Tag: balkan insight

Iranian Embassy in Tirana, Wednesday 7 September 2022. Photo: BIRN

Iranian diplomats in Tirana prepared to leave the country on Thursday after Albania’s government the day before declared them personae non grata – having accused the Islamic republic of responsibility for the big cyber-attack in July that blocked several online services.

Prime Minister Edi Rama said the Iran embassy in Albania has been notified that its staff need to leave the country within 24 hours.

Tirana-based security expert and professor Fabian Zhilla told BIRN that severing diplomatic relations with Iran was not enough; this must be coordinated with preventive measures, or the country risks facing heightened aggressiveness from Iran’s secret services.

“They have exploited weaknesses in [our] cyber security protection and now have a significant amount of documentation that they acquired during the first attack, and we do not know what that information is … whether it is classified information, which could bring instability tomorrow,” Zhilla told BIRN.

Albania has linked the attack to its hosting of around 3,000 exiled Iranians belonging to the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, MEK, an opposition group to the regime in Iran, supported by the US.

But Zhilla said that Albania’s government should talk to MEK and urge them not to use Albanian territory for any kind of media or propaganda war against the Iranian regime.

“Because this … would expose us as a country to Iran and give them a reason to strike. In this context … the agreement was to give the MEK a political shelter, but not for them to use this type of political shelter to wage war from our territory,” Zhilla added.

Another, security expert, Adrian Shtuni, based in Washington, also links the cyber-attack to the MEK. Tirana’s tough response was “the strongest public response of a state to a cyber-attack so far,” he noted.

“The primary purpose of the attack seems to have been to exert pressure for the cancellation of the annual ‘Free Iran’ conference organized by the MEK,” Shtuni told BIRN.

The conference was, in fact, cancelled in July after US embassy in Tirana warned of an unnamed security threat to the summit.

“The publication of sensitive information online can also be interpreted as a revenge against the Albanian state for the decision it took to shelter the Iranian opposition. If the aim of the attack had been financial gain, there would have been a demand for payment/tribute,” Shtuni argued.

Shtuni says that, unfortunately, cyber attacks in the 21st century are a daily reality, involving high costs and risks.

“Albania, as defined in the New Strategic Concept of NATO 2022, must improve its infrastructure, networks, and capabilities for cyber defence. This will make it more able to prevent or counter these threats more efficiently in future,” he added.

This is not the first time that Albania has seen massive leaks of personal data. Just before the April 2021 general elections, a massive database of 910,000 voters in the Tirana region that contained personal data, such as IDs, job titles and even possible political preferences, was published by the media.

Many accused the ruling Socialist Party of using state institutions to gather the personal data.

Another massive data leak occurred last December, when data detailing the salaries of around 630,000 Albanians was circulated online. Days later, another database with data of car license plates was also leaked.

In January, prosecutors arrested four people in connection with the data leaks. Two people from state institutions suspected of selling people’s personal data, and two others from private entities suspected of buying it, were arrested.

Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama. Photo by EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, on Wednesday said Tirana was freezing diplomatic ties with Iran after he blamed the Islamic republic for a major cyber-attack in July, which blocked several online services.

Rama said the Iran embassy in Albania has been notified that its staff need to leave the country within 24 hours.

“A deep investigation brought uncontestable proof that the cyber aggression towards our country was orchestrated and sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which engaged four groups for the attack,” Rama said on Wednesday.

“Among them was one of the most notorious international cyber terror authors or co-authors of previous cyber-attacks against Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United [Arab] Emirates, Kuwait and Cyprus,” Rama added.

The government’s online services were attacked on July 15, when the main servers went down, following what the authorities called “a synchronised criminal attack from abroad”.

Media outlet Top Channel then reported that Iran was behind the cyber-attack, likely sending a political message to Albania, which hosts around 3,000 exiled Iranians belonging to the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, MEK, an opposition to the current regime in Iran and strongly supported by the US.

Reports also said the attackers had demanded 30 million euros in bitcoin. Rama denied reports of blackmail on Twitter, saying that the news about the “demand for 30 million euros is completely fake” and a foreign state was behind the hackers.

Albania’s latest move comes as other governments in the region are facing similar issues.

On Tuesday, the Kosovo government announced that for two days in a row, on Monday and Tuesday, Kosovo institutions had faced temporary interruption of their internet network.

“The cyber-security team sector within the Information Security Agency in cooperation with local and foreign experts identified that the problem with internet service is a consequence of a cyber-attack,” Perparim Kryeziu, Kosovo government Spokesperson, said on Tuesday evening.

“The cyber-attack did not penetrate the infrastructure of state computers’ network because it was blocked by relevant security equipment,” he added.

“It was identified that the cyber-attack came from outside of Kosovo and targeted the IP in which several web pages of Kosovo institutions work,” he said.

He said the Information Security Agency has undertaken “concrete actions to overcome this cyber-attack and return internet service into function”

“For the moment, the situation is stable. Internet and other online services are functioning and accessible. Cyber security experts will continue to monitor the security of services and government’s systems and will take necessary measures to maintain their security,” Kryeziu said.

In neighbouring Montenegro, government and judicial websites were forced to go offline and trials delayed following massive cyber-attacks that started on August 24 and whose perpetrators remain unknown.

This is not the first time that Albanian public has faced massive leaks of personal data.

One year ago, just before the general elections in April 2021, a massive database of 910,000 voters in the Tirana region that contained personal data such as IDs, job titles and possible political preferences was published by the media.

Many accused the ruling Socialist Party of using state institutions to gather the personal data.

Other massive data leak happened last December, when data detailing the salaries of around 630,000 Albanians was circulated online. Days after, another database with data of license car plates was leaked.

In January, the Tirana Prosecution arrested four people in connection with the massive data leaks. Two people from state institutions suspected of selling people’s personal data and two others from private entities suspected of buying it were arrested.

Online threats to journalists and politicians in Serbia, Hungary

Episodes of intimidation and other online threats continue to mark several online environments. Serbia, in particular, remains at the top list of regional countries, with the highest rate of online attacks on journalists and independent media.

Along the same lines, Hungary’s digital space remains a breeding ground for hate campaigns, online attacks and other politically motivated incidents of intimidation.

A police officer stands by as cartoons from French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo are projected onto buildings in central Montpellier in France, 21 October 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO

On November 5, the mayor of Budapest’s 9th District, Krisztina Baranyi, received threatening messages after refusing to answer questions from a journalist of the pro-government media Pesti Srácok on a TV show a few days earlier. The mayor had refused to answer an inquiry about the payment of utility bills in Ferencváros. She replied: “I’ve been saying it for a long time, and I vowed that I would never speak to the propaganda media, to paid propagandists, so I won’t do that now either. I didn’t know you would be here, and if I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.”

Following this, Gergely Huth, Pesti Srácok’s editor-in-chief, defended his colleague and freedom of the press in general. “According to the editorial office of PestiSrácok.hu, the presenters of ATV acted ethically and correctly when they warned Krisztina Baranyi, a public figure and public official, of the seriousness of her actions and rejected the accusations and slanders that seriously hurt our colleague Szilárd Szalai’s professional honor and human dignity. We evaluate Krisztina Baranyi’s statements and behaviour as a gross attack on press freedom,” read the media release.

In Serbia, several cases of online threats and intimidation were also recorded. On November 6, Dragoljub Petrović, editor-in-chief of Danas daily newspaper, received a threatening email which had “Belgrade Charlie Hebdo” in the subject, alluding to the 2015 terrorist attack on a French satirical magazine. The message described detailed plans of an attack on Danas offices in Belgrade. Days earlier, on November 3, Serbian parliamentarian Staša Stojanović, a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, published an insulting tweet against the opposition, branding them “enemies of the state, people and [Serbian] identity”.

Finally, Dragan Bursać, a journalist based in Bosnia and Herzegovina writing for the Serbian portal Autonomija, received threatening messages on Instagram on November 2. The journalist is often targeted with threats, insults and hate speech because of his writing about nationalism and post-war societies in former Yugoslavia.

Hate speech still mars North Macedonian online environment

National, ethnic and other minorities, as underlined in some of our previous articles, are being systematically attacked in North Macedonia’s digital landscape, which remains full of hate comments and acts of discrimination.

Ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje attending a protest. Photo: EPA/GEORGI LICOVSKI

The ethnic Albanian minority was subjected to the greatest number of registered episodes. On November 13, a Twitter user wrote that, “Shiptars (Albanians) went around the world to promote Islam as a religion of peace”. Another user typed: “Stinking traitors, Shiptarian poltroons, sold souls, filthy whores. Your faggot tribe, you should be exterminated”. Three days earlier, another Twitter user wrote that “Shiptars” are “the cancer of Macedonia”. The same user said: “Тhey’ve screwed up healthcare, economy, police, customs, infrastructure, history, constitutional order, judiciary, law and what not. No, I’m not a nationalist, I love Macedonia, and they treat it destructively. We hate you.”

Other acts targeted the LGBTI community. A Twitter user wrote on November 11: “Faggots in the past were much bigger men than today”, sharing a picture of the later gay singer Freddie Mercury. In another episode, a Twitter user commented that he was shocked at the way “faggots” go to the extreme of being attractive to straight culture.

Fake news, denigrated women and fear of retaliation in Romania

The latest cases recorded in Romania in the first half of November saw several violations of digital rights of various natures.

On November 9, a priest told a live interview on BZI’s Facebook page, a local media outlet in Iasi, north-eastern Romania: “This is about two unmarried girls. In my opinion, they both suffer from some kind of deviant behaviour. They are hysterical.” His accusations concerned two women he had attacked on the grounds of Vladiceni Monastery, on the outskirts of Iasi. The two women not only filed a criminal complaint but also filmed the attack and published the video on Facebook. During the interview, BZI journalists did not contact the two women.

Activists belonging to two feminist NGO associations protest peacefully in front of the Bucharest Court’s headquarters against sexual abuse, aggression and violence against girls and women in Bucharest, Romania, 08 March 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Three days earlier, on November 6, Emilia Sercan, an investigative journalist who recently revealed the PM’s plagiarism, complained of being often followed by “strange men” in Bucharest. Her fear of retaliation reflected that she said she had been followed by state actors multiple times recently. Sercan said she suspected it might be part of an attempt to expose her sources. “This is a failure of the state. If a journalist is harassed, surveilled or targeted by ‘kompromat’ actions, these are signs of a failing state and of a failing political class that doesn’t understand the role of the media in a society,” Sercan told Radio Free Europe Romania.

Another episode saw the spread of a fake narrative about unexploited diamond reserves in Romania by multiple online media, including one that uses the visual identity of the well-known newspaper Romania Libera. However, there never were any natural diamond reserves in Romania, according to Stefan Marincea, a researcher at the National Institute of Geology.

Phishing and online scams hit Serbia

Computer frauds in digital spaces show no sign of slowing down and are occurring at an alarming rate in many countries.

Serbia recorded two such episodes on November 4. First, a fraudulent email allegedly coming from the Serbian branch of Raiffeisen bank claimed to contain an international payment copy. The spreadsheet attachment was probably aimed at infecting devices with a macro-virus.

On the same day, the Ministry of Interior warned the public about phishing emails impersonating police commanders and heads of police departments. The malicious emails, sent to a number of state institutions and private citizens, contain an attachment allegedly in connection with charges of paedophilia and other criminal acts.

Greek police arrested a well-known and awarded photojournalist Nikos Pilos, while reporting in the Prosfygika area in Athens on a police operation hunting a suspected arsonist.

Pilos was freed after midnight Tuesday; however, police filed 10 criminal charges against him.

“No one prevented me from entering the area. The tenants were holding an assembly. There was a little use of chemicals by the police, so we went up to the roof to get some air … The police also came up and, despite the fact that I showed them my professional identity card, arrested me. I was charged with 10 charges that can land you 15 years in prison,” Pilos told BIRN.

The police operation in the Prosfygika area of Alexandra Avenue was part of a search for a person suspected of involvement in arson attacks on the media Real Group. On November 13, a fire broke out in the building housing Real FM 97.8 and Real News. The Fire Service found improvised explosives.

Police said the operation was carried out to arrest a person involved in arson attacks. “After the arrest, groups of people gathered at the scene, climbed onto the roof and threw objects (stones, building materials, etc.) at the police forces, preventing the seizure and transport of the arrested person’s vehicle. So far, dozens of arrests have been made from the spot.”

Pilos has been documenting the lives of people leaving in the Prosfygika area in Athens since 2017. From 2019 to 2020, with the support of the non-profit organization iMEdD, he developed a cross-media, interactive project on the people living there.

Immigrants, refugees, political activists, workers, unemployed, elderly, homeless, families, drug addicts, and ex-prisoners have become neighbours in the housing complex, comprising eight buildings with 228 apartments. Some have papers, many are undocumented while others are in transit to Western Europe.

Greek newspaper EFSYN wrote that, after the first arrests, police organized a second operation in the area; among the arrested people was also a pregnant woman who complained that they did not provide her with medical assistance. Pictures on social media show kneeling people on the ground, tied to bars by the police.

Police issued a second press release saying that 78 people were arrested and charged with violence against officials and judicial persons, disturbance of the peace, joint infliction of bodily harm, infliction of grievous bodily harm by complicity and damage to property, as well as violation of the laws on guns, flares and sparklers. “The result of their illegal actions was the injury of seven police officers, two of them seriously,” wrote the press release.

Police told BIRN they currently cannot make any comments on the issue.

Christos Mponis, president of the Photojournalist Union of Greece, told BIRN that journalists must be free to do their work.

“Since professional photojournalists have their professional ID signed by the chief of police, the law enforcement agencies must respect the public document and leave us free to do our jobs. We only record the facts and it is a constitutional right to practice our profession,” he said.

The Foreign Press Association, FPA, condemned the arrest and detention of Pilos, saying that the charges were imposed without testimony or evidence against him; and called on the police, judicial authorities, and the state to drop all charges.

The FPA mentioned that the police that day obstructed the work of journalists and photojournalists and In a press release announced that will take measures to secure the safety of journalists.

Pilos is an Athens-based, award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker. He is one of Europe’s noted feature photographers. He has travelled extensively to document war, natural disasters, poverty, socioeconomic struggle and cultural shifts and his work regularly appears in leading international newspapers and magazines throughout Europe and the US.

Radio Television of Kosovo offices in the capital Pristina. Photo: BIRN

The board of Radio Television of Kosovo, RTK said in a statement on Friday that its allocated budget of 8.96 million euros for 2023 is inadequate and will not allow the public broadcaster to make any investment in new equipment or technology.

“The budget of 8.96 million euros is the smallest budget ever allocated to RTK in the last ten years,” said the board after the Kosovo parliament approved the budget on its first reading on Thursday.

The 2023 budget is the same as the one for 2022 and significantly lower than the one for 2021.

“This budget is 2.2 million euros less than the 2021 budget,” the RTK board’s statement said.

It complained of alleged past mismanagement at the public broadcaster, which it said was proved by Kosovo National Audit in its 2019-2021 report on RTK, as well as in the 2021 financial audit report for RTK.

“As one consequence, amongst others, 1.6 million euros in debt have been inherited, which involve the constant threat of the RTK bank accounts being frozen,” it said, adding that this debt cannot be paid off under the allocated budget for 2023.

The board also claimed that the allocated budget for 2023, including RTK’s income from marketing and savings, isn’t enough to fulfill the legal criteria for awarding contracts to independent productions.

It also excludes any capital investment in RTK, including in equipment, new technology, signal distribution and content.

Valon Ramadani, an MP from ruling party Vetevendosje, the head of parliamentary commission on public administration, local governance, media, and regional development, told BIRN that “from November 21 to 25, we as the commission will organise the public hearing envisaged by the regulations. In this case, we will take into account requests submitted by anyone who has an interest.”

Mergim Lushtaku from the opposition party Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, who sits on the same parliamentary commission, told BIRN that Kosovo’s government “is not giving [RTK] the importance it deserves in a democratic state”.

“The situation at RTK is worrisome because they need a lot of different equipment… they do not even have digitalisation,” Lushtaku said.

He added that he hopes the issue will be rectified because “we need a public broadcaster that is politically independent”.

On November 17, RTK board member Driton Hetemi told the problematic commission on media that the situation with the budget is concerning “because it does not help us to improve the programmes for the next year”.

“We haven’t bought any external productions because we don’t have a single cent for such things and we have a legal requirement to buy external productions,” he added.

Hetemi added that RTK generates less than a million euros a year from advertising.

A conference held on Wednesday by international media freedom organisations also highlighted the lack of proper financial support to the public broadcaster RTK.

Kosovo media companies’ microphones. Photo: BIRN

A conference held on Wednesday after a two-day visit to Kosovo by international media freedom organisations heard that although the country has made progress in depoliticising the public broadcaster and introducing a legal framework for improving the media environment, this progress is being undermined by problems like politicians’ toxic rhetoric and smear campaigns against journalists.

The underfunding of the public broadcaster and a lack of official transparency are other issues, the conference in Pristina organised by the Council of Europe’s Platform on Safety of Journalists was told.

Verbal attacks on journalists and media outlets by state officials, politicians and people connected to the ruling party Vetevendosje are also disturbing, the conference heard.

“Divisive rhetoric and smear campaigns directed at journalists by some politicians and public officials, including from the governing party, is creating a growing climate of hostility against the media,” said the International Press Institute, one of the organisations that participated in the visit.

It said that such rhetoric could cause “threats, online harassment and physical violence”.

Flutura Kusari from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom also told the conference on Wednesday that in addition to the positive findings about “the advancement of press freedom, the legal framework for the protection of journalists and positive developments in the public broadcaster”, derogatory language towards the media and journalists from politicians, mainly from ruling party Vetevendosje, remains a problem.

Kusari claimed that “the safety of journalists, impunity, non-handling of cases of missing journalists, problems in access to information in the Serbian language, and the lack of transparency of the current government continue to be one of the main challenges journalists face”.

Pavol Szala from Reporters Without Borders said that “verbal attacks by politicians on journalists create an unsafe climate that can encourage physical threats and intimidation against journalists”.

Roberta Taveri from Article 19 also highlighted the lack of government transparency as worrying.

“This issue raised by journalists must be improved, since access to information is also an obligation of the government,” she said.

Attila Mong from the Committee to Protect Journalists noted meanwhile that progress has not been made in following up cases of physical attacks on and threats against journalists.

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, also said in a report in October that Kosovo is not doing enough to protect journalists from violence after a rise in attacks and threats in 2021.