PODGORICA, 25.09.2020. – Cooperation between judicial bodies and the media community is crucial in the process of strengthening media freedom, especially having in mind the negotiations on Montenegro’s membership in the European Union, it was concluded during the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Supreme Court of Montenegro and the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro.

“According to media assessments and analyzes, the transparency of the Supreme Court is very well assessed, and this Memorandum will further improve the quality of communication between the highest court in the country and the public and citizens”, said Supreme Court President Vesna Medenica.

She also expressed satisfaction that there is an organization, such as the TUMM, which contributes to every journalist being informed and having enough knowledge and skills not to make a personal judgment before the citizens do so.

According to the TUMM, that media workers’ organization has been working for years to establish a reliable and accurate database of court cases related to the media and journalists in order to monitor and analyze certain trends, so the Memorandum is a big step forward in that direction.

Good cooperation with the institutions of the system that agree to share their information with the TUMM and the public is extremely important for our organization and its activities, said the president of the TUM, Marijana Camovic Velickovic.

“The application of the standards of the European Court of Human Rights in the field of freedom of expression in proceedings concerning journalists and the media on the one hand, and the length and outcome of labor disputes on the other, are in our special focus. Therefore, the Memorandum will significantly facilitate the procedure of collecting statistics, which is necessary to create a complete picture of trends in the media sector”, said Camovic Velickovic.

Medenica also reminded that the Supreme Court is the only court in the region that has adopted the Communication Protocol on the Judiciary (KOPS), which precisely defines the extremely high quality and timely exchange of relevant information between courts and the media, which courts already apply.

Peter Bárdy, editor in chief of the portal for which the murdered journalist Ján Kucijak worked talks to Cenzolovka about his colleague who investigated embezzlement of public money and mobsters with political connections

In February 2018, the investigative journalist of the news portal Aktuality.sk, Ján Kuciak, was brutally killed, together with his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, because, as it was later established, of the article he was working on.

The killing of the journalist, the first one since Slovakia has become an independent country, has triggered a wave of discontent throughout the region. The article on which Kuciak was working at the time of the murder  was soon published in a number of newspapers in Slovakia, as well as in some Czech and European media outlets.

People took to the streets in protest. In Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, 25,000 people protested under the slogan „We Don’t Want 1990s Back“

A week later, twice as many people took to the streets at the protest called „Let’s defend an honest Slovakia“, and further protests had happened in another 40 Slovak cities.

Kočner is not innocent. He has so far only been „acquitted“ for lack of evidence and will continue to be decided by the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that Kočner will be punished.

The pressure of the international and local community was so intense that it in short order led to the fall of the government and to the arrests of suspects. During the ensuing trials, two people were convicted in the first instance. One of the two killers, former soldier Miroslav Marček, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. A middleman who cooperated with the police, Zoltán Andruskó, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The trial against Tomáš Szabó, who was charged with the murder of Kucijak, Alena Zsuzsova, who was accused of providing assistance, and Marián Kočner, a controversial businessman with strong ties to the top of the government who was suspected of ordering the killings, has ended recently. Szabó was sentenced to 25 years in jail, while Zsuzsova and Kočner were acquitted.

In an unrelated trial, Marián Kočner was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the fraud related to the television network.

We talked to Peter Bárdy, the editor-in-chief of the Slovak portal aktuality.sk since 2008, and we asked him about Ján Kucijak, the changes that took place in Slovakia after his murder, and about the trials.

Cenzolovka: You worked with Ján Kuciak for several years. How do you remember him?

Peter Bárdy:  I hired Ján Kuciak in the summer of 2015. He was my colleague and a member of the Aktuality.sk investigative team. Ján was a modest man, but a great professional. I used to call him – the architect of Slovak data investigative journalism.

He was not an egoist in his work. He did not desire to be the best, first, exclusive. Instead, he tried to connect people and work bringing them together.

It was not unusual for him to help with data analysis in his free time, even to colleagues from competing media.

Ján Kuciak combined human good in its purest form and an immense effort to work for society, for the country.

In his work, he focused on corruption in the state administration, overpriced state purchases, manipulated public procurement, and he wrote about the mobster Marian Kočner, about Slovak oligarchs connected to the government.

Ján Kuciak with his fiancé Martina Kušnírová

Practicing journalism in Slovakia is not dangerous

Cenzolovka:  Was journalism perceived to be a dangerous profession at that time?

Bárdy:  Despite the fact that in the past there were sporadic physical attacks on Slovak journalists and that two journalists have been missing for several years, journalism in Slovakia was not considered a dangerous profession. And it is not so much regarded even today, more than two and a half years after the murder of Ján Kuciak.

We all believe that this heinous act was something extraordinary.

I do not want us to accept attacks on journalists or attempts to kill them in an EU Member State. I believe that the government, parliament and the state institutions will do their utmost to ensure that this does not happen again. And, of course, the media also have to do a lot of work to protect ourselves.

I am convinced that without international pressure, without the interest of the EU and the European institutions, we would still be waiting to this day, and perhaps we would still not know the names of the killers.

As for the legislation, there are still big gaps, but the government has promised to address them.

Cenzolovka: The killing of Ján Kuciak and his fiancé was described as „sending shock waves“ through Slovakia that led to the largest mass protest since the fall of communism and ultimately to the fall of the government.  How important was support of the public?

Bárdy: It was something special. After years of society tacitly tolerating the actions of the government that have hurt democracy in my country, tens of thousands of people have suddenly decided to speak. And to speak out loud.

They took to the streets and told the government that they did not want it. That they don’t want a government that protects the mobsters, but that they want a government that protects good people. They rejected a government that did not save Ján Kuciak.

We have not personally been involved in it. We didn’t stand on the podium, we didn’t shout slogans, we didn’t upset people. We may have had a right to do so, but we did not want to do it because it would immediately turn against us.

We did not want politicians to abuse this situation. And it turned out that it was the right decision. I am proud of all those who supported us and I am grateful to them until my death.

Without international pressure, we would not know the names of the killers

Cenzolovka: In Serbia, we have three unresolved murders of journalists and only one trial – for the murder of Slavko Curuvija in 1999- on which we had to wait for 15 years, and the matter is still not settled. What made the process of sentencing perpetrators of  Ján Kuciak’s murder so efficient?

Bárdy: I am convinced that without international pressure, without the interest of the EU and the European institutions, we would still be waiting to this day, and perhaps we would still not know the names of the killers.

The people took to the streets and told the government that they did not want it. That they don’t want a government that protects the mobsters, but that they want a government that protects good people. They rejected a government that did not save Ján Kuciak.

The excellent work of the investigation team in cooperation with EUROPOL and EUROJUST is confirmed by the fact that three people are already convicted. However, we are still waiting for the perpetrator of the murder to be punished.

Cenzolovka:  Recently, there was possibly another „shock wave“ in Slovakia, this time provoked by the court’s decision to acquit businessman Marian Kočner of charges of ordering the murder. Do you believe that in the end the justice will be served?

Bárdy: Of course, I was very muted, frustrated, disappointed after the verdict … But then I thought it wasn’t over.

This is not a romantic story, but a cruel event that must be evaluated responsibly.

I understand the judges if they have doubts about the sufficiency of the evidence, but on the other hand, I am sure that they can consider Marian Kočner as the commissioner of the murder.

Kočner is not innocent. He has so far only been „acquitted“ for lack of evidence and the process will continue to be decided by the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that Kočner will be punished.

Please find the original version of this interview, written in Serbian, on this LINK.

Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic reiterated the issue of publishing the identity of protected witnesses, referring to the latest case in Bosnia and Herzegovina related to Republika Srpska Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and the publishing of the name of a protected witness at a war crimes trial.

As she stated, effective protection and support for witnesses in the context of wartime-related criminal proceedings is instrumental to the fight against impunity for the crimes committed during the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

However, she warns, in recent days, the name of a protected witness in a war crime case in Bosnia and Herzegovina allegedly implicating the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska has been published in local media outlets, and war crime files containing the names of witnesses allegedly belonging to the Specialist Kosovo Chambers were anonymously transferred to a veterans’ organisation in Kosovo. These developments are unacceptable and raise a number of serious issues to be addressed by the relevant authorities, prosecutors’

“These developments are unacceptable and raise a number of serious issues to be addressed by the relevant authorities, prosecutors” she added.

Many protected witnesses are war crime victims themselves and live in the same communities as the perpetrators. In some cases where witnesses’ names have been disclosed their lives have been endangered and their families threatened, and some witnesses have been ostracised by their own communities because of their testimonies.

She therefore called all politicians and members of the judiciary in the region to take the issue of the protection of witnesses in war crimes cases seriously and to take all the necessary measures to ensure that no witness has to fear for their life when testifying in a war crimes case. Crucially, this includes promptly identifying and bringing to justice persons attempting to intimidate witnesses.

“I also appeal to media professionals not to disclose information about the identity of protected witnesses. In doing so, not only do they violate ethical codes of journalism, but they risk being held criminally responsible”, concluded Mijatović.

VRANJE, 22.09.2020. – The founders of the infovranjske.rs news portal in the southern Serbia town of Vranje on Monday expressed concern over the latest attacks on the portal and its journalists.

The Team for Development and Integration said that it was greatly concerned over the attacks on the portal, journalist Slavomir Kostic and for the safety of the rest of the news desk. The Team, as founder of the portal, also called the authorities to react immediately, the portal said.

The Team reacted to a statement from the Mineralac football club which called the InfoVranjske portal “anti-Serb and anti-state” and singled Kostic out as “an on duty idiot and rat”. Mineralac supporters also carried a banner insulting Kostic at its field.

InfoVranjske recalled that portal editor in chief Sasa Stojkovic was insulted in an earlier statement by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

A coalition of global unions, representing nearly 21 million workers worldwide, is launching a campaign today to save print journalism. UNI Global Union and the International Federation of Journalists are calling on national governments to tax major internet companies and support print media.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and UNI Global Union announced an effort today to push governments to adopt emergency rescue packages for the print media industry as a whole (journalism, publishing, printing and distribution) as well as introduce a digital services tax on tech giants such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook who have diverted advertising revenue from media outlets.

The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated a long-standing decline of media ad income. This year alone, revenue is down 20 per cent. Much of this money has been siphoned by tech companies. For example, in 2018, Google earned $4.7 billion from news—money not shared with the journalists who produced it.

“The current global health crisis is significantly increasing the great difficulties facing the print media sector,” Anthony Bellanger, IFJ General Secretarywarns. “Governments need to react urgently. The sector is a public good and a crucial pillar of our democracies. Governments are well aware of this. Indeed, with the COVID crisis they have identified the sector as essential. Today, they cannot just watch the ship sink from their balconies.”

In light of the severe economic crisis that lies ahead, the unions want national governments to step in to protect media jobs safeguard a print media industry that stands for quality, ethics, solidarity, labour rights and fundamental freedoms.

“The health of our democracies rests on holding people in power accountable, and journalists are the ones who, more often than not, shine a spotlight on political and corporate power abuses of the public trust,” says Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union. “Print media plays a huge part in disseminating this information and supporting the online components of journalism.”

Unless action is taken, thousands of media outlets risk being shuttered and hundreds-of-thousands jobs risk being lost due to the consolidation in the media sector and loss of advertising income.

The IFJ and UNI have adopted a joint appeal addressed to National Governments titled “Rescue and future survival package for the print media industry.” Unions who are members of these federations will use these points lobbying for support for the news media.

Nicola Konstantinou, Head of department of the UNI’s Graphical & Packaging sector, says, “Print media is a social good, and its media supply chain is long and includes millions of people—journalists,  editors, proof-readers, printers, designers, photographers, but also delivery people, postal workers, and booksellers”.

“These businesses—and the people who work for them—are put at a disadvantage by the unfair tax avoidance stealing of ad income by major tech companies. We are asking governments to intervene to make sure that the people who produce and distribute the news we depend on get a fair share.”

To protect press and media freedom, we need an accurate picture of the forces that threaten it. To do this, we must collect and verify as much information as possible. That is why the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) has launched the ‘Report It’ campaign to create awareness and encourage everyone to play a role in documenting and reporting the many violations committed against journalists and media workers across Europe. It is wrong that such violations, abuses and aggressions have become so frequent as to be almost accepted as “situation:normal”. Through this campaign, the MFRR insists that this behaviour should not be normalised or accepted as the price of being a journalist or media worker. Threats and violations against media actors are not right and they should not be tolerated. Instead, they should be reported.

The Mapping Media Freedom (MMF) platform is the place to report every threat, including everything from physical attacks that require hospital treatment, arrests and detention, vexatious legal actions, harassment and smear campaigns, to attempts to censor journalistic output, ban journalists from government events or bring forward laws restricting media freedom. All these violations need to be reported: all you need is an internet connection. By entering this information to MMF, the MFRR team can offer direct support to the media worker(s) affected. This will also help us gain a clearer understanding of the threats to  press and media  freedom in Europe.

Everything you need is to fill the report. 

Since the beginning of 2020, 241 alerts from 30 countries have been uploaded to the MMF platform, including attempts by the Greek police to prevent journalists from speaking to refugees and asylum seekers after the Moria site fire; attacks on journalists during anti-government demonstrations in Sofia; the denial of broadcast licenses for independent media outlets, such as Klubrádió in Hungary, or the online misogynistic harassment against journalists in countries such as UK, North Macedonia and Belgium.

Every alert makes sure that journalists and media workers do not have to suffer in silence. To effectively support journalists across Europe, we need everyone’s help to ensure that every violation is reported on Mapping Media Freedom.