far-right Archives

Romanian Far-Right Party Condemned for Blacklisting Hostile Media

Posted on January 27, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The right-wing nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians, AUR, has been criticised for started a public campaign on Facebook against Romanian media outlets it deems hostile to its message.

“The audience has spoken: Digi24 TV station is the most toxic and false media institution. Unfortunately for them, the ‘young hopes’ from ‘G4 Fake Media’ only managed to get a mention from the jury, as did their colleagues from Sputnik,” AUR said on Facebook, naming various media outlets it resents.

According to audience rankings, Digi24 TV is in fact one of the most-watched televisions in Romania and news website G4Media.ro is in the top ten in the country.

The editor-in-chief of G4Media.ro, Cristi Pantazi, told BIRN that blacklisting media is a tradition on the far right in Romania.

“Far-right fascist parties made such blacklists before. The Iron Guard [the pro-Nazi nationalist movement in pre-war Romania] had blacklists in the interwar period. This is exactly how the extremist AUR party behaves now,” he said.

Pantazi added that by making public blacklists, AUR intends “to intimidate journalists who honestly report this party’s facts, intentions and positions. AUR wants to inhibit the professional press, which presents the public as they are: as anti-Semites, Holocaust-deniers, violent, and hate-speech promoters”.

The attacks started after G4Media labeled the party as extremist, based on a long line of public acts by its leaders including a violent assault on parliament, physical and verbal violence to parliamentarians, minimisation of the Holocaust and the appointment as honorary president of Calin Georgescu, a known venerator of the Iron Guard.

An NGO that campaigns for journalists’ rights in Romania, Active Watch, also condemned the AUR blacklist. “The AUR party blatantly violates the principles of democratic life by urging citizens to help blacklist those media outlets it labels as toxic,” Active Watch said.

It argued that such strategies of creating division in the public space have no place now, but are similar to those adopted by the parties that laid the foundations for the dictatorial regimes of the last century.

“We stand in solidarity with these media outlets, which are now the target of a dangerous populist attack, and call on other parties, organisations and citizens who still believe in freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and the right to information to firmly reject blacklists and attacks on democracy,” Active Watch added.

Call for Applications: Grants for Small Projects Focusing on Far-Right Extremism

Posted on December 1, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Grants are offered to ten journalists, artists, academia or civil society activists that will have an opportunity to develop a concept that tackles these topics with the multidisciplinary approach.

Main focus of project proposals should be on exploring far-right symbols, radical groups and extremist ideologies in local communities of the Balkan countries, their connections and cooperation with other similar groups, especially those in Europe and the Middle East, the role of diaspora communities, disinformation efforts and online hubs.

Ten grantees will be selected on the basis of submitted applications. Grantees are expected to produce one project based on the proposal they submitted. Mentorship support will be provided by BIRN.

GENERAL RULES FOR CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

A maximum of 10 grants is awarded
Maximum amount per grant: EUR 2,000.00
Project duration: 6 months
Propose a plan for using various platforms, including how to reach targeted audience
Give a clear overview of their timeline
Each applicant may submit only one application under this grant scheme.

HOW TO APPLY

Application form content

Applications must be submitted in line with the instructions and guidance of this Call. The designated application form must be used.

Application Form should be completed in English language. Any error or major discrepancy related to the Application Form instructions may lead to its rejection.

Clarifications will only be requested when information provided is not sufficient to conduct an objective assessment. The Application Form must be filled out online, all additional documentation can be submitted in
the online format.

The application can be filled out by clicking the link below.

The application must be submitted by 23:59 CET, on December 20, 2021.

In case of additional inquires please contact us at: applications@birnnetwork.org

EVALUATION AND SELECTION

All received proposals will go through three phases:

PHASE I: Technical evaluation done by BIRN staff to ensure applicants followed application procedures and submitted all required documents.

PHASE II: Evaluation by Committee will be done in order to select applicants based on evaluation criteria including:

a) Quality of proposed idea
a) Multiplier effect of the project result
b) Innovation
c) Level of interactivity of the project
d) Ability to reach broad population

PHASE III: Notification of applicants and corrections (if necessary). Upon evaluation of applications, applicants will be notified. In case of suggestions (in case two or more applicants have similar submissions, proposals of different topics and such) applicants will have the option to submit another application, or to addend the existing application.

ADMINISTRATIVE AND ELIGIBILITY CHECK

During the administrative check the following will be assessed:

Compliance with the submission deadline. If the deadline has not been met, the application will automatically be rejected.

The Application Form satisfies all criteria specified above. If any of the requested information/document is missing or is incorrect, the application may be rejected on that sole basis and it will not be evaluated further.

The application that passes this check will be evaluated further as part of the quality assessment.

OPEN ONLINE APPLICATION

Net Searches for Far-Right Keywords Soar in Bosnia

Posted on November 9, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A company that specializes in analyzing harmful content on the internet has told BIRN that two terms favoured by hard-line Serbian nationalists – “Serbia Strong” and “Remove Kebab” – were searched for more than 4,000 times in Bosnia and Herzegovina over five months in 2020.

Research by Moonshot said these keywords were particularly searched for in May and early June 2020, which coincided with the anniversary of the May 1995 Bosnian Serb massacre in the northern city of Tuzla and Muslim festival Eid al-Fitr, and came just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Bosnian Serb-perpetrated genocide at the eastern town of Srebrenica.

According to data collected by Moonshot, “Serbia Strong” and “Remove Kebab” were searched for 468 times in under one week from May 30 to June 4.

Its report, “Tracking Far-Right Extremist Searches in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, which it has shared with BIRN, says the rise in such searches reflects the wider rise of political and ethnic extremism in ethnically divided Bosnia.

“Karadzic, lead your Serbs” is the opening line of a song which normally appears when searches are done for “Serbia Strong” or “Remove Kebab” on the internet.

The former Bosnian Serb leader in the 1992-5 war in Bosnia was sentenced for life in 2019 for the crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Significantly, the song lauding Karadzic was played on a video recording the attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, when 51 people were killed and more than 20 injured.

It was allegedly recorded in 1995 but only published in 2006. Researchers describe the song as “an anti-Muslim hymn” that calls on the former Bosnian Serb chief to lead “his Serbs” against both “Ustashas” – referencing Croats, and “Turks” – a pejorative Serbian term for Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims.

Moonshot analyst Liam Monsell told BIRN that searches for “Serbia Strong” and “Remove Kebab” “significantly increased over the 25th anniversary of various crimes against Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s war”.

“Searches increased substantially just a few days after the 25th anniversary of the Tuzla massacre of May 25, 1995, which also coincides with festival Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan,” Monsell noted.

He added that the highest level of searches was recorded on June 2, but that sporadic leaps in searches also appeared during the marking of other wartime crimes in Bosnia.

Besides these two keywords, people in Bosnia also searched for the term “Za dom spremni”, or Ready for the Homeland, a World War II-era Croatian fascist slogan, “Kebab Remover”, an alternative construction to “Remove Kebab”, as well as for “antimigrant.ba”, an anti-immigrant portal. They were searched for 517 times over the course of the same five months.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in court in The Hague in 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/YVES HERMAN/POOL.

Monsell said the popularity of the Karadzic song and searches done in English from Bosnia indicate that a “Western discourse of ‘white nationalists’ sometimes spreads back into the region,” and that specific local extremist dialogues are increasingly drawing on international symbolism.

Data obtained by Moonshot suggest that over the period in which the targeting was deployed, just under half the searches came from the Serb-led entity in Bosnia, Republika Srpska. According to Moonshot, the highest number of searches per 100,000 inhabitants was registered in the northern Brcko District.

Sead Turcalo, Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo, said the searches focus on themes around which key far-right groups’ narratives focus.

“A continuous denial of genocide and glorification of war criminals reflect on right-wing circles throughout Europe,” he said, adding that this was evident not only in the terrorist attack on Muslims in New Zealand, but in the previous case of Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Breivik who shot dead 69 young leftists in 2011 and killed another eight in a bomb attack.

“The aspect of interconnectedness of genocide denial and influence on the growth of the radical right, not only in the region, but in Europe as well, is still insufficiently researched, but is coming into the focus of researchers more and more,” Turcalo said.

“Their narrative is based on Islamophobic and anti-migrant content, accompanied by glorification of fascist groups and puppet states from World War Two,” Turcalo said, adding that, besides that, they also try to present Bosnia as a safe haven for radical extremists.

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