Author: birnEU

BIRN Kosovo played a role in the establishment of Prosperiteti, which will be streamed online, by organising meetings and trainings.

Lendrit Qeli, who runs Prosperiteti and attended BIRN’s training, said the station will benefit the community greatly.

“There will be topics to raise the community awareness in the municipality and at the same time we will do promotions that until now did not have the opportunity to get promoted through other mediums,” Qeli said.

Prosperiteti received donations from the Gjakova municipality and the Italian organisations IPSIA and CELIM MILAN.

Considering the difficulties that journalists face because of the absence of the law of protecting the sources of information, BIRN together with ARTICLE 19, a London-based human rights organization, drafted a law that will serve as a protection for these sources.

The draft law was sent to the parliament and BIRN publically asked MPs to adopt the law since it is crucial for freedom of speech and expression.

Report, titled “The State is 30 Per Cent Accessible to Citizens,” is the culmination of a year-and-a-half of monitoring of public institutions to examine the implementation of the law.

Concluding that government institutions respond to only 30 per cent of official requests, the report found that the Prime Minister Office is the least transparent institution. 

Gresa Musliu, a BIRN Kosovo researcher, presenting the report to Kosovo’s media, noted that only 100 of 300 official requests to government institutions received positive responses. In the case of 100 requests to the prime minister’s office, fewer than 30 were responded to.

In one case, when BIRN requested access to spending reports from official trips, the Prime Minister’s office refused on the grounds that the reports could reveal diets, and thus expose confidential health information. As a result, BIRN Kosovo has sued the Prime Minister’s office.

Musliu singled out the Agency for Protection of Personal Data, whose opinion was used to justify the Prime Minister’s Office decision not to disclose the trip reports, as contributing to a lack of government transparency.

“This agency presents risk for transparency, because since the establishment it is allegedly finding reasons to justify the lack of transparence of the legal institutions,” Musliu said.

The least transparent institutions include: the municipality of Prishtina, Kosovo Cadastral Agency, Prosecutorial Council and Judicial Council of Kosovo. While, among the transparent institutions are: Business Registration Agency in Kosovo, the Office of the General Auditor, and the Anti-Corruption Agency.

This report contains an exact template for writing official requests and also specific examples of requests sent by BIRN to the public institutions. Moreover, it provides recommendations for the public institutions and the citizens who want to have access to public documents.

 

Please see the full report here: PDF

The main issue discussed was the transparency of institutions on providing public documents. There is not enough transparency of these institutions since there are a lot of barriers to have access on the public documents.

Kusari, legal advisor at BIRN, explained the law on Access to Public Document, adopted by the Assembly on October 7, 2010, which gives full access to public documents.

BIRN has sent official requests to institutions asking for accessibility in the public documents. “The most transparent institution regarding the accessibility to documents is the Kosovo Business Registration Agency, while the least transparent ones are Data Protection Agency and the Prime Minister’s Office,” Kusari said.

The June 24 programme also aired exclusive footage of government inspectors from the Independent Commission for Mines and Minerals being attacked during the seizure of an excavator.

“People are following me, and I am scared. I had to take a vacation from the job and I have not left home since then alone,” said inspector Refki Morina, who reported that the threats stopped after the programme aired.

“Justice in Kosovo” found that those taking the gravel were doing so at the expense of the environment.  Furthermore, judicial bodies have failed to prosecute the exploiters, who typically start work at 4 p.m., when inspectors are off-duty.

The guests were Daut Xhemajli – deputy minister of justice, Albulena Haxhiu – deputy from Vetevendosje, and Florent Spahija – legal advisor in BIRN. Also, prisoners from the prison of Dubrava were a part of the live debate through telephone.

This law has been opposed by some members of the opposition in the parliament, while the government said the law was crucial.

A prisoner from Dubrava said that they want to benefit from the law on amnesty just like the other prisoners from the region. “We are not asking get fully amnestied, but just for an acceptable percentage,” added the prisoner. He also claimed that they had a decent support from the government, but no support at all from the other parties from the opposition.

For instance, Enver Aliu, wanted on drugs charges, ,successfully changed his identity in the municipality of Vitia. He changed his name even though the persons that are under investigation legally cannot change their name or surname.

He changed his name to Mehmet Mjaku. “Justice in Kosovo” verified this by comparing his personal ID number.

The Police of Kosovo also confirmed that it is the same person. “The person that you are referring to is wanted from the authorities of Macedonia,” said Kosovo police spokesperson Baki Kelani.

There are three similar cases of fugitives that changed their names. Because of these occurrences, the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided in July 2012 that municipalities must require verifications from Kosovo Police when people petition to change names.