Serbia Archives - Page 4 of 4

Twitter Axes Thousands of Accounts ‘Promoting Serbia’s Ruling Party’

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

Twitter has removed almost 9,000 accounts that were “working to promote Serbia’s ruling party”, the Serbian Progressive Party said on Thursday.

“Toward the end of last year, we identified clusters of accounts engaged in inauthentic coordinated activity which led to the removal of 8,558 accounts working to promote Serbia’s ruling party and its leader,” Twitter announced.

Toward the end of last year, we identified clusters of accounts engaged in inauthentic coordinated activity which led to the removal of 8,558 accounts working to promote Serbia’s ruling party and its leader.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) April 2, 2020

The social networking company explained that it had updated its archive of “state-backed information operations with some recent account networks we’ve removed from our service”.

These identified and removed accounts were all associated with five countries: Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.

Serbia was by far the top country in terms of the number of removed accounts, numbering 8,558. Twitter removed 5,350 accounts associated with Saudi Arabia, 3,104 linked to Honduras, 2,541 accounts linked to Egypt and 795 fake accounts linked to Indonesia.

“These behaviors are in violation of our policies and are a targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation”, Twitter explained.

The company also said it was “making publicly available archives of Tweets and media that we believe resulted from potentially state-backed information operations on our service”.

Under Twitter’s policy on manipulation and spam, “coordinated activity that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting” is not allowed.

Media in Serbia have often reported that online activists of the Serbian Progressive Party, so called “bots”, are very active on social networks. Some are reportedly employees of state-owned companies or public institutions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serbian Govt Takes Control of Information Flow About Pandemic

Posted on April 1, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

All local crisis headquarters and medical institutions in Serbia must send any information about the coronavirus pandemic to the central Crisis Staff led by Prime Minister Ana Brnabic – which will then inform the public about anything regarding COVID-19, the government in Belgrade has decided.

“Mayors and municipal presidents and emergency staffs of local government units are obliged to direct all information regarding the condition and consequences of COVID-19 … exclusively to the [national] Crisis Staff, which will carry out the necessary checks and take appropriate measures to inform the public in a timely and accurate manner,” the decision taken on Sunday says.

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

As a result, local crisis headquarters in Serbia may no longer inform local communities of developments directly. Media outlets on Tuesday were also notified that they will no longer can get information from local authorities directly.

Dejan Kovacevic, president of the municipality of Gornji Milanovac, told a press conference that while he understood the new rules, local government units will still hold press conferences “as needed about what they have done, and are doing, to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Some NGOs in Serbia have voiced unease with the move to control the flow of information, saying that the solution is not in line with the advice of United Nations experts, or of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has called for journalists to be allowed to work without obstacles “in order to provide citizens with access to key information”.

Serbia imposed state of emergency on March 15. By April 1, 23 people had died from complications caused by COVID-19 and 900 cases of infection were confirmed in total.

Facebook Extends Political Ads Rules to Balkans Before Elections

Posted on March 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook has added Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova and Turkey to its updated list of countries that must adhere to its strict political advertising transparency regulations.

The enforcement of the new regulations is expected in mid-March, about a month before parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, due on April 26 and April 12 respectively. Montenegro is also due to hold the elections this year, by October at the latest.

Facebook launched the regulations in June last year. They mean that any adverts paid for by a political group or candidate must be labelled as such.

With the new 32 countries, the total count of states required to stick to the regulations, which relate to any adverts about social issues, elections or politics, rose to 89.

Apart from the five Balkan countries, the regulations will also expand to Chile, Japan, Mexico and Indonesia, to name a few. Facebook said it was working to expand enforcement to more countries later this year, including Myanmar and Brazil.

“Anyone who wants to run ads about elections or politics in these countries will need to confirm their identity with an ID issued from the country they want to run ads in and disclose who is responsible for the ad.

“We require that the advertiser provide additional information, like a local business address, local phone number, email and website, if they choose to use their organization or Page name in the disclaimer. These requirements hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram,” the social media giant wrote on its Facebook for Business website.

While political ads will be more transparent, the requirements are also designed to ensure that Facebook can list political advertisers in its Ad Library. Political ads from all of these new regions will now be added to the Ad Library API.

“We will introduce the Ad Library Report for each of these countries by the end of April. The report provides aggregated insights for ads about elections and politics, such as total number of ads and spends in the Ad Library. The report is also available as a downloadable file,” Facebook explained.

Political parties in the Balkans have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections.

At the beginning of 2020, SHARE Foundation, a Serbia-based digital rights NGO, asked Facebook to put Serbia and North Macedonia on the list, citing the upcoming elections as the main reason. In its letter, SHARE said that if these two countries were on the list “the campaign will be more transparent.”

“This is especially important, since it is expected that Facebook pages which are not openly political might engage in supporting a certain political party or candidate with ads,” the letter adds.

Social Media a Help and Hindrance in Balkan Coronavirus Fight

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

Serbia has no confirmed cases of coronavirus yet, but on Tuesday a WhatsApp voice message began doing the rounds on social media claiming several people had already died from the virus in the capital, Belgrade.

“Doctors are strictly forbidden to talk about the virus,” the woman is heard saying on the message, which was published on several Serbian news portals.

A similar thing happened in neighbouring Croatia, where another WhatsApp message contained the claim that the first case had been recorded in the coastal city of Split, before authorities actually confirmed the first case in the capital, Zagreb, on February 25.

With its epicentre in Italy, Europe is grappling to contain the spread of Covid-19. In the Balkans, cases have been confirmed in Croatia, North Macedonia and Romania.

Governments and concerned experts and citizens in the region and elsewhere are taking to the Internet, social media and mobile phone messages to spread information.

But likewise they face what Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, has called an “infodemic” of false information and scaremongering in the media and online.

In Serbia, the interior ministry said on Wednesday that its Department of High-Tech Crime was trying to identify the women who made the WhatsApp recording claiming that coronavirus had already claimed its first victims in the country.

In Albania, prosecutors on February 24 announced investigations into what they called the “diffusion of fake information or announcements in any form aimed at creating a state of insecurity and panic among the people.”

Scientist: Behaviour ‘not in line with magnitude of danger’

Serbia’s Health Ministry has launched a website dedicated to the coronavirus outbreak, regularly posting updates, news, advice, contacts and warnings for those coming to Serbia from affected areas.

On Wednesday in Moldova, the government began sending mobile phone text messages telling Moldovans what symptoms to look out for and what steps they should take if they suspect they may have contracted the respiratory virus.

“Take care of your health. Call your family doctor immediately if you have a fever or cough. If you have returned from areas with Coronavirus and feel ill, call 112,” the SMS reads.

Croatian scientist Igor Rudan of the Centre for Global Health Research at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, said on Wednesday the state of panic in Europe did not reflect the level of threat posed by Covid-19.

Even if the virus were to spread throughout Croatia, he wrote on Facebook, “the casualties should be at least roughly comparable with the number of cases of death from the flu or with the number of road traffic fatalities during the same period.”

“This panic is triggered by the persistent media coverage… rather than by generally accepted and scientifically-based knowledge about the coronavirus,” Rudan wrote.

“If you started behaving differently than you did during the winter months, during the flu epidemic, for example, collecting food supplies or wearing masks on the streets, this is not the kind of behaviour that reflects the actual magnitude of the danger.”

The post has been shared 2,500 times.

The Covid-19 outbreak originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.

According to the World Health Organisation, there are now more than 82,000 confirmed cases in 45 countries.

In the Balkans, there are three confirmed cases in Croatia, one in North Macedonia and one in Romania. More than 180 people are under supervision in Montenegro. In Serbia, 20 people have tested negative for the virus, while several Serbian citizens who recently travelled to affected areas are in quarantine in Belgrade and the nearby town of Sabac, the public broadcaster reported.

Serbia Urged to Come Clean on Journalists’ Surveillance

Posted on February 20, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, has called on the Serbian authorities to investigate how much surveillance goes on in the country – after the Serbian news agency Tanjug on February 16 published a response written by the Defence Minister to a never-published opinion piece by a former defence minister.

The former defence minister and current opposition politician Dragan Sutanovac emailed his article on defence issues to the editor of the weekly Nedeljnik, Veljko Lalic, which decided not to run it.

RSF noted its concern that current minister Aleksandar Vulin felt able to respond to the unpublished material – and that he had said in his article that he was replying to the article Sutanovic had published in Nedeljnik.

On February 19, RSF’s European bureau chief, Pauline Adès-Mével, called on the Serbian authorities to investigate whether opposition politicians were being spied on.

“We are concerned that emails between opposition politicians and independent media outlets are being spied on and intercepted by the government,” Adès-Mével said.

“We call on the authorities to shed all possible light on this matter,” the press release added.

After the news broke, Vulin apologized to Nedeljnik and said he would ask the relevant bodies to look into the matter. Vulin’s staff later said its PR team had mistaken Nedeljnik for Kurir, a Belgrade-based tabloid that recently published an interview with Sutanovac.

But in his response article, Vulin only referred to Sutanovac’s comments about Serbia-Russia cooperation, which the unpublished piece contained, and was not mentioned in the Kurir interview.

Nedeljnik also said the authorities needed to find out whether any officials used the resources of the secret services to intercept emails between Sutanovac and Lalic.

“It is hard to believe that a person working constantly with the media, for example, someone in the defence ministry’s public relations department, would confuse the daily Kurir with the weekly Nedeljnik,” the weekly said.

This, however, is not the first time that concern about surveillance of politicians and journalists has arisen in Serbia.

In March 2016, the tabloid Informer published some of the findings of an investigation into the assets of Aleksandar Vucic – now president of Serbia, who was then prime minister – which the investigative website Krik had carried out but never published.

Serbia has been falling for years in the rankings of the World Press Freedom Index. It was ranked in 90^th place out of 180 countries in the 2019 Index.

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