Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Serbian authorities to guarantee the safety of the journalists at OK Radio, a leading local radio station in the southeastern town of Vranje, whose work is being obstructed by increasingly violent threats from Dejan Nikolic, a powerful local businessman known as Kantar.

Update on 6 July 2023: A powerful local businessman, Dejan Nikolic known as Kantar, was convicted on 26 June 2023 to one and a half years in prison. Delivered in a record time, the first-instance verdict sanctions the threats targeting the journalists of OK Radio during the first trial when he had already been judged for attacks on the media. But having filed an appeal against the new verdict, Kantar – who is currently serving a 14-month prison term – will be set free in August this year. The journalists fear new attacks, while the authorities have failed to tearn down the wall, built illegally by the businessman, to block OK Radio‘s windows. In addition to intimidating the reporters, the wall prevents from working a café which is attached to the radio and is its main funding source. 

Kantar has been exerting constant and growing pressure on OK Radio for several months because it is opposing his plan to build an illegal gambling room that would encroach on the building that houses the radio station.

“The threats against OK Radio’s staff are very worrying and are obstructing the work of its journalists,” said Pavol Szalai, the head of RSF’s European Union and Balkans desk. “In accordance with our April 2022 recommendations, we call on the Serbian authorities to take steps to improve journalists’ security. There is an urgent need to restore a safe environment for this radio station’s journalists so that they can resume working normally. Press freedom must not be gagged by fear.”

OK Radio is a well-established radio station that broadcasts local news. Most of its funding comes from the income of a café called the No Comment Caffe that is attached to the radio station. In March, OK Radio owner Olivera Vladkovic told the police she was getting telephone threats from Kantar. Then, the café was ransacked at the start of June.

Kantar began construction on his illegal gambling room on 6 June, walling up the windows of the radio station. Representatives of journalists’ associations with the Standing Working Group for the Safety of Journalists – an entity created by the Serbian government in 2020 to respond more effectively to attacks on journalists – visited Vranje on 15 June and voiced their support for OK Radio and Vladkovic. Kantar went to No Comment Caffe and reiterated his threats on 16 June. He was arrested the same day.

The strongman’s harassment has taken various forms, from threatening phone calls to smashing the café’s windows. He even sent one of his men to the café carrying a phone on which Kantar could be heard screaming threats against the radio station’s journalists.

Kantar’s imprisonment has not stopped him from continuing his threats. In late June, he targeted Veran Matic, a member of the Standing Working Group for the Safety of Journalists, by means of fake arrest warrants posted in the streets of Vranje accusing Matic of destroying the city.

Kantar even continued to threaten journalists when he appeared in court, while friends and associates gathered outside wearing T-shirts with the words “Vucic help us” – a reference to Serbia’s president – and displaying signs saying “Justice for Kantar,” suggesting that he is a victim. After the hearing, OK Radio’s reporters said publicly that they did not feel safe.

Kantar is both extremely influential and feared in the region. A local court ordered the destruction of the wall erected in front of OK Radio, but no builder is prepared to carry out the job for fear of reprisals from Kantar. Two employees have left OK Radio because they felt they were in danger. Other Serbian media outlets are also reluctant to cover this case for the same reasons.

As the No Comment Caffe’s inability to keep operating has deprived OK Radio of its main source of funding, the Association of Independent Electronic Media has launched a fund-raising drive for the radio station.

Serbia is ranked 79th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index.

European Union member states want to authorize spying on journalists and their sources. It sounds really incredible, but do you remember the Pegasus affair?

Journalists all over the world are monitored using software that allows infecting mobile phones and eavesdropping on phone conversations and reading messages and e-mails. The secret services and the police thus monitored the telephone conversations and digital communication of hundreds of journalists, human rights activists, lawyers and politicians, and even presidents of states.

A group of investigative journalists from the German public services WDR and NDR, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, along with the organizations Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, discovered that the secret services and the police used software purchased from the Israeli company NSO to tap the phones of more than 180 journalists, especially in Hungary. Greece, Spain, France, Belgium and Azerbaijan. Among the journalists spied on was the editor-in-chief of the British FT, reporters from the French Le Monde, a CNN reporter… The scandal was huge.

Presenting the idea of the European Media Freedom Act, EC Vice President Vera Jurova stressed that the Media Freedom Act includes strong protective measures against the use of spyware against the media, journalists and their families.

The European Federation of Journalists welcomed the idea of the European Act on Freedom of the Media, but with the amendments we requested, among other things, an additional improvement regarding the protection of journalists’ sources and the installation of spyware in accordance with international standards, so that the law would ensure the protection of journalists from all forms of surveillance that threaten protection journalistic sources.

But the member states decided to go in the completely opposite direction. France requested an exception to the general ban on the deployment of spyware against journalists, demanding that provisions on the effective protection of journalistic sources “do not call into question the responsibility of member states to safeguard national security”.

The EU Council accepts the idea of weakening the EMFA and in 2023 in Europe we are faced with the fact that the EU Governments agree that spying on journalists and their sources should be approved on the vague grounds of “national security”.

Of course, the European Federation of Journalists strongly rejects the EU Council’s position on the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) and condemns the attack on media freedom, arguing that such legislation would further endanger journalists and their sources, because such an exception would actually nullify the original idea of protecting journalists from spying. Who will determine what is a justifiable reason for spying for national security?

I will remind you that after the discovery of the Pegasus affair, in January 2022, an investigation was conducted in Hungary. Hungary’s National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information issued a report concluding that in all cases they investigated, including those in which journalists were eavesdropped, all legal criteria for the use of spyware were met and that the spyware was used to protect the national security. It has not been explained why these journalists pose a threat to national security.

That is why it is necessary to adopt a provision that will be imperative for member states to ensure the protection of journalists and their sources from spying.

The European Federation of Journalists has joined its affiliates and other civil society organizations in calling on member states to review their current position and take steps to meaningfully protect journalists and their fundamental rights and ensure that the Act protects journalists and their fundamental rights by:
– eliminates the “national security” exception
– limit the list of criminal offenses that allow repressive measures against journalists and journalistic sources and prohibit the installation of spyware
– include strong legal safeguards for the protection and respect of free and independent journalistic work.

Everything else takes us to some past times, far from the free democratic world to which Europe wants to belong. A world where journalism is truly a public good and those who make decisions have the courage and intelligence to provide a framework in which journalists will work freely and independently. Today, we are facing the European Parliament in the hope that it will have the courage to return the European Act on Freedom of the Media to the direction it was intended, which leads to strengthening the protection of journalistic freedoms, creating a solid framework for the independent, professional work of journalists.

Source: Sindikat Novinara Hrvatske