Category: News and Events
EU Awards: Investigations that Changed Balkans and Turkey
The 21 investigations selected for the 2018 EU awards all highlighted the way courageous journalists in the region continue to raise the bar and challenge cultures of secrecy, corruption and impunity.
From revealing corruption among officials, institutions and public figures to revelations of ties between politicians and criminal organisations, the winners of the 2018 EU Awards for Investigative Journalism in six countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey shaped public opinion and made an impact through exceptional watchdog journalism.
The awards aim to celebrate and promote the outstanding achievements of investigative journalists as well as improve the visibility of quality journalism. In this year’s awards, 30 journalists were given prizes for 21 remarkable investigations.
The 2018 EU Awards kicked off on Turkey, with a dozen quality investigations, but three stood out.
Hayzel Ocak’s investigative story about corruption in the real estate industry, “Unprecedented Betrayal”, showed how Istanbul’s urbanization plan was destroyed by privileged zoning rights, which were granted to a few. Ocak was awarded first prize at a ceremony held at the Press House of the Association of Journalists in the capital, Ankara. The jury deemed the story “a product of outstanding and courageous research, which was additionally presented very clearly”.
Second prize in Turkey went to Dinçer Gökçe for “Turkey’s List of Shame (Part 1 & Part 2),” about 115 underage girls and the gross negligence of officials in public hospitals. In his investigation, Gokce examined the records of 115 children who came to hospital between January 1, 2017, and May 9, 2017, one by one.
According to the records, 77 of the 115 found to be pregnant were over the age of 15 while 38 were found to be pregnant below the age of 15. The pregnancies were never reported to the authorities, even though it was mandatory to do so by law. After the publication of Gokce’s investigative article, the authorities launched an investigation against the hospital and everyone involved in these cases. The jury viewed this story as an example of systematic wrongdoing that demonstrated the need for greater transparency in governance. Not only was it expertly researched, but it was also masterly and courageously presented, casting a spotlight on some very serious problems in the country, they said.
Fevzi Kızılkoyun won third prize for an investigation in to the death of Gazi University student Şule Çet, who fell to her death at 4am from the 20th floor of a plaza in the Çankaya district of Çağatay. Her death might have been closed as a suicide had the autopsy report not come into the hands of this journalist. Through a thorough investigation, Kızılkoyun pursued justice in “Secret of the 20th Floor / Truth Revealed by the Autopsy”. The case was eventually closed as a case of rape and murder. The jury stated that the story was researched by the careful and dedicated journalist who had uncovered important evidence despite being confronted by a wall of ignorance.
In North Macedonia, 20 high-quality investigations were in the running for prizes, but three were most noticeable. First prize went to Snezhana Lupevska Sozen, Miomir Serafinovic and Biljana Nikolovska, for “Citizens Identity Theft for Criminal Purposes”. This researched the fate of Zlate Stojanovski who has wrongly accused and went to jail in a case of stolen identity. The journalists revealed the details of the case, the mistakes made by institutions and the state, and the stolen identity that cost Stojanovski his freedom. The jury members deemed it a product of outstanding research.
Veles, a small town in the north of Northern Macedonia, become famous after the 2016 US presidential elections, when media outlets revealed that young men from here were running over a hundred websites that pumped out often false viral stories in support of the candidacy of Donald Trump. In “The Secret Players Behind Macedonia’s Fake News Sites”, Saska Cvetkovska uncovered new information and added fresh details to the story of the fake news boom in Veles. Cvetovska won second prize and praise from the jury for her indepth investigation.
The third prize awardees Kristina Ozimec and Vasko Magleshov investigated North Macedonian MPs’ travel expenses. Ozimec and Magleshov proved, by using FOI requests, that MPs in the country spent around 50,000 euros a month on this purpose only. “Scandalous Amounts for MPs’ Travel Expenses” revealed unessential spending and misuse of public money.
First prize in Albania went to Esemeralda Keta and Elisa Gjerani for “Premature Baby Deaths Rise in Albania’s Cash-Starved Hospitals”, an emotional and touching deep probe that exposed the lack of incubators and other medical equipment needed to treat premature babies in Albania’s maternity hospitals – and believed to be a factor behind the alarmingly high child mortality rate in the country.
Endrit Habilaj was awarded second prize for the TV documentary “The Destruction of Valbona”, which used footage and documents to show the deterioration of the heart of the “Albanian Alps”, exposing evidence that hydropower developers are building plants illegally and in contravention of court orders, so destroying the environment and tourism.
Ola Mitre won third prize for exposing the added and often hidden cost that patients face when they undergo surgery in private hospitals with medical packages subsidized by the Health Insurance Fund, in “The Hidden Costs of Free Cardio Surgeries in Private Hospitals”.
In Montenegro, Jovan Nikitovic won first prize for an extensive investigation into one of the biggest cases of cultural negligence in the country. His investigation into the disappearance, theft, damage or destruction of 14,475 exhibits in the National Museum and other museums in Montenegro.
Second prize in Montenegro went to Maja Boricic who tackled the country’s growing environmental problems in “Medical Waste in Montenegro – A lurking menace”. In this well researched and reported story, Borcic presented new information and revealed that not all pharmacies in the capital, Podgorica, follow the same standard when it comes to dealing with medical waste and that the disposal of more than a thousand tonnes of such waste was not supervised.
Dejan Milovac and Lazar Grdinic won third prize for their investigation into donations to the ruling party from the poorest part of Podgorica ahead of elections, which went through the roof. Milovac and Grdinic shone a light on the hidden world of election and party financing frauds in “Citizens’ donations, or black-funds”.
In Serbia, the ties between political figures and criminals were revealed in the investigation “How Serbia’s Health Minister Helped a Criminal Avoid Trial”, by Dragana Peco and Stefan Dojcinovic, which won the first prize in the EU Awards in Serbia. Their thorough investigation revealed the shady connections between Minister of Health Zlatibor Loncar and mobster Petar Panic, who avoided a court hearing and eventually jail time thanks mainly to his connection to top officials.
Vladimir Kostic and Dina Djordjevic won second prize for their two articles, “Small hydroelectric power plants: the state and companies connected to Vucic’s best man profit most”, and “From Nigerian scheme to clandestine EPS procurement worth millions”. Kostic and Djordjevic shone a light on the controversial and lucrative business of small hydro-plants. They discovered that more than 7.2 million euros was paid between 2013 and 2016 to companies connected to Nikola Petrovic, the best man of President Aleksandar Vucic, and his business partners.
Milos Stanic discovered that almost a million people in Serbia, Croatia and Hungary are exposed to carcinogenic drinking water with arsenic levels above the legal limit, so winning third prize for “Toxic Taps: Arsenic in Water Stirs Cancer Fears”.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amarildo Gutic won first prize for his documentary “The State against David”, which reconstructed the last hours of the life of David Dragicevic, a young man whose unresolved death sparked major tensions in the country. The jury’s summary of the award said Gutic had transformed a personal and family tragedy into a story that convincingly spoke about the pathology of institutions and the entire government.
Second prize in Bosnia went to Semir Mujkic for “Corruption in Public Procurements”, a series of investigative articles on corruption practices in public procurement in Bosnia published during 2018. In addition to the articles, Mujkic made a database of year-round live tracking of spending on official vehicles.
Renata Radic Dragic and Mubarek Asani won third prize for their multimedia investigation “Veterans against Veterans’ Associations”, a story that was the result of months of research and data collection from all levels of government. Having reviewed hundreds of documents, they proved that Veterans’ Associations had misused money intended for veterans. They revealed that at least 40 million euros were paid out to about 1,600 veterans’ associations over the six-year period. Some of the money was misused by individuals, and veterans never saw the benefits intended for them.
In Kosovo, Saranda Ramaj won first prize for her investigation, “Warehouse of Pharmaceutical Abuse”. Ramaj showed that the monopoly created by pharmaceutical companies in 2016 and 2017 enabled them to hike drug prices, and that this was permitted by the state. Ramaj’s story led to an investigation of the Ministry of Health by State Prosecution and the suspension of the sale of questionable drugs.
Second prize went to Serbeze Haxhiaj for “Kosovo’s Political Murders: Unpunished, Not Forgotten”, a story about the local authorities and international missions that failed to jail the perpetrators of a series of political assassinations and gun attacks after the Kosovo war ended. The jury praised the story for giving “a voice to those who will otherwise not be heard”.
Third prize went to Ardiana Mehmeti for the series “Exploitation in Telecom” (link, link). Mehmeti’s work focused on the business of Telecom of Kosovo whose owners are either unknown or politically connected. After receiving the award, Mehmeti talked about the threats she had received during her investigation, and the money offers she was given to stay silent.
Although the Balkan region is clearly not a safe environment for journalists to produce independent news content, Mehmeti and the others who received awards in the 2018 EU Award cycle showed persistence and perseverance in investigating topics of public interest and importance.
Western Balkans Have Yet to Embrace Freedom of Information
Liberal-sounding access to information laws – vital for a free media – have yet to bring real transparency to the traditionally secretive countries of the Balkan region, a BIRN report shows.
Between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. With the aid of the information gained from these requests, BIRN produced numerous investigative pieces and so exposed wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.
On the basis of the submitted FOI requests, BIRN has also published an in-depth analysis of institutions’ openness to FOI requests across the countries of the Western Balkans. This shows that while Freedom of Information laws in the region are among the most liberal in Europe on paper, implementation of these laws is well below European standards.
Implementation also varies between the Western Balkan countries themselves. Some countries are showing an improvement, for example, by public institutions publishing large amounts of data and documents.
Others, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, lag behind. It is now the only country in the Balkans that does not even offer access to public records in electronic form. In some other countries, like Montenegro and Serbia, there has been a decline in implementation, as a result of legislative changes and political pressure.
Of the 854 official requests that BIRN submitted to access public documents, less than half of them, 408, were actually approved; 224 were partially approved, meaning the institutions provided only technical information, while 221 requests were either rejected or no answer at all was received, despite repeated follow-ups from the journalists.
Looking at the ratio between requests that were submitted and answered positively, in Albania the score was highest, at 61 per cent. It was followed by Kosovo, at 56 per cent. In Serbia, institutions provided the requested information in 40 per cent of the cases, while in North Macedonia the figure was 33 per cent. The worst response rate was in Bosnia, where institutions replied to only 25 per cent of requests sent.
For many journalists in the Western Balkans, where independent media are often under attack and pressure, Freedom of Information laws are often an important pillar of their own freedom, and are sometimes the only way to obtain information.
In recent years, however, there has been a certain tendency among institutions to close the information door and experiment with new ways to deny public information, especially to journalists, who have been traditionally the most frequent users of these laws.
To withhold information, institutions often either ignore requests or mark the requested information as classified.
In many cases, BIRN journalists have been forced to file complaints in order to get the data they want, or a decision on their request. This process often lasts long, disrupts journalists’ daily activities and prolongs the whole investigative process, which can end up using outdated data.
In Kosovo, BIRN journalists submitted the majority of their 337 requests to municipalities, ministries, the Telecom Company, the Prosecutorial Council, Judicial Council, the President’s Office, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Procurement Review Body. Of these, 188 were approved, 27 were partially answered and 122 were rejected.
BIRN Kosovo repeatedly submitted complaints about denial of access to public documents. In all cases, the Ombudsman asked the relevant institutions to grant access. But only 45 per cent of these requests resulted in BIRN gaining access to the requested documents. Another 20 per cent of requests resulted in BIRN gaining partial access. The remaining 35 per cent is still pending.
In North Macedonia, BIRN submitted 233 information requests, of which just over a third were approved.
While most countries in the region, such as Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia, have liberal Freedom of Information laws, at least on paper, there is a worrying trend in Montenegro, where latest changes to the law allow the head of an institution to decide which information shall be marked “classified”. This change has been widely criticized, as it contains a series of exclusions that are not in line with international standards or the country’s own constitution.
In Albania, meanwhile, a new law includes a number of novel concepts, including the possibility of re-classifying secret documents, the release of partial information and the use of information technology to make information held by public institutions more available to the public.
In Serbia, BIRN submitted 95 requests. Of these, 13 were fully answered, 25 were partially answered and 20 were rejected or no answer was received. Another 37 requests were still pending by the time of publication. Although the legal deadline for institutions in Serbia to respond to such requests is 15 days, in some institutions, like the Interior Ministry, the average response timeframe is a month or longer.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN filed 12 requests and it took regular follow-ups and reminders before the authorities ever responded, even though, as in Serbia, the legal deadline to respond is 15 days. In reality, it takes a month or more.
Looking at the annual reports of regional Commissioners, Serbia’s received the highest number of complaints, 64 per cent, during 2018. Albania came next, with 13 per cent, followed by North Macedonia, on 10 per cent and Montenegro, with 7 per cent. The lowest number of complaints reported by the Ombudsperson’s Office was in Bosnia and Herzegovina – 5 per cent – and in Kosovo, only 1 per cent.
BIRN’s analysis also showed that local government institutions are more responsive to requests for information while central government institutions are more likely to postpone decisions and eventually reject journalists’ requests. Possible reasons for this could be the nature and exclusivity of the information that these institutions possess.
The lowest positive response that BIRN journalists had, in term of individual institutions in the region, was with the Civil Aviation Authority in Albania, the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Bosnia, the Post in Kosovo and the Interior Ministry in Serbia.
As part of BIRN’s drive for openness, it has established a free, user-friendly, searchable online library of public documents and scraped database, called BIRN Source. To increase access to open data for journalists, in January 2020 BIRN will also launch a new online platform, the BIRN Investigative Resource Desk, BIRD, which will provide a digital space and user-friendly tools for better and stronger investigative journalism.
BIRD will provide journalists with various types of assistance, including a set of useful tools and information in one place related to freedom of information, data access and protection, cybersecurity and open-source datasets.
Read the full report here.
Download Albanian version here.
Download Serbian version here
BIRN Journalist Wins Journalism Award in Kosovo
Serbeze Haxhiaj, a journalist for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, was given the 2019 Rexhai Surroi journalism prize for the best written work of the year on Monday.
Haxhiaj was awarded for her story for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network about children born as a result of rape during the war in Kosovo.
For the article, Haxhiaj spoke to mothers who became pregnant after being raped by Serbian fighters during the Kosovo war, addressing a topic that remains taboo in the country.
The jury said that this was an extraordinary story which had resonance beyond Kosovo’s borders.
Other award winners were Ardiana Thaci from KTV for a series of web articles and Bashkim Hoxha for the novel ‘Kronikat e Mjegullës’ (‘Chronicles of Clouds’), while veteran journalist Zenun Celaj was given a lifelong achievement award.
The awards are named after Rexhai Surroi, who was a pioneer of Kosovo journalism and an author. He died in a traffic accident in December 1988 while serving as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s ambassador in Spain.
Pristina-based media house Koha Group has been presenting the Rexhai Surroi awards since 2008.
The jury members were two journalists and professors of journalism, Imer Mushkolaj and Majlinda Bregasi, and novelist Xhevat Syla.
BIRN Kosovo, Democracy Plus, Publish New Report on Kosovo Tax Office
The 2019 monitoring report on the Kosovo Tax Administration, TAK, from BIRN Kosovo and Democracy Plus concludes that most of the recommendations from the previous year’s report were fulfilled but also identifies numerous other management and disciplinary problems within the institution.
Political employments, the involvement of TAK officials in political activities, weak disciplinary sanctions, and TAK officials’ links to accountants are among the key findings of this year’s monitoring report, which was discussed a few days ago at a roundtable with TAK officials, and released in full online on Monday.
Monitors also discovered that, in September, 30 officials within the institution were holding positions in political parties while also working for TAK.
As part of the monitoring process, researchers met with over 19 accountants and discovered numerous instances of improper links between TAK officials and accountants. The report also outlines unclarities in the process of TAK’s restructuring and administration reform.
Kosovo citizens assisted the monitoring, reporting irregularities through the KALLXO.com platform. According to the report, they submitted 68 reports related to tax evasion, the informal economy and political and nepotistic appointments between January and December 2019.
Over the same period, 53 legal letters were sent to TAK, passing on information about tax evasion, the informal economy, and illegal betting stores, as well as requesting access to documents related to employment, and information on political activities involving senior TAK officials.
As a result of these legal letters, inspections were carried out on 107 different businesses throughout the territory of the Republic of Kosovo, after which over 50,000 euros of fines were imposed.
BIRN Kosovo and Democracy Plus will continue to monitor TAK’s work throughout 2020.
Report is available for free download in English, Albanian and Serbian.
BIRN Albania Launches ‘Urban Renaissance’ Database
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania on December 19 published its comprehensive database of the Urban Renaissance projects financed from 2014 until 2017 by the country’s centre-left government through the Fund for the Development of Regions.
Urban Renaissance was a pet project of Prime Minister Edi Rama to renew the image of local towns and squares across Albania after years of neglect. Its critics maintain the project was aimed at extensively funding municipalities controlled by Rama’s Socialist Party in order to guarantee its success at the polls.
The database contains the records of 573 projects with a total value of 359.8 million euros, as well as the documents and photos of the projects taken by a network of 12 reporters across the country.
Using the data collected in the database, BIRN Albania was able to publish over the past year dozens of pieces of news, features and investigative stories focusing on the Urban Renaissance project, offering a critical perspective and informing public opinion.
The database contains hundreds of contracts signed by contractors, subcontractors and overseeing companies for each project, as well as data on their completion status, obtained over a period of one year through freedom of information requests from 61 municipalities.
The database is accessible online in Albanian and English at: rilindjaurbane.reporter.al
BIRN Kosovo Holds Discussion on Public Debt
BIRN Kosovo held a round-table discussion on December 19 about public debt and capital investments in Kosovo.
The discussion was organised as part of an EU-funded project entitled ‘CSOs as equal partners in the monitoring of public finance’ in which BIRN Kosovo is among ten partners from across the Balkans.
Panellists at the discussion were Hekuran Murati, a member of parliament from Vetevendosje, Ahmet Ismaili, director of the Ministry of Finance Treasury, and Sokol Havolli, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Kosovo. It was moderated by kallxo.com’s managing editor, Visar Prebreza.
The panellists discussed the current level of public debt in Kosovo and institutions’ capacity to manage loans, as in many cases publicly-financed projects have been delayed due to financial mismanagement. They also discussed which projects most deserve public financing.
The discussion included officials from the Tax Administration of Kosovo, the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and civil society organisations.
BIRN Launches Updated Map of Balkan War Crime Verdicts
BIRN has published an updated and improved version of its War Crimes Verdicts Map, an interactive tool that offers an overview of hundreds of court rulings on the crimes committed during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network published its updated and improved War Crimes Verdicts Map, enabling users to search rulings in cases from courts across the former Yugoslavia and from the UN tribunal in The Hague.
The map includes all the final war crimes verdicts that are available from 42 different domestic courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia.
It also includes the verdicts handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and cases in which defendants died during their trials at the UN tribunal.
In the updated version of the map, users can now search by defendants’ names, the units to which they belonged, the countries in which the courts are located, the crime locations and the dates. It is based on over 1,400 court documents.
The number of verdicts included is now 468, with a total of 1,028 defendants. The verdicts were handed down between 1992, when the first cases in Croatia were opened, and 2019.
Courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina delivered the most verdicts – a total of 209 – while Croatia had the biggest number of defendants, 396 in total.
“This map is the result of our dedicated work in following both international and domestic war crime trials since 2004. While reporting from the courtroom, we as journalists often struggled to get all the documents. Through the years, we accumulated a significant archive and we wanted to share this with our colleagues but also the general public to make their work in following war crime trials easier and more factually-based,” said Marija Ristic, BIRN’s regional director.
“This war crimes verdicts map comes amid growing efforts of courts to anonymise court documents, preventing us from reporting fairly and correctly from trials,” Ristic added.
In the future, the map will also include verdicts handed down by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
In some of the countries however, BIRN is still waiting for courts to provide all their verdicts.
The wars in the former Yugoslavia left some 125,000 people dead, and around 12,000 are still listed as missing.
The War Crimes Verdicts Map is part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice initiative, funded by the European Commission.
The project aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
See the map here.
Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2019 — Winners Chosen
Romanian journalist Ani Sandu was awarded first prize for the 2019 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence (BFJE) programme at a closing ceremony in Vienna on Friday.
Sandu won the award of 4,000 euros for her investigation into the trafficking of Roma children to Western Europe.
Kosovo journalist Shkumbin Ahmetxhekaj grabbed second prize, winning 3,000 euros for his investigation into the impact of medical brain drain in Europe’s youngest country.
Greek journalist Kostas Zafeiropoulos came third, collecting 1,000 euros for his work on cyber propaganda.
Jury members praised Sandu, a news anchor and editor at Romanian public radio and a reporter at large for quarterly magazine DoR, for her meticulous reporting on what Europol has described as one of Europe’s biggest trafficking rings.
Her investigation, Blind Justice for Romania’s Trafficked Roma Children, reveals the scale and complexity of an alleged criminal enterprise in the Romanian town of Tandarei, where investigators say local gangsters have trafficked scores of children into a life of forced criminality.
“At a time when we only get information in fragments and attention spans are limited to 140 characters, Ani produced a piece brimming with detail, suspense and thoughtful, elaborate research that grabs you to the end and you won’t easily forget,” said Elena Panagiotidis, editor of Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
“Keeping people like slaves in Europe seems unthinkable, although we’re aware of Roma begging and being abused. Ani sheds light on this topic in a way that doesn’t sensationalise it. She contacted — or tried to contact — all the people involved. She found superb characters in Britain telling her how they discovered the network.
“She gives us a picture of life in Tandarei. She read countless court documents. It’s like she said: ‘a detective story without a happy ending.’”
Ahmetxhekaj, an editor at Kosovo Public Television, won praise for Brain Drain: Will the Last Doctor in Kosovo Turn Out the Lights.
“The exodus of medical personnel from the Balkans to Germany and other EU countries is well known by now,” said Florian Hassel, Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“Shkumbin Ahmetxhekaj managed to break new ground nevertheless, reporting on the dark side of the medical exodus and the newly born exodus industry in his home country, Kosovo, and on Germany, where hospitals hire nurses and doctors from Kosovo by the hundreds but often find the reality different from their expectations.”
The jury singled out Zafeiropoulos, an investigative reporter for Greek daily Efimerida ton Sintakton, for his soon-to-be published “Alexander the Bot: The Twitter War for the Macedonian Soul”.
“It’s a good feature examining and exploring cyber nationalism using the latest methods of ‘computational propaganda’,” said Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute.
Ten journalists from across the Balkans spent more than six months pursuing in-depth stories and investigations linked to this year’s theme: “freedom”. They came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.
The jury congratulated all of this year’s fellows on the originality and integrity of their work, which included stories on demographic change, public health, energy independence, human rights, refugees and historical revisionism.
In addition to Sandu, Ahmetxhekaj and Zafeiropoulos, this year’s fellows were Dina Djordjevic (Serbia), Stavros Malichudis (Greece), Milena Mitrovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Angel Petrov (Bulgaria), Jelena Prtoric (Croatia), Vedrana Simicevic (Croatia) and Katerina Topalova (North Macedonia). This year’s programme editors were Timothy Large and Neil Arun.
A collection of their stories will be published in the new year.
The jury members were Elena Panagiotidis, editor of Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung; Florian Hassel, Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung; Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute; Kristof Bender, deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative; Milorad Ivanovic, representative of the BFJE alumni network; and Adelheid Wolfl, correspondent for Austrian daily Der Standard.
With the conclusion of this year’s programme, the 10 fellows join the BFJE alumni network, which consists of more than 100 journalists from 10 Balkan countries who collaborate on stories and promote the highest professional standards.
The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was launched in 2007 to promote high-quality, cross-border reporting. The programme provides fellows with financial and editorial support, allowing them to travel, report and write their stories and develop their journalistic skills.
In 2020, the fellowship programme will expand to include journalists from the Visegrad Four countries of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and supported by ERSTE Foundation.
BIRN Organises Study Trip to Hague Courts for Journalists
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network organised a study visit to institutions dealing with wartime crimes in The Hague to give ten journalists from the Balkans expert insights into transitional justice processes.
BIRN organised a study visit to The Hague from December 1 to 5, enabling ten journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia to visit institutions involved in transitional justice processes that address crimes committed during the Balkan wars.
The journalists from various media outlets visited the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the Special Prosecutor’s Office, where they met representatives of both institutions, as well as representatives of the Registry and Ombudsperson.
They also visited the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, where they met officials from its Registry and the Office of the Prosecutor.
They then had extensive training on how to use the Mechanism’s database, which provides online access to the public judicial records of all completed cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Mechanism.
The journalists also visited the Association of Defence Counsel practising before the International Courts and Tribunals.
On the last day of their visit, the journalists visited the International Commission on Missing Persons, where they were told more about the ICMP’s work in the Balkans and globally, and visited its laboratory.
All ten journalists who participated in the study visit received grants from BIRN to write in-depth stories on transitional justice issues in the Balkans.
Their stories will cover variety of topics, including criminal justice, reparations and missing persons. All the stories will be developed under the mentorship of BIRN editors and will be published in 2020.
Both the study visit and the granting scheme are part of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme, a regional initiative that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The programme is supported by the European Commission.