Radovan Karadzic, Sarajevo is not your city, and you have no right to say that it is, just as you do not have the right to say in public, even if it’s in court, that someone has dug up bones around Bosnia and brought them to Srebrenica to make a fake graveyard. This is insulting.
BIRN Show Triggers Row on Freedom of Speech in Kosovo
Pristina | 11 June 2009 | By Lawrence Marzouk
Jeta Xharra
One article appeared to contain a clear incitement to violence, saying “Jeta has brought it upon herself to have a short life.” Infopress later claimed that this had been misconstrued.
Xharra has described the campaign as tantamount to a death threat.
“In a post-war society such as Kosovo where the wounds are still open, to compare someone to Milosevic’s Serbia is not only an insult and incitement to hatred, but could also be life threatening.” she said.
Journalists, foreign embassies and non-governmental organisations have defended the show’s right to examine controversial topics in Kosovo, as a test of Kosovo’s commitment to a free media. They have also called on the government to distance itself from the accusations.
The May 28th debate, broadcast on RTK, Kosovo’s publicly funded television station, tackled the issue of press freedom.
The show discussed whether government advertising was used to influence the media and addressed the subject of recent dismissals of journalists who claimed they had lost their jobs because they inconvenienced the authorities.
It featured a video report in which BIRN Kosovo’s news team was shown being expelled from the Skenderaj municipality's Office for Public Information in the central Drenica region, and forced to leave town by an armed man who confiscated some of their footage.
During the show, television journalist Jeton Llapashtica claimed he lost his job from Besa TV, a commercial station, because of the “very tough questions” he put to Kosovo’s government spokesperson, Memli Krasniqi.
During his interview with the government spokesperson, Llapashtica asked Krasniqi to comment on the Kosovo rock band Troja and their song “Clown’s Testament”, in which the political apparatus in Kosovo is criticised as an organised team that is stealing land. He also asked the spokesperson whether a controversial visit to Skopje by the Kosovo Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, had been on private or state matters.
Llapashtica said the director of the station later told him: “You shouldn’t have asked him that question because you provoked him very much. We shouldn’t taunt the government people. They give us advertisements.”
Besa TV director Muhamer Fusha argues that Llapashtica was dismissed for his general performance, though he added that “being critical is not in the best interest of a local TV station”. He said it was the national media’s job to tackle the bigger issues.
Life in Kosovo also revealed the results of an investigation into changing patterns of government advertising in newspapers. It noted that some newspapers received more ads following the 2007 election, which led to the formation of the PDK-LDK coalition, while others lost out. Government advertising is the life-blood of Kosovo newspapers, which struggle to make money given poor copy sales and a relatively underdeveloped advertising sector. There is no clear data about newspaper circulation, but most assume that not more than 30,000 copies are sold every day.
The programme revealed that Infopress had run 234.5 pages of advertisements in March 2007, while in 2009 this had doubled to 406 pages. On the other hand, Zëri newspaper, headed by the deputy head of Alliance for Kosovo’s Future, AAK, Blerim Shala, carried 260.5 pages of ads in April 2007, while in 2009 it ran just 178.5.
An investigation by think-tank KIPRED, Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, also found similar changes. KIPRED followed daily newspapers for eleven consecutive days to see which one received more advertising following the creation of the PDK-LDK coalition. According to their research, Infopress had 105 pages of ads, Epoka e Re 82 pages, Express 50, Koha Ditore 49, Kosova Sot 40, Zëri 37, Lajm 24 and Bota Sot 16.
Although Koha Ditore is currently the most widely read and respected newspaper in the country, the coalition directed more ad money to Infopress, which has a more tabloid approach to news, including pictures of scantily clad women in each edition, and is seen as an cheerleader for the PDK.
During the TV debate, Glauk Konjufca, from the radical nationalist Vetevendosje! movement, said: “There is an entire mechanism of small scale blackmails, threats, phone calls and pressure threatening the freedom of speech either on behalf of the government or institutions.”
Krasniqi defended the government’s record on freedom of speech. He said: “No doubt that there is always more to ask for, more to be ambitious for, and we, as much as we can, without being directly involved, are interested, and work to have this horizon as wide as possible, and to make it possible for everyone to say what’s on their mind.”
Two days after the show, Infopress began its campaign with a front-page story focusing on what it claimed was the programme’s attempt to denigrate the Drenica region, the heartland of the former Kosovo of Liberation Army.
It attacked RTK for broadcasting the show, saying the station was “terrorising” Drenica.
In a comment piece, journalist Qani Mehmedi compared Life in Kosovo to a “fascist campaign against everything Albanian”, led by Serbian state Radio and Television. He branded one of the show’s journalists, Jeta Abazi, “a detective working for Serbia”. In the Tuesday, June 2, edition, an interview with the Skenderaj mayor, Sami Lushtaku, was published. The interview was trailed on the front page, under the headline “Lushtaku: Jeta Xharra is a servant of the Serbian secret police”.
Infopress had already attacked BIRN in April after it published an investigation into alleged crimes committed by KLA members during the conflict with Serbia.
On June 3rd, the international community’s top representative in Kosovo, Pieter Feith, spoke out in defence of BIRN.
“I have the highest regard for the programme and I welcome the scrutiny of my own activities that the Life in Kosovo programme undertakes,” Feith, the head of the International Civilian Office and the European Union’s Special Representative in Kosovo, wrote in a letter to BIRN’s governing body.
“Freedom of expression, including in the media, is a central value of European Union integration. Deficiencies in this area have a direct impact on a prospective member’s progress towards the European institutions,” he added.
In a letter to BIRN, the Swiss ambassador to Kosovo, Lukas Beglinger, wrote: “This campaign, and the attitudes upon which it is based, threaten the open space in society represented and defended by independent journalism. Freedom of expression and independence of media from political interference and pressure are crucial for ensuring democracy, and BIRN stands for this important effort.”
Reporters Without Borders, the not-for-profit organisation which campaigns for press freedom, said: “This behaviour by Infopress is appalling and dangerous. “Infopress has strayed far beyond the boundaries of news and information. It is guilty of unacceptable editorial practices.”
In the open letter, released on June 4, nine NGOs and dozens of individuals expressed concern over the intensifying campaign against Xharra. They wrote: “The increasingly common practice of Infopress asserting that particular individuals are ‘Serb spies’ is becoming a disturbing issue.”
Human Rights Watch and OSCE Kosovo, the international organisation responsible for monitoring press freedom in Kosovo, have also voiced concern in recent days, urging the government to condemn threats made against the Life in Kosovo show and its presenter. Human Rights Watch wrote: “Kosovo's president and prime minister should forcefully condemn recent threats against the independent journalist Jeta Xharra in a newspaper that receives substantial advertising revenues from the government. The attacks are the latest indication that freedom of the media in Kosovo is coming under threat.”
In a strongly worded letter, the OSCE chief of mission in the country, Werner Almhofer, said he had followed the media campaign with “regret and deep concern”.
On June 6, the Pristina daily Koha Ditore criticised the authorities for not calling for the allegations to be withdrawn, adding that the authorities’ statements sounded like “an invitation to lynch”.
The Reformist Party, ORA also urged Kosovo’s President and Prime Minister to intervene to protect freedom of speech.
The head of the Independent Media Commission, Argjentina Grazhdani, and the Albanian Press Association in Tirana also condemned the attacks.
Grazhdani said: “The Government should have at least denounced [Lushtaku’s] declaration [that Xharra is a Serbian spy].” By not commenting, the government was “minimising the seriousness of these declarations”.
Despite calls for the government to distance itself from the allegations, the Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuqi, declined to comment on the attacks and threats in an interview with the Kosovo daily Express.
Asked to comment on assertions that Xharra was a Serbian spy, the deputy prime minister answered: “I do not comment on such declarations”. However, he added that the “government works with great care so that freedom of speech is respected fully.”
Meanwhile, at a press conference in Paris, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci described the attack on BIRN staff in Skenderaj as an isolated incident.
He said: “The government of Kosovo has built a very good partnership with Kosovo businesses, civil society, with the academic world and also with independent media, and will fully respect independent media, so every isolated case will remain isolated.”
In an Infopress article published on Monday, Mehmedi argued that he had meant no harm when he compared BIRN journalists to the Serbian police and military who ravaged Drenica in the late 1990s. But he criticised NGOs for speaking up in defence of the show, again repeating his core allegation that Life in Kosovo was a “foreign production” that draws upon “suspicious” international donations. Funding for Life in Kosovo is transparent and comes from well-respected sources such as the OSCE.
On Wednesday, Infopress called an end to the “debate” on Life in Kosovo on its front page and thanked those who had submitted articles on the issue, which it said would now not be published. They said the decision had been taken as the newspaper felt the issue had been discussed fully and it had listened to comments from local and international organisations.
On Wednesday, the the government released a statement, confirming the guarantee of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution and adding that "“All incidents of isolated violation of freedom of speech are punishable by the government. They do not present the vision and the commitments of the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo for the development of democracy, defence of freedom of speech and the independence of the media.”
BIRN, in the meantime, has raised the issue with the police and Kosovo’s press council.
2009-06-11 22:10:35