Vetevendosje, of a public advocate of its policies in government openly shows this party’s intent to put independent media institutions under its control,” it added.

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

Hadzi Vasileva: Attacks on North Macedonia Journalists are Moving Online

Posted on May 3, 2023May 16, 2023 by BIRD

Iskra Hadzi Vasileva has been working as a public prosecutor in North Macedonia for eight years.

In an interview with BIRN, she says that apart from Instagram, she doesn’t use social networks herself.

Her distance from the online world is a “double-edged sword”, she admits. On the one hand, it protects her privacy, but on the other, information gets to her more slowly.

Hadzi Vasileva is one of the few prosecutors in Skopje’s Public Prosecution Office who knows how to behave in front of a camera, and says prosecutors have to communicate better with the public.

“It is not very comfortable when you have to make a statement to the public because the courtroom is your territory, you know the arguments and the facts that you have to present,” she says. “But we have to find the balance.”

She believes this is why public and communications training at the Academy for Judges and Public Prosecutors is so important.

Last year there were four cases involving attacks against journalists. Photo by Robert Atanasovski

Threats to journalists shifting to the internet

The public first encountered her last October, when the Association of Journalists and the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that for the first time a prosecutor had been appointed specifically to handle cases where journalists were under attack.

This was the first appointment of its kind in the region, and came at the request of the Journalists’ Association.

The move was motivated by the Journalists’ Association’s claim that a culture of impunity operated in North Macedonia, which was why the number of unsolved cases of journalists being attacked physically or online was rising.

After half a year of working on such cases, Hadzi Vasileva says that at the start she was not sufficiently aware of what the actual mandate would mean in practice.

“Now, I understand it more and more, as I communicate with you [journalists] and as I enter more into this subject and sphere,” she said.

She describes this activity as a preventive measure: “If we show a strong commitment and efficiency through specific subjects, I hope it will have the effect of fewer threats.”

Hadzi Vasileva says the statistics of crimes against journalists are improving. Last year, there were four such cases, two of which were handled by the Skopje Prosecutor’s Office.

“One case was closed, and the reason for that was that the identity of the user of a Twitter account could not be obtained. The other case was a physical attack on a television crew, and there was a verdict based on a guilty plea. Тhe court found the defendant guilty with protective supervision, which is a fair sanction that the Prosecutor’s Office welcomes.”

The prosecution is acting with speed and special attention in cases where journalists are the victims, Hadzi Basileva said. Photo by BIRN

The prosecutor also recalled the case of the portal Dokazm.mk, which, among others, targeted two journalists.

The portal owner was convicted of several crimes, including hate speech, as he had used the portal to conduct smear campaigns. As a result, the two journalists were exposed to hate speech through social networks. The first-instance verdict came with a prison sentence.

Hadzi Vasileva says they currently have another case before them, in the early stages, related to sexual harassment through a social network, where a journalist reported the case аs a victim.

The Prosecution Office has noticed a trend in which “the number of physical attacks is decreasing, but at the same time, the number of online threats is increasing”.

When it comes to physical attacks on journalists, Hadzi Vasileva notes that new amendments to the criminal code approved this year in parliament have improved the protection of journalists and media workers.

“In the case of some criminal acts, the legislature has intervened and recognized the quality of journalists or media workers to whom it has given increased protection.”

In practice, means that attacks on journalist will be more severely punished.

But she also noted that journalist victims in several cases, for several reasons, have not declared that the reason for the attack was related to their profession.

“That’s why we are trying to have contact through the public relations service of the Prosecution Office with the Association of Journalists in terms of tracking and recording the cases, to compare the data for accurate statistics,” she said.

The Prosecutor’s Office also monitors proceedings in cases in which journalists are not harmed but are reported or are called as witnesses to give statements in proceedings, so that those proceedings are not used as pressure on freedom of expression.

There are no formal criteria who can declare itself as a journalist in front of the prosecution. Photo by Robert Atanasovski

Race against time for evidence

In cases concerning journalists, but also in other cases in which crimes are committed on the internet, the possibilities of investigation are sometimes limited, she said, “due to the anonymity that the internet offers”.

“The speed of the action is important, but also the speed of reporting the case,” she stressed.

In that race against time for evidence, the Prosecutor’s Office, through the police, cooperates with the operators of social networks, which are located in other countries, primarily the US.

“Usually, we go through the Ministry of the Interior, where there is a contact point for cooperation with the operators, and they also have their own policies that they act on,” she noted.

“In practice, there are examples of hate speech in our country, but the operator in the foreign country responds that in their jurisdiction, it is [deemed] freedom of speech. It has to be a crime both here and there,” she pointed out

The prosecutor clarified that the problem is termed the “volatility” of evidence, which means that the evidence is rapidly changing.

“If you don’t fix and secure the evidence right away, you’re likely to lose it in some cases,” she warned.

“In addition, each state has its own jurisdiction and norms regarding how long operators have to keep some of the data [and] due to the protection of personal data, these are limited periods of time, which can be electronic evidence in an investigation. In our country it is a year, in some countries it is six months, even shorter.”

But when it comes to attacks on journalists, Hadzi Vasileva assures that the Prosecutor’s Office is committed to act “with particular attention and speed”.

This does not mean that other victims do not receive appropriate treatment, but for journalists, she adds, “it is important that in addition to the protection of physical integrity, you also have a broader target of protection, that is freedom of expression, that is, in the broadest sense, the fundamental of our society.”

The prosecution does not act ‘ex officio’ on all complaints posted by journalists in the online media. Photo by BIRN

Not every online threat is hate speech

Hate speech in the online space is one thing, and a civil suit for defamation and slander is another, she notes.

“We have many examples in which a person who has been offended thinks he can also seek protection, but it is worthwhile to explain to the public that there is a difference.”

For a crime of hate speech, it is necessary to prove that the perpetrator in his or her speech intended in a broad sense, through expression, or representation of an idea, image or text, “to incite discrimination or violence, based on any of the discriminatory grounds against a person or group”.

This crime requires “an intensity and effect that constitutes the dissemination of such ideas and harms public order”.

Defamation or slander, on the other hand, refers to “injury of the personal or moral integrity of the individual, for which there is civil liability if the person’s dignity is injured”.

The Dokazm.mk case, in which content was published on a portal that did not respect journalistic professional standards, also raised the question of how and in what way the Prosecutor’s Office decides whether someone is a journalist or not.

“Formal criteria for the determination of a journalist before the Public Prosecutor’s Office do not exist, because they do not exist in our country either,” she cautions.

Investigations must contain evidence for prosecutors to act

“Some articles are of great interest for us. We discuss those things with our colleagues the very next day, when we come to work,” says Hadzi Vasileva, noting that serious journalistic investigations may present an obligation for the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate proceedings and investigate suspicions of crime.

However, the public impression often is that prosecutors are “deaf” to serious journalistic articles that reveal suspicions of crime and corruption.

She maintains that the responsiveness of her Prosecutor’s Office in this regard is good, but says also what her colleagues often repeat, which is that not every voice heard obliges prosecutors to act immediately.

She says published findings of journalists indicating corruption or crime must “contain enough clues and evidence and be of adequate quality to be the basis for criminal proceedings”.

She says that press reports do not always touch on issues that are for the Prosecutor’s Office. “Some of them may relate to systemic failures, or weaknesses”, she concludes.

Attack on Kosovo Journalist Condemned

Posted on April 12, 2023May 16, 2023 by BIRD

Journalists’ associations and political leaders on Wednesday condemned the assault on Kosovo journalist Valon Syla who received medical treatment after the attack in a Pristina neighbourhood.

Kosovo Police confirmed that Syla was assaulted in Pristina’s Bregu i Diellit (Sunny Hill) neighbourhood around 22:30 on Tuesday. He was going home after participating in a TV debate.

“The victim received [medical] treatment while the others [attackers] fled the scene in a car with local licence plates,” police said in a statement.

Pristina Basic Prosecution said that Syla was assaulted by three persons and sustained body injuries.

No arrest has been made.

Speaking from Pristina hospital after receiving treatment, Syla told TV Dukagjini that he was assaulted by “three Islamic fanatics”.

“It all happened too quickly,” Syla, who is CeO and Director of Kosovo news portal Gazeta Metro, said.

Through a Facebook post on Wednesday, Syla alleged that the attack is linked with comments he made on social media about a local imam who received a Mercedes car as a gift some days ago from worshippers, on the day he retired.

“I don’t know if anyone ordered it [the attack] but it was enough to cause serious injuries on my head and my left hand,” Syla said.

The attack was condemned by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, which asked for an “urgent investigation” into the incident.

“This attack is totally unacceptable and is an attempt to hinder and undermine freedom of speech and freedom of media in Kosovo,” the AJK said.

“AJK calls on relevant institutions to take necessary measures to urgently arrest those responsible for the attack and bring them before the justice,” it added.

The attack was also condemned by the European Federation of Journalists. “We call on the police and prosecutor to investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice,” EFJ said on Twitter.

Condemning the attack and wishing the journalist a speedy recovery, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, on Wednesday called it “intolerable and unacceptable”.

“Disagreements on beliefs and positions cannot and should not be a cause for physical attacks. In a democratic society which we proudly present and promote, we cannot allow that fear from free speech overweight freedom of speech,” Kurti said during a cabinet meeting.

Belgrade Mayor Files Defamation Lawsuits Against BIRN

Posted on March 29, 2023April 4, 2023 by BIRD

Aleksandar Sapic, the mayor of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, has filed two separate defamation lawsuits against BIRN Serbia, its editor and journalists, claiming that their reporting damaged his reputation and caused him mental anguish.

Sapic is suing BIRN Serbia, editor-in-chief Milorad Ivanovic and investigative reporters Jelena Veljkovic and Aleksandar Djordjevic for their reporting on his villa in the Italian coastal city of Trieste

He is also suing BIRN Serbia, Ivanovic and investigative reporter Radmilo Markovic over an article about the legalisation of extensions to Sapic’s mansion in Belgrade’s Bezanijska Kosa neighbourhood.

He is seeking six million Serbian dinars (around 50,000 euros) in damages in each case – a total of around 100,000 euros.

“By publishing falsehoods, the accused have caused irreparable damage to the plaintiff in terms of mental anguish due to the violation of [his] honour, reputation and human dignity, which called into question the plaintiff’s overall moral values, which he enjoys within a certain social environment,” both lawsuits allege.

BIRN Serbia editor-in-chief Ivanovic said the lawsuits were another example of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, SLAPPs, which are aimed at intimidating journalists and discouraging them from reporting about individuals and topics of public interest.

He added that court practice in Serbia shows that judges do not award damages in such large amounts as Sapic is seeking from BIRN, and that the aim of the mayor’s lawsuits is to expose the media organisation, its editors and journalists to financial costs in order to exhaust its resources.

“BIRN will continue to investigate topics of public interest, keep institutions, politicians and public officials in check, and publish stories that the public has the right to know about so that they can make informed decisions,” said Ivanovic.

The aim of SLAPPs is to drain the target’s financial and psychological resources and chill critical voices to the detriment of public participation, according to a report on SLAPP lawsuits in Serbia published in 2022 by Article 19, the American Bar Association Centre for Human Rights and the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, NUNS.

Bulgaria Media Report Fresh Cases of Intimidation

Posted on March 15, 2023April 3, 2023 by BIRD

Bulgarian journalists and online media face fresh instances of what media watchdogs describe as possible strategic lawsuits, or SLAPPs, and even arrests.

On March 15, media reported that the journalist and publisher Ivan Atanassov had been arrested on Tuesday for 24 hours following an anonymous claim that he was in possession of ancient coins and objects of cultural and historical values, without being registered as a private collector.

Atanasov is the publisher of the regional website sakarnews.info, focused on the south-central town of Harmanli, and is also part of the team behind the anti-corruption online platform zaistinata.com (For the Truth), which includes Dimiter Petzov, who in 2020 was arrested for possession of drugs in what he described as an act of intimidation.

In a statement, zaistinata.com wrote that a likely factor in Atanasov’s arrest were his articles critical of the work of the local administrations in Harmanli, Topolovgrad and Svilengrad – and that he was working on a story about potential voting fraud in favour of the GERB party, which has previously been associated with similar misdoings.

“I guess I overdid it with the criticisms of GERB and the Ministry of Interior,” Atanassov told Sega.bg ironically on his release on Wednesday.

GERB, headed by three-time PM Boyko Borissov, has not responded to this version of the events.

On March 8, the insurance company Lev Ins filed a lawsuit for 1 million leva (500,000 euros) in the Sofia City Court against the respected online media outlet Mediapool.

The company felt offended by an article from journalist Tsvetelina Sokolova from September 27 that said Bulgarian drivers might lose their liability insurance in the European Green Card System when traveling internationally from January 1 2023, due to the big debts run up by Lev Ins.

The article included a statement by interim financial minister Rositsa Velkova who said: “There is a serious risk that our national office will be excluded from the Green Card system.”

On the same day, watchdog organisation Reporters Without Border described the lawsuit as “abusive”.

The Association for European Journalists – Bulgaria expressed support for Mediapool and demanded Lev Ins to withdraw the “shameful” case. ”It is absurd for a media outlet to be sued for quoting a minister’s speech by referring to an official transcript,” it said.

On March 14, AEJ-Bulgaria initiated a donation campaign for Mediapool which raised 5,000 euro in a day: “The significant amount that the defendant must provide in order to adequately participate in the case is probably one of the reasons why the insurance company filed such a large claim.”

The latest developments are part of a long line of acts of intimidation against critical journalists. Well-known journalist Slavi Angelov was assaulted by masked men in early 2020. Early last year, several journalists and activists received threats.

In 2021, BIRN looked in-depth into the problems of Bulgaria’s media landscape while the country is in a cycle of elections, which as of 2023, is ongoing.

In 2022, the World Press Freedom Index listed Bulgaria in 91st place, a slight improvement from 112nd position in the 2021 report.

Anti-government protests between 2020-2021 were associated with several instances of physical violence against journalists from the authorities.

“The few independent voices in Bulgaria work under constant pressure,” the most recent report by Reporters Without Borders says.It added: “Corruption, insufficient independence and low efficiency of the justice system make the state often toothless vis-a-vis press freedom violations. Independent media and investigative journalists are regularly victims of abusive procedures, or SLAPPs. [Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation]”.