Today is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. From 1998 to 2005, 14 journalists and media workers were killed and reported missing in Kosovo. Their kidnappers and murderers still have not been found.
In 2017, 30 assaults on journalists took place in Kosovo – only two of which were prosecuted, with courts levying fines of 500 and 300 euros. Twelve attacks on journalist were reported in the first half of 2018. According to the NUNS database, 73 attacks on journalists took place in Serbia this year, five of which were physical, while 52 were cases of intimidation and 16 verbal threats.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) launched a global campaign to end the impunity of crimes against journalists in order to remind the authorities and the public of crimes that have not been resolved or tried over the years.
According to the IFJ’s statistics, more than 600 journalists have been killed in the past six years.
„Nine out of ten cases of attacks on journalists remain unpunished. Hundreds of journalists are in prison, and journalists are attacked, beaten, held in detention, harassed and threatened on a daily basis,“ said the IFJ.
The experience of KoSSev editorial office
KoSSev Portal’s newsroom was shot at on the 11th of June, 2015, only a year after its establishment. According to the official police investigation, the portal premises were fired at with seven bullets. Despite this, we found more shells later, which numbered 11 altogether. According to unofficial information, these shells were fired from a Heckler submachine gun. To date, we have no information either about the course of the investigation or about the status of the case. That same year, on November 24th, a private car used by our editorial staff was set on fire. There is also no information about this investigation. During the 2017 pre-election campaign for the Kosovo, our editor’s family received threats along with a verbal explanation that this happened because of “what KoSSev writes”. KoSSev female journalists were physically attacked two times, in the presence of members of the Kosovo Police who failed to react during both incidents. Local authorities, both in the Kosovo and Serbian systems, have unilaterally seized any communication with the KoSSev portal, including departments dealing with sports, educational and cultural activities, as well as the schools and institutions which receive funds from the budget. Communication was unilaterally cut off by two heads of the Kosovo Police in the North region – Zeljko Bojic and Nenad Djuric, who, along with another official, are the only ones who have the authority (according to their own words) to communicate with the public in the region of North. All Serbian ministers in the Kosovo government – Nenad Rikalo and Ivan Todosijevic, with the exception of one minister, as well as Serbian deputies in the Kosovo parliament, are also on the list of those who cut off communication with KoSSev, along with all mayors and presidents of provisional bodies. Kosovo Assembly deputy and Srpska Lista’s head of Communication with the Media and Civil Society, Igor Simic, also does not communicate with KoSSev. All these officials are members and supporters of Srpska Lista.
„Due to the rise of violence and the lack of will to suppress impunity, the IFJ has launched a campaign for the adoption of an international convention dedicated to protecting journalists and other media professionals,“ the IFJ stated.
The IFJ’s initiative was also supported by the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS), which assessed that the largest number of those responsible for attacks on journalists and media workers in Serbia have not been punished or no investigation whatsoever has been initiated against them.
UNS points out that as many as 39 journalists and media workers who worked for Serbian newsrooms, including Slavko Curuvija, Milan Pantic, Dada Vujasinovic and victims of the bombing of RTS, were killed, kidnapped, disappeared or died under unknown circumstances in the period from 1991 to the end of 2001.
The UN Day to end impunity for crimes against journalists was adopted on 18 December 2013 and is marked on the 2nd of November, on the anniversary of the killings of two RFI reporters, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, who were murdered in Kidal, Mali in 2013.
The Journalists’ Association of Serbia is organizing a protest gathering in the Belgrade Media Center today, at 11 am, during which a public letter addressed to the authorities in Serbia will be read, as members of NUNS are joining media workers around the world in the campaign „End of Impunity – for a UN Convention to protect journalists“.
The International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists this year in Serbia followed in the midst of the scandal after publishing the Belgrade-based state’s sponsored Ilustrovana Politika Front Page reading „The beasts are unleashed, why are RTS and Politika silent?“ with a biting dog’s head on the front and front pages of Serbian dailies and weeklies out of the state’s control in the background. The writer Djordje Martic is known as the author of a notorious article published shortly before Curuvija’s murder in 1999.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
