The Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety which represents more than 8,000 members, strongly condemns the offices break-ins of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo (AJK), located in the Public Housing Enterprise building in the center of Pristina.
In the early hours of Tuesday (18.02.2020), AJK offices were broken into for the second time. Different from the first case on 06.12.2019 when valuables were stolen this time nothing is missing in the offices, however the perpetrators have searched the documents in the office.
Kosovo Police was immediately informed about the case and the forensics team arrived two hours later at the scene to conduct the necessary investigations.
The AJK offices were broken into twice over a period of less than 3 months and the investigation for the first incident is still on – going.
“We are extremely concerned with this situation and strongly condemn this act. We ask the authorities to conduct a thorough investigation on both cases, since we have not received any news from the investigators for the first case even though more than two months have passed.” – said the President of the Board of AJK, Gentiana Begolli Pustina.
The Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety asks that the perpetrators of these incidents to be brought to justice. The Platform will also inform all European institutions of this incident and request their immediate intervention.
Skopje – Belgrade – Podgorica – Pristina – Sarajevo – Zagreb, 20.02.2020
BH Journalists Association
Trade Union of Media of Montenegro
Croatian Journalists’ Association
Association of Journalists of Kosovo
Association of Journalists of Macedonia
Independent Journalists Association of Serbia