Tag: balkan insight

‘I Was Powerless’: Serbian Women Detail Devastating Impact of Revenge Porn

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Confiding in her sister and a friend, the three of them composed an email to the porn site asking for the video to be taken down. Pornhub, which has over 130 million visits per day, obliged. But days later the video was back under a different heading.

She wrote again, and the video has since disappeared, but Marina lives with the threat that it may resurface at any time. Pornhub did not respond to a request for comment.

“I don’t talk about it with a lot of people,” Marina said. “I feel like everyone would judge me if they knew and blame me for not reporting him or doing more about it.”

“I want to cry when I think about it even today. Somehow, it reminds me how powerless I am, or was.”

Marina was one of 28 women in Serbia interviewed by BIRN about their experiences of revenge porn; some said intimate videos of them had circulated on Telegram groups with tens of thousands of members, others on porn sites.

Coupled with months of monitoring of Telegram groups and data from police and prosecutors, the picture that emerges is one of systematic failure on the part of the Serbian legal system to protect the victims of revenge porn, a form of gender-based violence.

Victims are exposed to blackmail, public shaming and emotional trauma. Few have the resources to fight back.

Today, explicit photos and videos of Serbian women are being shared on at least 16 Telegram groups, BIRN has found, the biggest of them boasting almost 50,000 members.

“You feel like the whole world will collapse if anyone sees it, finds it, passes it on further,” said another victim, a 28 year-old woman from the Serbian capital, Belgrade. “I was horrified for a month; I was shaking at every message and call.”

None of the victims quoted in this story are identified by their real names in order to protect their privacy.


Infographic: BIRN.

A safe place for abusers

The term ‘revenge porn’ refers to the sharing of private, sexually explicit photos or videos of another person without their consent, often with the purpose of causing embarrassment or distress. Some activists specialised in this area say a more accurate term would be ‘image-based sexual abuse’.

Using advanced search bots, BIRN spent several months monitoring Telegram and was able to identify 13 active groups sharing private, explicit material, with several thousand users posting daily.


Infographic: BIRN.

At one point, a video of Jelena was in there too.

Jelena told BIRN she had been in a committed relationship when she began suspecting that her boyfriend had hidden cameras in the flat they shared.

“We were spending time in that flat, having sex in the bedroom, and he was filming it all and watching it later,” she said. Her boyfriend confessed and showed her all the footage.

“There was footage on those files from every day for the last year, and it wasn’t just with me but various other girls,” she said. Her boyfriend threatened to publish the videos if she reported him to the police; undeterred, Jelena did go to the police, twice. But on both occasions officers doubted her account and refused to search the apartment, citing a lack of evidence.

Then a friend called her to say there was a video of her being shared in a Telegram group.

“He published videos in a closed group where you can only enter if you have an invite,” Jelena told BIRN.

Users enjoy complete anonymity; messages are sent almost every minute, some with photos or videos apparently taken from porn websites, but others with material that appears to be private.

There is no information on how the content was created or whether the people they feature have given permission for the files to be shared. Often there is some information, however – links to the Instagram profiles of the women, or their Viber or WhatsApp numbers.

The result is often a barrage of messages to women from anonymous men asking for sex.


Infographic: BIRN.

Telegram’s Terms of Service prohibits the sharing of “illegal pornographic content on publicly viewable Telegram channels”. The platform has an email through which users can report such content.

This investigation, however, shows that some Telegram groups in Serbia are violating those rules with impunity.

In a written response to BIRN, a Telegram press officer wrote that “since its launch, Telegram has actively moderated harmful content on its platform – including the publication of revenge porn.”

“Our moderators proactively monitor public parts of the app as well as accepting user reports in order to remove content that breaches our terms.”

Legal issues

Revenge porn, on its own, is not defined as a criminal offence in Serbia.

In order for police or prosecutors to get involved, the case needs to involve elements of blackmail, harassment, or stalking. Otherwise, victims have to initiate a private lawsuit, within three months of discovery of the content.

That’s what a police officer told Ivana to do, after she went to the police aged 19 to report an ex-boyfriend.

Their breakup had unleashed months of stalking that became so intense that Ivana had to move apartment and block her ex-boyfriend on all her social media profiles. But he continued sending emails and contacting her family, before finally threatening to release intimate video of them together.

The threat was real; one night, Ivana recalled, she suddenly received 100 friend requests on Facebook from strangers, many featuring offensive messages. What followed, she said, were “a few days of torture and crying, worrying about who would see it.”

With the help of friends, Ivana set about removing the video from various websites. Then she went to the police.

“The inspector listened to me. He did not blame me for anything, especially because I told him about the violence in the relationship and said that he would call him [the ex-boyfriend] but that there was not much he could do,” Ivana said. “I had to file a private lawsuit, if I wanted, because he was posting the video without permission.”

After the officer spoke to the ex-boyfriend, the harassment stopped.

“If there’s any message a woman can take from my experience, it’s that no one has the right to do this to anyone and that no one ‘deserves’ something like this,” Ivana told BIRN.

Explicit photos and videos of Serbian women are being shared on at least 16 Telegram groups, BIRN has found, the biggest of them boasting almost 50,000 members.

Mirjana Stajkovac, a high-tech crime prosecutor, said that revenge porn should be defined as a criminal offence under Serbian law.

“Everyone has the right to send their intimate material to others. But it has opened new doors for misuse. And then the person suffers consequences that can be devastating for their mental health and the members of that family,” Stajkovac told BIRN.

In May 2022, the Autonomous Women’s Centre, an NGO, submitted an initiative to the Serbian Justice Ministry asking that revenge porn be included in the criminal code, but nothing came of it.

The Centre says that it receives at least one call per week from women of all ages who have been affected by the problem.

Many of the women who shared their experiences with BIRN said they had been in committed relationships and trusted their partners when they agreed to be photographed or filmed; they said they believed it to be a “one-off” and that the material would be deleted.

Olivera had lived with her partner for years and has a child with him.

When he asked to take photos of her naked, she did not hesitate; they were building a life together, and she trusted him, she said.

“I didn’t think anything negative for a single moment,” Olivera told BIRN. “He bought me all kinds of halters, bras, panties, SM gear, socks, you name it.”

They would look at the photos together and she believed he deleted them. But he hadn’t.

After nine years, Olivera ended the relationship. Six months later she received a message from her ex containing screenshots of photos of her, published on a porn site. He sent the same pictures to her mother, brothers, friends and male relatives.

Olivera went to the police; eventually she was given full custody of their child and her ex-partner was banned from approaching or contacting her in any way. “A very ugly, sad and unpleasant situation, but I got over it; life goes on,” she said.

Minors


Mirjana Stajkovac, a high-tech crime prosecutor, said that revenge porn should be defined as a criminal offense under Serbian law. Photo: Stefan Milovojevic.

Some of the women interviewed by BIRN were minors when they became victims of revenge porn.

Katarina was 15 years-old when she began dating an 18 year-old from a small town in Serbia. They talked about sex, but Katarina told him she wasn’t ready and believed he understood.

After a few months, they went to Serbia’s Tara Mountain, where Katarina came down with a fever. She drank a cup of tea and fell asleep. Today, she believes her then boyfriend drugged her.

She remembers nothing from the night, but after they broke up a few months later, video of her appeared on countless porn sites and in Telegram groups. Katarina had no idea the video had ever been made.

“You can see me on the video, but not him, nothing but his genitals,” she told BIRN. “He wrote to my sister saying he did it to re-educate me, because how dare I break up with him.”

Alongside the clip was Katarina’s full name, her home city, Instagram profile and phone number. Katarina went to the police, several times, but her complaints fell on deaf ears.

“They said I was exaggerating because we were still in a relationship, so maybe he couldn’t wait any longer because he is a man, and he has needs,” Katarina said, recalling the police response.

“More than three years have passed and I started to fight with the problems in my head only now when I moved to another city. The consequences are permanent, and nobody reacted.”

With a staff of four, the Prosecutor’s Office for High-Tech Crime is the only one dealing with such cases; they review reports of revenge porn on a daily basis.

One of the cases it is handling, concerning Telegram, has been dragging on for roughly two years but is being investigated as child pornography, not specifically as revenge porn, BIRN has learned.

The Telegram group ‘Nislijke’ [Nis Women] was initially exposed by one of its victims, Stasa Ivkovic, who took to Twitter to say her picture and social media profile had been circulating in the group, focussed on the city of Nis. Police arrested the group’s administrator, Nemanja Stojiljkovic, in March 2021, but the case is still ongoing.

“Many of the victims I talked to are very upset,” said Stajkovac. “Most of these people cry while giving their testimony, which is very upsetting for me as well. I really trust them.”

Victims, she said, should save the evidence as soon as they detect that something has happened – screenshots of messages, pictures, posts, and profiles from which content was sent.

“In every possible way, please, they should screenshot everything and not sweep it under the rug, believing it will pass. It will not pass, and the consequences can be dire.”

Victims should go to their nearest police station and hand over their phone for expert examination, she said. And take any witness they might have who could corroborate their account.

“These actions taken by these people are criminal acts for us, and we will not look at it lightly as a phenomenon in a society that should not be sanctioned,” Stajkovac told BIRN.

“Those people will not relax so easily and think that they can do whatever they want. If the predator feels that someone is on his tail and chasing him, he will make a mistake, and we will catch him in that mistake.”

Attacks on Critical Journalists’ Property in Bosnia’s Banja Luka Condemned

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The Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina has condemned the attacks on the vehicles of two journalists from Banja Luka, a day after they criticised a law that threatens freedom of speech.

The attacks on the cars of two journalists from Banja Luka, administrative centre of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, discovered early on March 9, a day after they criticised a new law on defamation, was “extremely worrying,” the Delegation stated. 

Nikola Moraca, journalist of EruoBlic and SrpskaInfo, and Aleksandar Trifunovic, editor-in-chief of online magazine Buka, found their cars damaged in the same neighbourhood where they both live. 

“It is yet another example of the difficult conditions that journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina operate in, and the ongoing hostile environment for media freedom in the country,” the EU office added. 

A day prior to the attack, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik slammed those who criticised a proposed law which would criminalise defamation, imposing huge financial fines, naming several individuals, including Moraca and Trifunovic. 

“This is a typical attempt at intimidation; the day after Dodik called us scoundrels and marked targets, it was only a matter of time before someone would interpret this as an instruction,” Trifunovic posted on Twitter after discovering the damage. 

“Verbal attacks by political leaders that seek to discredit journalists can also contribute to increased hostility and risks for them,” the UN mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina wrote on Twitter, among many reactions by local and international human rights and media organisations.

Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, condemned the attack on Thursday but also suggested they had “organised” the damage to their cars themselves.

“The government is asking for an imminent police reaction and prosecution of the perpetrators,” he said, adding in the same sentence: “There are some indications that they have organised the attack by themselves, and we will see if it is correct or not.” 

“So the investigation has not officially even begun, and Dodik seems to want to help solve the case by accusing us,” Trifunovic shared on social media on Thursday evening. 

The EU Delegation recalled that freedom of expression and freedom of media are among 14 key reform priorities for Bosnia, as stated in the European Commission’s Opinion on the country’s EU membership application.

“In any democratic society, journalists must be able to do their important work without fear or intimidation,” the EU office said. 

CoE Platform Records Continued Degradation in Press Freedom in 2022

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine occurred against the backdrop of a continued degradation in press freedom across Europe in 2022 and it has had far-reaching consequences for the continent’s journalism, according to the annual report published by the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists.

The platform, which through alerts submitted by partner organisations seeks to document the serious threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom in Europe, said in its report published on Tuesday that 289 alerts were posted in 2022 concerning 37 countries, a figure comparable to that of 2021, which saw 282 alerts.

At one end of the scale, apart from the 12 journalists and media workers who died on active duty covering Russia’s war in Ukraine, the platform recorded one journalist killed in the exercise of their work, Gungor Arslan in Turkey, compared to four who died the previous year outside of a war zone. Yet there was a 60 per cent rise to 127 in the number of journalists in prison at the end of 2022 in Europe.

At the other end of the scale, continuing unabated were the harassment and smear campaigns, both online and offline, targeting journalists; the rise in surveillance; the continued use of abusive court proceedings; and the use of the war as ammunition for governments trying to restrict journalists’ right to report on matters considered national security.

Harassment, intimidation and smear campaigns have become a “new normal” up to the point that some journalists no longer even report them, noted the report titled “War in Europe and the Fight for the Right to Report”. A total of 94 alerts were posted on the platform, compared with 110 in 2021. The highest number of cases were recorded in Russia, but also in Serbia, Italy, Poland, Croatia and Greece.

“Press freedom in Europe continues to be undermined by restrictive legislation,” Flutura Kusari, senior legal advisor for the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) told a press conference. “Surveillance, the fight against disinformation, legislation on state secrets or the fight against terrorism are all used to pressure journalists.”

This is the third year that the annual report has dedicated a chapter to the rising use of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and other legal actions aimed at intimidating and silencing journalists, which have become a favourite tool of powerful individuals and corporations. At least 20 defamation and other types of legal proceedings were documented against journalists in 2022, with hundreds of thousands of euros sought in damages in the name of reputational harm.

The European Commission published a directive last year in which it tasked the Council of the EU and European Parliament to develop anti-SLAPP legislation to protect journalists, activists, academics, and others from legal battles intended to stop their work. “Now is the time for member states to start taking actions against SLAPPS,” said Kusari.

The threats posed to journalists and their sources from surveillance increased in 2022 as fresh allegations and evidence emerged about the abuse of sophisticated spyware tools by governments in the region.

Particularly noteworthy cases occurred in Hungary, where investigations continued into the use of Pegasus by state intelligence agencies to surveil at least five journalists and media owners. And in Greece, 2022 saw the emergence of a new spyware product, Predator, with revelations about its use to surveil journalist Thanasis Koukakis, as well as leading politicians. On November 6, in yet another development of what is being called the “Greek Watergate”, the newspaper Documento published an article alleging that numerous journalists, media owners and figures connected to the Greek media industry were among persons targeted with Predator.

New Pegasus Target Identified in Poland

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Jacek Karnowski, currently mayor of Sopot on Poland’s Baltic Sea coast, was monitored by state surveillance in 2018-2019 when he was one of the key politicians promoting an opposition alliance to win the Senate elections, according to Friday’s daily Gazeta Wyborcza. (The united opposition did win the Senate in 2019).

“This is a violation of privacy and human dignity,” Karnowski told Wyborcza in response to the revelations. “Those who monitored their political opponents should be brought before the Tribunal of the State.”

Wyborcza says it found Karnowski’s name on a list of monitored individuals made available to multiple media outlets that were part of the Pegasus Project consortium.

According to the paper, the Polish Central Anti-Corruption Bureau CBA tapped Karnowski’s phone 10 to 20 times between 2018 and 2019.

It is impossible to say what data the services took from Karnowski’s phone, Wyborcza reports, because the device was “cleaned up” of data.

In Poland, secret services are obliged to delete data they collect if they do not uncover or confirm a crime during the investigation.

Karnowski is currently head of an alliance of mayors that is a major actor in the coalition of liberal opposition parties confronting the ruling PiS in this year’s parliamentary elections, due in the autumn.

Polish intelligence services used Pegasus until November 2021, after which the Israeli company producing the software, NSO Group, did not renew its contracts with either Poland or Hungary.

This followed media revelations that these two governments used the spyware to monitor journalists and opposition politicians.

Stung by Criticism, Turkey’s Erdogan Targets Free Speech as Elections Loom

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According to the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA, at least two journalists were arrested, five detained, four placed under investigation and 12 physically attacked while reporting on the earthquake response between February 6 and 27.

Another 14 were expelled from the affected area by security forces and three TV channels that aired reports criticising the response were fined.

Murat Mumtaz Kok, MLSA communications and project director, said that, “on the very first day”, the General Directorate of Security and the president’s Directorate of Communications began issuing warnings against the spread of ‘disinformation’.

“Unfortunately, it seems that from the beginning the government had priorities other than saving people from under the rubble,” Kok told BIRN. “The very cries of people who lost their homes and their loved ones and asked a very fundamental question, ‘Where is the state?’ were immediately criminalised.”

Arrests, fines

An aerial picture taken with a drone shows the rubble of collapsed buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras, southeastern Turkey, 08 February 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/ABIR SULTAN

Kok cited the case of Mehmet Gules, a journalist with Mesopotamia News Agency who was taken into custody in the southeastern town of Diyarbakir two days after the earthquakes after he interviewed a search and rescue volunteer who complained that the state’s chief emergency response bodies were not on the ground.

Gules and the volunteer were accused of stirring “hatred and hostility” among the public; after hours in custody, there were released but banned from leaving Turkey on suspicion of “openly disseminating information misleading the public.”

“This and many other examples as well as Mr President’s explicit threats and insults show that the self-preservation of those in power is more important than the preservation of those who still spend their days mostly out in the open and in freezing conditions,” Kok said.

On February 22, Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors and sanctions radio and television broadcasts, fined three TV channels – Fox TV, Halk TV and Tele 1 – between three and five per cent of their monthly advertising revenue due to the critical tone of their coverage. A number of specific programmes were temporarily suspended from broadcasting.

“It truly is heart-breaking that in the aftermath of such a catastrophe, the primary target of the governing alliance remains to be the editorial independence of news organisations, and more generally media freedom and the society’s right to access information,” said Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom.

Threat to free elections

A woman shows to her child a picture of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, Turkey, 18 January 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

The authorities have not stopped only at traditional media.

Also on February 22, popular social media platform Eksi Sozluk – known as Turkey’s Reddit – was blocked by the government and accused of “spreading misinformation about the earthquake”.

The platform said it would challenge the decision in court.

Complaining again about “misinformation”, the government also restricted access to Twitter and TikTok and slowed down the Internet. Access was restored the next day following a public outcry, with critics accusing the government of cutting off vital communications channels for survivors, relatives of those who died, and aid campaigners.

So far, police say 441 people have been investigated, 129 people detained and 24 people jailed over “provocative posts on social media platforms concerning the earthquakes in order to create fear and panic among the citizens.”

The crackdown is in line with the government’s ever tighter control over media and Internet freedoms under Erdogan via several draconian laws and regulations.

With elections a matter of months away, experts fear authorities will pursue the crackdown further under the cover of the state of emergency declared after the earthquakes.

“When we see such threats, detention of journalists, throttling of access to Twitter and fines being imposed on the TV stations as well as censorship orders targeting minority publications, it hardly looks solely like an attempt to manipulate the discourse around disaster management but raises suspicions whether this is a move from an election-focused perspective,” Ozturan told BIRN.

The logo of Twitter is seen on a smartphone held besides a Turkish flag. Photo: EPA/Karl-Josef Hildenbrand

Pollsters say Erdogan and his government, already facing a significant challenge to their hold on power, are likely to see a further drop in popularity due to their handling of the earthquake response.

“Considering the threats and actions that have taken place so far, there are no guarantees that these restrictions and violations will not take place during the election period, before, during or after the Election Day, also under the light of the ongoing state of emergency in the region, Ozturan warned.

Kok, from the MLSA, agreed: “The fact that freedom of expression – which was literally used to hang on for dear life – is considered by the government to be an existential threat makes the picture all the more bleak” in the context of imminent elections.

“Millions of people forced to stay in almost completely destroyed cities and which are now under a state of emergency will be expected to make an informed decision at a time when those in power now have all ‘legal’ grounds to cut off the flow of information if that information is deemed dangerous by those in power.”

Albania Election Commission Calls on Socialists to Explain New App

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Ilirjan Celibashi, head of Albania’s Central Elections Commission, CEC, said on Wednesday that it is seeking explanations from the ruling Socialist Party about an app, “Aktiv1st”, which it has offered, following queries from the opposition and civic groups.

“We have received a request from the Democratic Party regarding this matter and are evaluating what this app implies in relation to the law or the behaviour of the owner in relation to the electoral code”, he said.

He added that the CEC is only looking into the app regarding the electoral code, and not other laws – meaning that the CEC is not looking into laws such as the law for data protection.

“I believe that by next week we will have a decision or an evaluation from the CEC regarding this issue,” Celibashi concluded.

The Socialist Party presented the app a year ago as a “tool of communication” for party activists. The users win points by engaging with its content, including new stories that redirect users to the Facebook and Instagram pages of Socialist officials.

The app appears to be a means of raising the social media profile of the Socialist Party, which faces local elections in mid-May.

Critics in the past have drawn attention to the party’s use of such technology to gather data on would-be voters and manipulate social media.

They are suspicious of the latest app, citing a lack of specific Terms of Service and indications that it may not be as “voluntary” as the party insists.

As BIRN previously reported, some have seized on the Aktiv1st app as the latest way for the Socialist Party to exploit the public sector for its own electoral benefit, in a country where the state administration is widely seen as the fief of the party in power.

Aktiv1st is available for download from Play Store and App store; in a section explaining data safety, it is specified that photos, videos, files, documents, and other IDs may be shared with other companies or organisations, while the app may collect user data including location, email address, home address, phone number, and messages.

Clicking on the Terms of Service redirects the user to the Law on Data Protection, without explaining the app’s specific terms. The user must click that they accept the terms in order to use the app.

A civil society organisation called Civic Resistance, which works on issues of transparency, education, youths and politics in Tirana, has lodged a complaint with the Commission for Data Protection and the Right to Information.

BIRN Hit by Cyber-Attacks After Turkish Fraudster Investigation

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The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and its Greek partner media outlet Solomon’s websites came under DDoS attack by hackers from early Saturday morning onwards in the wake of the publication of an investigation into a controversial Turkish businessman.

The attack began on Saturday morning and continued into Sunday. BIRN’s server was not compromised but at one point, BIRN’s flagship Balkan Insight website was completely inaccessible.

“The attack started on Saturday at 7.30am. That’s when the alarms went off, and around eight we had already started to react. It was a fierce battle, I never experienced a fight like that,” said an IT security expert whose company works for BIRN.

“At one point on Saturday, we had 35 million different IP connections from all over the world.  The site was brought down by the number of connections,” he explained.

BIRN’s technical experts determined that the attack was specifically aimed at bringing down the page on which the investigation into how a Turkish businessman who had been convicted of fraud bought his way to honorary Greek citizenship.

By Sunday evening, the attack had been repelled. But Solomon’s website remained under attack and was still offline on Monday morning.

Solomon, a Greek independent media outlet which worked with BIRN on the investigation, initially announced on Twitter on Saturday that it was experiencing difficulties because of a “massive DDoS attack on our site”.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

It is often used in attempts to target specific content published online and strike a blow at websites that need time to recover from such huge amounts of visits.

The investigation believed to have caused the DDoS attack looks at the case of Yasam Ayavefe, a Turkish businessman who was convicted of defrauding online gamblers in his home country in 2017 and arrested in Greece in 2019 while trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false Greek passport. He was later awarded honorary Greek citizenship.

The BIRN and Solomon investigation “examined how honorary citizenship, a state honour long reserved for those who have significantly promoted Greek culture, was turned into a golden visa scheme for those with deep pockets”, Solomon said in a Twitter post on Monday.

The investigative outlet Inside Story first broke the news in July, triggering a fierce debate over Ayavefe’s suitability for such an honour. Inside Story also came under DDoS attack after publishing its report on Ayavefe.

Data Dominance: In Cyprus, a Chinese Outpost inside the EU

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In October 2015, two years after a banking crisis left Cyprus in desperate need of new financing, President Nicos Anastasiades visited China on a charm offensive, touting the Mediterranean island’s low tax rates, its European Union membership and its readiness to take part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.

The floodgates opened, but there was nothing sporadic about the Chinese outlay.

Today, money from Chinese state-owned or state-linked corporations has penetrated the core of just about every key Cypriot sector, from real estate to natural resources, transport to aviation, all in the name of a transcontinental infrastructure project linking countries along the route of the old Silk Road.

Thanks in part to the BRI, China is set to surpass the United States as the world’s leading economy by 2028 and become the standout superpower heading into the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution.’

A key component of the BRI is the Digital Silk Road, DSR, through which the Chinese Communist Party seeks to develop and export key technological infrastructure – including 5G – to participating states, boosting the importance and presence of Chinese tech companies around the world and, to a degree, replicating its digital authoritarian model.


Chinese investments in Cyprus. Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic

In Cyprus, according to BIRN’s findings, China now dominates the 5G networks and the island’s wider tech ecosystem, creating a key Chinese outpost inside the EU with potentially far-reaching consequences for data security and the independence of Cypriot – and by extension EU – foreign policy.

It is a state of affairs that contradicts US and EU recommendations and the island’s own claims to be pursuing a multi-vendor strategy.

5G underpins power grids, transportation and water supplies, and, in the future, will enable military tools including artificial intelligence, said Carisa Nietsche, associate fellow for the Transatlantic Security Program at the Washington-based Centre for a New American Security.

“In extreme cases, analysts suspect China could pull the plug on the network, gather intelligence from data pulsing through the networks or cut off a 5G-enabled energy grid,” Nietsche told BIRN.

Chinese investment in Cyprus

In 2015, China’s largest private copper smelter, Yanggu Xiangguang Copper, bought a 22 per cent stake in Cyprus-registered copper mining company Atalaya Mining Plc for 96.2 million euros.

In November 2019, a consortium led by state-owned China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering signed a 290 million-euro deal with the Cypriot natural gas infrastructure company ETYFA to build a liquefied natural gas terminal for electricity generation. Among the four firms in the consortium is state-owned Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, the top warship producer for the Chinese navy.

Before it pulled out in 2019, state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China, AVIC, was the largest shareholder in Cypriot airline Cobalt.

JimChang Global Group has invested 100 million euros in a five-star hotel and housing development near Ayia Napa via a joint venture announced in 2016 with Cyprus property group Giovani. The residential part was completed last year.

Macau-based Melco is investing $677 million in the City of Dreams Mediterranean, an ‘integrated casino resort’ in Limassol, Cyprus. It is expected to open in 2022.

Building 5G on Chinese foundations

Illustration: BIRN/Igor Vujcic

On his 2015 visit to China, Anastasiades, who was re-elected in 2018, visited the Shanghai research centre of Huawei, the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.

Huawei plays a key role in driving global industry standards in Beijing’s favour through the filing of patents that make the industry more likely to adopt Chinese proposals as global standards.

In terms of 5G standard essential patents, Huawei has the largest portfolio worldwide. The company claims to hold more commercial 5G contracts than any other telecom manufacturer in the world – 91. Forty-seven of these are in Europe.

At the research centre, Anastasiades lauded Huawei’s “important contributions to communications network construction in Cyprus” and called for “deeper ties”.

Huawei’s dominance, however, has unsettled the United States and others, which say the company’s equipment could be used by Beijing for spying, something Huawei has vigorously disputed.

In a rare interview with foreign media in 2019, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said: “I love my country. I support the Communist Party. But I will not do anything to harm the world.” He said that Beijing had never asked him or Huawei to share “improper information” about its partners and that he would “never harm the interest” of his customers.

Unconvinced, in October 2020 then US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, Keith Krach, visited Nicosia and, with the 5G licence application process underway in Cyprus, incorporated the island into the US ‘Clean Network’ on 5G, an initiative launched under former President Donald Trump to build a global alliance excluding technology that Washington says can be manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party.

The Americans are concerned, in part, by the proximity of Chinese-dominated 5G networks to military bases. But while on paper the Cypriots may have sided with the Americans, in practice Huawei is still very much in play.

Huawei (Nicosia)-the building in which Huawei’s main Cyprus offices reside. Photo: BIRN

The company entered the local market in 2009, taking a lead role in the upgrade of the island’s information and communications technology and the 2/3/4G infrastructure of its four telecommunications companies, CyTA, Epic, Cablenet and Primetel.

Since Cyprus uses the so-called Non-Standalone, or NSA, mode for 5G – effectively building on top of its existing 4G infrastructure – and with Huawei providing the components for 100 per cent of the telecom companies’ 4G Radio Access Network, RAN – the Chinese giant looked perfectly placed last year to take the lead in the 5G rollout as well.

The RAN is comprised of various facilities such as cell towers and masts that connect users and devices to the Core Network, which in turn encompasses all 5G data exchanges such as authentication, security, session management and traffic aggregation across devices.

In December 2020, the two biggest 5G contracts were awarded to CyTA and Epic.

But both companies, sources say, are overwhelmingly dependent on Huawei for their Core Network and their RAN infrastructure.

Semi-governmental CyTA launched its 5G Network in January 2021, catering to 70 per cent of the population on launch and aiming for 98 per cent coverage by the start of 2022.

A senior CyTA manager told BIRN that 80 per cent of the company’s Core Network and 100 per cent of its RAN is covered by Huawei infrastructure. The remaining 20 per cent of its Core Network is provided by Swedish Ericsson.

“CyTA is a governmental company and comes up with tenders for the equipment, and Huawei has been a long-term provider of infrastructure and support and offers the best prices,” said the senior manager, who asked not to be named since he was not authorised to speak to media.

Asked about the makeup of its Core Network and RAN infrastructure, CyTA told BIRN: “We inform you that any information regarding the CyTA network is a trade secret and any disclosure of it is contrary to the commercial interests of CyTA and its partners (article 34 (2) Law 184 (I) / 2017).”

Huawei also accounts for 90 per cent of Epic’s Core Network infrastructure and 100 per cent of the RAN, said a senior manager at Epic, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Epic’s collaboration with Huawei dates to 2009, when the company, then named MTN, sealed a 20 million-euro contract with the Chinese firm to upgrade its network.

Now owned by Monaco Telecom, Epic went on to develop Cyprus’s first 4G LTE network, leveraging Huawei’s RAN solution, on which another Cypriot telecommunications firm, Primetel, also entered into an access-sharing agreement. In February 2019, shortly before its rebranding as Epic, MTN signed a deal with Huawei for the development of its 5G network.

An Epic spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Nietsche, of the Centre for a New American Security, told BIRN: “For 5G to deliver on its promises of faster speeds, it requires an immense amount of data to travel through the network. And that data is pushed closer and closer to the end user, or the edge of the network.”

“In Europe, some governments have distinguished between implementation of Huawei in the Core Network and the Radio Access Network, or edge of the network. These governments argue that you can essentially create a firewall between the core and edge of the network.”

“However, we should not make such a distinction. As 5G networks develop, more and more data is pushed toward the edge of the network, and it becomes harder to distinguish between the core and edge of the network.”

Chinese ‘fusion’


Huawei section of the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) Global 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALI HAIDER

Using Huawei components within 5G infrastructure is not a direct violation of European Union guidelines, since the EU toolbox on 5G – a common set of guidelines laid out by the bloc to limit 5G cybersecurity risks – did not explicitly ban any specific company but left it to member states to decide which providers were ‘high-risk’.

Authorities in Cyprus have not as yet identified any provider as ‘high-risk’.

The October 2020 memorandum of understanding that saw Cyprus sign up to the US Clean Network “does not imply in an implicit or explicit way that Cyprus will move away from Huawei”, said the man who signed it, Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Kyriacos Kokkinos.

“What it says is that we will collaborate with US agencies and authorities so that we ensure that the security standards are respected in the infrastructure we deploy,” Kokkinos told BIRN.

EU guidelines, however, do stress caution over suppliers “subject to interference from a non-EU country”, warning that a member state’s network could be vulnerable if there was a “strong link between the supplier and a government of a third country.”

Huawei’s state ties are considerable.

Zhengfei, the company’s founder, was a former Deputy Regimental Chief of the People’s Liberation Army; reports say that a considerable number of Huawei employees are believed to have worked for the military; and some Huawei employees have collaborated on research projects with military personnel.

But it was legislation passed in China in 2017 that really raised eyebrows.

Article 7 of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires any organisation to support, provide assistance and cooperate in “national intelligence work”. Even before that, Article 22 of the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law required any “relevant organisations and individuals” to “truthfully provide” information during any “counter-espionage investigation”.

China’s “military-civil fusion” – which calls for private sector assistance in the country’s military objectives – was inscribed as a strategic priority in the Chinese Communist Party’s constitution in October 2017.

Some European countries have already balked.

In October, Swedish telecom regulator PTS banned Huawei from supplying 5G equipment to Swedish mobile firms due to security concerns raised by Sweden’s SAP security service, a decision upheld by a Swedish court in June this year.

Huawei has repeatedly denied posing a security threat, while China threatened “all necessary measures” in response to the Swedish ban. Beijing also told France and Germany not to “discriminate” against the company.

In the United Kingdom, a firm US ally, the government set a cap of 35 per cent limit on Huawei’s involvement in 5G RAN. It also excluded Huawei from safety-related and safety critical networks and sensitive locations such as nuclear sites and military bases.

In Cyprus, Kokkinos would not be drawn on whether Cyprus might set a similar cap.

“I don’t want to make a statement that might be misleading that this is not something that might happen in the future,” he said. “But at the moment we do not exclude any vendor.”

Critics of the Chinese government say the stakes could not be higher.

Given how much states and societies will come to depend on fifth generation technology, its security poses an unprecedented challenge, with any potential ‘hack’ snowballing into a threat to national security.

As a host to British military bases and US spy stations at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Cyprus is no ‘island’ when it comes to geostrategic importance. Some experts say the threat posed by Huawei’s political and military ties and its data dominance in Cyprus cannot be ignored.

“One day Cyprus has to choose a side,” said Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese consular official in Sydney, Australia, whose work included monitoring Chinese dissidents until he defected in 2005. “One day China will take off its mask and Cyprus won’t be able to stand in the middle.”

“Cyprus needs to be careful about handing over its sovereignty to China,” he told BIRN.

John Strand, director and founder of telecommunications consultancy firm Strand Consult, concurred:

“The China we have today is a different China than we had five years ago,” he said. “China is a country which is very aggressive to countries which basically have an opinion, or have citizens who have an opinion about what is going on in China, Hong Kong or Tibet, and other places.”

“We have seen that China is not only threatening countries which go against them or criticise them, they also punish countries,” he told BIRN.

“If the Internet broke down 10 to 15 years ago, society could move on, it was not an issue. Nowadays, everything in our society is built on top of IT solutions which are connected to each other through the Internet of Things.

Cyprus embraces Chinese blockchain

Huawei, however, is not the only cause of potential concern when it comes to Cyprus.

Another is VeChain, a Chinese state-backed blockchain platform that in November 2018 entered into a national partnership with Cyprus to assist the island in the development and implementation of blockchain solutions across a range of private and public sectors.

Mediterranean Hospital of Cyprus (Limassol),one of two Cypriot hospitals to partner with VeChain store vaccination records on the VeChainThor blockchain. Photo: BIRN

It is the only such state partnership VeChain has outside of China.

The platform, launched in 2015, is a favourite of the Chinese Communist Party, which has entrusted it with contracts in, among other areas, agriculture and telecoms.

In July 2018, after thousands of children were given faulty vaccines, the Chinese government called on VeChain to create a nationwide vaccine tracking solution with health data stored on the blockchain.

When VeChain presented its solution at the China International Import Expo in November 2018, President Xi Jinping was in attendance. Xi has declared blockchain a national priority, with VeChain a co-founder of the Belt and Road Initiative Blockchain Alliance that aims to develop blockchain along the route of the BRI.

In Cyprus, VeChain developed the E-HCert App, which records COVID-19 PCR and antibody test results on the VeChain Thor Blockchain and is being expanded to serve as a wallet for all medical records of Cypriot citizens and as a vaccination certificate.

The ‘V-Pass’, a vaccination certificate sealed in the VeChain Thor, is also in the pipeline for the general public.

Two of the island’s biggest private hospitals have also struck agreements with VeChain for it to host their medical records on its blockchain.

Christiana Aristidou, co-founder and vice-chair of the Cyprus Blockchain Association, said that all necessary measures had been put in place “to maintain the safety of health data.”

“Blockchain is very secure and VeChain intends to take the lead in this sector in Cyprus,” Aristidou told BIRN.

Asked about any risks to data security, the Cypriot Health Ministry replied: “The Ministry of Health does not use blockchain technology in public hospitals.”

Golden passports and a city of dreams

But while some experts voice deep concern over the extent of China’s data presence in Cyprus, domestic scrutiny appears lacking. One reason may by the stakes involved for a number of influential political and legal figures.

In August 2020, an undercover report by Al Jazeera exposed a scam at the heart of a Cypriot policy to provide citizenship to foreign nationals who invest two million euros in the island’s economy.

According to the report, a number of high-level Cypriot officials had abused the scheme to secure passports for several thousand foreigners who did not meet the legal requirements.

Passport control at the derelict former Nicosia International Airport in Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: EPA/JAN RAKOCZY

An official investigation, published in June this year, said that 97 per cent of the 6,546 ‘golden’ passports issued between 2007 and August 2020 had been issued since Anastasiades took power in 2013.

More than half, or 3,609, were for family members of investors and executives of companies and who were granted citizenship without actually meeting the legal criteria.

Between 2017 and 2019, the Al Jazeera report found that 482 wealthy Chinese nationals applied for passports via the scheme, more than any other nationality bar Russian. They include several members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Communist Party.

The chief protagonist in the Al Jazeera exposé was Dimitris Syllouris, who as speaker of the parliament at the time was the country’s second highest-ranking official after the president.

Syllouris was caught helping to fast-track a Cypriot passport for a fictitious Chinese businessman despite being told the applicant had a criminal record and was therefore barred from a ‘golden’ passport under the rules of the scheme.

Syllouris, who resigned over the scandal, had been a key player in a number of deals between Nicosia and Beijing, including in the tech sector.

Property developer and MP Christakis Giovanis, whose company partnered in 2016 with Chinese group JimChang Global on a 100 million-euro hotel and luxury housing development, also resigned his public post over the scam.

Invest Cyprus, the government agency tasked with attracting foreign investment and which signed the 2018 MoU with VeChain, plays a central role in bringing Chinese money into the country.

When Invest Cyprus facilitated the arrival in 2018 of Macau-based conglomerate Melco for the development of a casino mega resort worth $667 million in Limassol, the agency’s CEO, George Campanellas, became a member of the management team overseeing the project.

Melco CEO Lawrence Ho is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, CPPCC, an advisory body to China’s central government.

Melco is also linked to the Cypriot telecom company Cablenet via the latter’s owner, Cyprus-based CNS Group, which is the parent company of The Cyprus Phassouri (Zakaki) Limited, Melco’s partner in the Integrated Casino Resorts Cyprus Consortium behind the Limassol casino development, City of Dreams Mediterranean. The resort is expected to open in 2022.

In 2019, Melco’s Ho attended the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing with Melis Shiacolas, the managing director of CNS Group and a relative of Cablenet non-executive chairman and 37 per cent owner, Nicos Shiacolas.

The Invest Cyprus board also includes Pantelis Leptos, a prominent property developer whose law firm, Leptos Group, handled the paperwork for 169 applications to the golden passport scheme between 2013 and 2019, according to interior ministry data reported by Cypriot media group Dialogos. The company also has an office in China.

A senior official at Invest Cyprus initially agreed to be interviewed for this story but then said he needed to seek authorisation to speak to the media. He subsequently did not respond to repeated efforts to arrange a meeting.

In Paphos, on the southwest coast of Cyprus, the head of the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Andreas Demetriades, signed a memorandum of cooperation in 2017 with the Hi Tech District and Chamber of Commerce of the eastern Chinese city of Changzhou, near Shanghai, for the development of a pharmaceutical tech park in Paphos, with tech parks – industrial zones specialising in science and technology – high on the agenda of Invest Cyprus and the government.

Demetriades’ law firm, Andreas Demetriades LLC, handled 272 golden passport applications between 2013 and 2019, more than any other firm.

Stelios Orphanides, an investigative journalist with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, said China could come to dominate the telecommunications sector “because there is the lowest level of scrutiny in terms of risk management.”

“Cyprus doesn’t have the will to carry out thorough checks,” he told BIRN, “because those who manage the system – both the old elites and new elites, lawyers, accountants and so on – have learned to do just one thing, which is to prostitute the sovereignty of Cyprus in exchange for personal benefits.”

Sacked Index Journalists Make History in Hungary

Posted on by BIRD

Veronika Munk sits in front of her computer in a somewhat rundown apartment-office in Budapest. She frowns as she reads the text in front of her, but in general she looks satisfied. Munk and her colleagues at Telex have achieved what few people in Hungary thought possible: they managed to build a completely new media outlet from scratch in 10 months mostly financed by readers, defying the hostile media environment that exists in Hungary.

On July 24 last year, Munk and her colleagues made international headlines when they staged a dramatic collective walk-out from Hungary’s then-leading independent news site Index. “All of a sudden, instead of writing the news, we had become the news,” she tells BIRN.

About 90 of the Index journalists resigned en masse following the sacking of editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull. In the lead-up to his dismissal, Dull had been warning that the independence of the editorial team was in danger and he moved the “freedom barometer” on the homepage of Index to “in danger”.

The journalist resignations made the news around the world and thousands of people took to the streets of Budapest to demand a free press and a ‘new Index’.

“It was a critical situation, and I tried to keep a cool head,” says Munk, who was Index’s deputy editor-in-chief and now leads Telex as co-editor. “I felt responsible for the team and all I knew was that we wanted to stay together. But on the other hand, I remember I felt an immense sadness and weariness – I didn’t even go to the demos because I was so tired.”

Munk has been a journalist all her adult life. She was at Index for 18 years, working her way up from intern to deputy editor-in-chief, and witnessed how the ruling Fidesz party has gradually assumed control over the bastions of Hungary’s independent press since it came to power in 2010.

Using a mix of restrictive media laws and deep-pocketed friendly oligarchs, the party has seized control of major television and radio stations, news portals, and print media publishers, to the point where independent analysis this year showed that Orban allies exert control over a majority of the country’s 88 most influential media outlets.

Index had fended off repeated attempts by government-allied oligarchs to influence its content. But after the municipal elections in 2019, when the Hungarian opposition scored some unexpected victories, most notably in Budapest, the Fidesz leadership reportedly decided to increase the pressure on Index, to mute critical voices ahead of the 2022 general election.

Index’s Achilles’ heel was its dependence on its sales house – responsible for advertisements and revenues – which was acquired in 2018 by businessmen close to the government, who started to apply pressure on the editorial department.

A year ago, Munk told BIRN that, “it was not the classical censorship on the content that we encountered, but a constant pressure on changing our editorial structure.”

The collective resignation was a desperate cry for help; and the project to set up a new outlet was a race against time. “It was clear from the very beginning that we had to react fast. The pressure was strong both inside, from the colleagues, and outside, from society,” Szabolcs Dull, the other co-editor of Telex, tells BIRN.

Dull remembers that the gestures of solidarity from society at large were heart-warming. “In shops or in the market – wherever I went, people were constantly asking me about the ‘new Index’. Once I was sitting in a restaurant and somebody sent a bottle of wine over to show his support. But we were also aware the we cannot make an Index 2.0 – it should be something different.”

Veronika Munk and Szabolcs Dull, co-editors of Telex. Photo: János Bődey

A year in the making

Telex was launched in October and became an instant hit. After less than 10 months in operation, it boasts 600,000 unique users, and is now one of the media market leaders in Hungary. Out of the original Index staff, the founders have managed to employ 72 colleagues, the vast majority of whom are on full-time contracts.

Telex is financed mostly by its readers, with a smaller share of revenue coming from advertising. According to its latest “Transparency Report”, revenue from donations was 2.3 million euros to the end of April – the single biggest donor being Czech businessman Zdenek Bakala with 200,000 euros – and another 400,000 euros from advertising. Over 50,000 people support Telex, in most cases with small donations, which provides a sustainable basis, though the founders won’t rule out a subscription-based model in the longer run.

“What happened at Index was truly a turning point for the Hungarian media landscape. People suddenly became aware that information and content is not free of charge: somebody has to pay the price: either it is the reader, the advertisers or political circles that must foot the bill. Here at Telex, we believe it is not absolutely necessary to make either political or business deals; we would much rather serve our readers’ interest,” Dull says.

Judging from the meteoric growth of its readership, Telex’s readers are happy with the new site so far. But politics is another matter. Telex journalists have become used to being ignored by government politicians for some time; the minister in charge of the cabinet, Antal Rogan, who also oversees government communications, once famously said he does not know what Telex is. It is not unusual for Fidesz politicians to refer to critical news sites as “blogs”, in a deliberate attempt to undermine their importance and credibility.

What happened at Index was truly a turning point for the Hungarian media landscape

– Szabolcs Dull, co-editor of Telex

When Telex reached around 400,000 readers, the government’s attitude changed markedly. “From the very beginning, we were sending questions to the ministries and to government politicians, but we rarely received any answer. This is, of course, nothing new for the critical media in Hungary,” Munk says.

“But now some Fidesz politicians are already talking to us, not from the first tier, but from the second; some even give us interviews. We also see they are closely monitoring what we publish,” she says.

‘Critical, curious and correct’

Telex’s tagline – “critical, curious and correct” – will remain the journalists’ guiding light even in the case of a change in government in Hungary next year.

Munk vehemently rejects the label of opposition or left-wing journalist. She says it is understandable that politicians are interested in framing the narrative in a way they find beneficial, but journalists should go after the news, and what’s interesting and important for their readers, regardless of political colours.

What makes the Index/Telex story special is the courage of these young people, Ilona Kocsi, president of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists (MÚOSZ), tells BIRN.

In most cases where the government took over or destroyed a critical media outlet, its journalists scattered, pursuing individual career paths. There have been some cases where a new independent outlet was established, though only with a handful of the original journalists. Telex was entirely different – this was the first time when an entire team resigned in protest, stayed together and proved that even in the current hostile media environment, an alternative, independent news site could be built.

“The decisive difference is that this was not a one-man show, but a collective action, with a community which had faith in itself and had even the courage to take on risks,” Kocsi says.

In broader terms, it could also indicate a generational change is in the air. Not everybody is ready to succumb to Fidesz’s bullying power; now there is an example of Fidesz’s dominance being challenged and fought off.

Slovenian Government ‘Eroding Media Freedom’, Report Warns

Posted on by BIRD

A new report published on Wednesday says that Slovenia, which takes over the rotating presidency of the EU on Friday, “has seen press freedom deteriorate ever since [Prime Minister Janez] Jansa returned to power in March 2020”.

“Since then, the ruling SDS [Slovenian Democratic] Party has embarked on a multipronged campaign to reshape the media landscape in favour of a pro-government narrative, renewing tactics successful during previous administrations and forging ahead with new forms of pressure,” said a press release for the report by Media Freedom Rapid Response, a group of press freedom organisations and journalism groups.

The report says said that the ruling party has been making “an aggressive attempt to seize greater control of the country’s public service broadcaster and national news agency using a mix of legal and administrative pressure”.

In late May, Slovenian journalists’ unions criticised the Culture Ministry after it revealed that several radio stations, well-known critical newspapers and investigative media outlets will no longer receive state funds.

These media outlets were defunded for their alleged “partiality”, but unions maintained that the Culture Ministry’s assessment was arbitrary. The Ministry insists the funding decisions were based on expert opinions.

The Media Freedom Rapid Response claims that at the same time, “propaganda media are being rewarded with lucrative state advertising contracts”.

Slovenia’s government also suspended financing for the Slovenian Press Agency, STA from the beginning of the year, alleging that the agency failed to deliver documents based on which it would be possible to determine a fair financing arrangement.

But some suspect that Jansa’s government is putting pressure on the STA to change its editorial policy by ‘weaponising’ the funding issue.

Slovenian media reported on Monday that the government has now asked its communications office to transfer a 845,000-euro advance to the STA for expected expenses.

Although the Media Freedom Rapid Response report welcomes the announcement, “serious concerns remain over the conditionality of this agreement and its detrimental effects on the independence of the agency”.

“We believe the government is only making this move because of the sustained criticism it has received for its actions and the need to remedy the situation before assuming the EU Presidency,” it says.

It also says that the Jansa government’s tactics “raise alarm as they reflect elements of the media capture strategy employed by Hungarian leader Viktor Orban”.

“Moreover, an influx of Hungarian capital linked to Orban’s Fidesz party is being used to prop up Slovenian pro-government media,” it adds.

A combative figure in the country, Jansa is known for his ‘Twitter wars’ against the media and individual journalists – and for his belief that he is fighting an entrenched left-leaning ‘deep state’.

An ally of Hungary’s authoritarian premier Orban, he has been accused of trying to take Slovenia down the same road.

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