Members of civil society, media, experts and researchers, at a webinar entitled “Rights in the Digital Space 2024”, said internet freedoms are deteriorating at an unprecedented pace in Southeast Europe.
The event was jointly organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF.
BIRN and ECPMF represented their latest works – BIRN’s Digital Rights Violations Report 2023-2024 and ECPMF’s Media Freedom Monitoring Report, as other speakers shared observations on digital rights violations, press freedom and topics such as big tech’s influence on internet freedoms.
“In 2024, BIRN was able to identify more than 1,700 significant digital rights violations [but] these are not all the violations that are happening in the digital space but violations … that are either examples of viral trends, or of something that has a lot of consequences, or something that is an emerging trend,” Ivana Jeremic, Digital Content Lead at BIRN’s Digital Rights Programme, said.
“Discrimination, genocide denial, foreign influences and disinformation are key violations in the region,” Jeremic added. She underlined that the use of artificial intelligence, AI, had caused a major spike in digital violations in 2024.
Usual suspects: Turkey, Serbia and Hungary
Cara Raeker, from ECPMF, said their monitoring recorded 1,548 press freedom violations in 35 European countries, including Southeast Europe.
In Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, “we found 417 cases with 756 people affected. We have found most cases in Turkey, Serbia and Hungary,” Raeker said.
Raeker underlined that online and digital attacks are the most common forms of attacks on press freedom.
Gurkan Ozturan, from ECPMF, who is also Turkey rapporteur for Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net project, said Turkey remains a major violator of digital and internet freedoms.
“Turkey remains still ‘not free’ in the digital space, with continuous restrictions on press and media fields as well as in the field of freedom of expression, access to information and digital privacy,” he said.
He shared examples of internet and digital platform restrictions, the use of draconian laws to censor internet and media as well as major violations of citizens’ online data.
Mila Bajic, from Share Foundation and Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net project, said internet freedoms continue to deteriorate in Serbia as well.
“In 2024, Serbia fell to 70 points [on the Freedom on the Net rankings] which is basically the line between ‘partly free’ and ‘free’, which is the lowest score the country ever got,” Bajic said.
She expected the situation to continue to deteriorate. “We will be falling … under the ‘free’ line and will be chartering into ‘partly free’ territory,” Bajic said.
In a panel on big tech companies, Bojana Kostic, a Human Rights and Tech Researcher, noted an “asymmetry” between big tech and citizens’ rights.
“Incredible power asymmetry will not play out well at the end, to the detriment of freedom of expression and other human rights and all citizens’ wellbeing,” Kostic said.
Journalists among most-targeted groups
Speakers agreed that journalists are among the most-targeted groups online because of their work.
The threats often result in real-life consequences, such as the case of jailed Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli.
Teona Sekhniashvili, Network and Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute, IPI, said Amaglobeli has been prisoned unjustly.
“A veteran Georgian journalist who has been fighting against injustice and for full press freedom for years … is now unjustly held in pre-detention,” Sekhniashvili said, adding that Amaglobeli was one of the first to stand up against the Georgian government’s notorious foreign agents law.
“The law would basically require NGOs and newsrooms to register as organisations pursuing the interests of foreign power,” Sekhniashvili explained.
Azem Kurtic, Bosnia correspondent of BIRN, said that Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity is another government preparing a similar foreign agents law, at the cost of press freedoms and civil liberties.
“The law gives a lot of legal rights to the Justice Minister [of Republika Srpska] to mark anyone receiving money from abroad as an agent of foreign influence. In the end, they could be banned from existence and from actually conducting their activities,” Kurtic said.
More about digital rights violations in Southeast Europe can be found in BIRN’s Digital Rights Violations Report 2023-2024 and in the latest ECPMF Media Freedom Monitoring Report.
The webinar can be watched here: