At BIRN’s Digital Rights Annual Conference in Tirana, speakers highlighted that women and LGBTQ+ groups are often the chief victims as new technologies and bad laws worsen violations in South East Europe.
Media representatives and civil society and international organisations told BIRN’s Digital Rights Annual Conference in Tirana, Albania, that worsening digital rights violations in the Balkans were having “profound effects” on people’s lives.
“The report shows that digital rights violations have profound effects on everyday lives, only amplifying already existing human rights issues and barriers. While compiling it, we have attempted to paint the current picture but also to forecast future trends,” Ena Bavcic, BIRN’s Digital Rights Research Lead said.
Despite the challenges, Bavcic said there is still hope for a safe internet.
“Challenges are numerous but there is some hope and we hope this report will be used to cast light on steps that need to be taken to improve online safety for everyone,” Bavcic said, referencing BIRN’s Digital Rights Violations Annual Report 2023-2024, published on Wednesday.
Bavcic highlighted that the main digital rights violations in the region over the past year include disinformation, hate speech and cyber attacks. She also underlined the malicious use of AI.
“Most of the cases [in the report], such as computer fraud, phishing, manipulated videos impersonating others and other similar digital rights violations were ‘improved’ by AI. AI is here to stay,” Bavcic said.
She predicted that the malicious use of AI will preoccupy the digital agenda in the coming years, as it is used increasingly to target politicians, political opponents and journalists and to spread hate speech and disinformation. Deep-fake videos are increasingly used against girls, women and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Speakers at the event highlighted legislative changes that have worsened digital rights violations.
“There is a lack of public debate and a lack of information about stakeholders [when making new laws] and so we wake up to a law that was passed at 5am by the majority in parliament. Women and the LGBTQ+ community are targeted specifically under these laws,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Monitoring Officer at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedoms and Turkey Rapporteur for Freedom House, said.
Ozturan recalled various adverse legal changes in Turkey and recent plans to adopt a Russian-style law labelling foreign-funded organisations as “foreign agents”. Similar laws have either been introduced or proposed by lawmakers in Hungary and Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.
Speakers and participants at the event stressed the serious effects of digital rights violations on vulnerable groups, such as girls, women and LGBTQ+ groups.
One of the speakers, Xheni Karaj, director of Albania’s Aleanca, an NGO advocating for LGBTQ+ people, has faced serious threats online due to her activism and media appearances. “We don’t realise the damage these messages impose on activists and a whole movement, when the whole country sees you as a ‘public enemy’ just because of misinformation,” Karaj said.
Karaj recalled getting death threats after a media appearance in which she spoke about the UK registering newborn babies on passports under Parent 1 and Parent 2, after which she said a similar system could be applied in Albania. However, the media twisted her statement and added a headline accusing Karaj of wanting to remove the traditional family from Albanian legislation entirely.
“Many media outlets … started to reproduce this news, magnifying the disinformation that this news represented. I wasn’t following the media at the time but I was receiving a lot of death threat messages on my social media without even knowing why,” Karaj added.
The Digital Rights Violations Annual Report 2023-2024 was co-funded by the European Union.
A day before the event, a documentary, Body of Shame, exploring the sexual abuse and harassment of women in Albania, was screened.