Tag: Albania

BIRN is offering grants for three journalists to cover labour rights stories, with mentoring by experienced editors.

The call is held as part of the project ‘Strengthening Media’s Role in the Fight against Corruption’, supported by the Open Society Foundation in Albania.

The project aims to strengthen reporting on corruption in the country through cooperation with civil society, in order to help create a more informed citizenry that is engaged in the democratic process.

Three journalists will be awarded grants to cover their expenses while conducting investigations and writing their stories on labour rights.

The journalists will have around three months to dig deeper and research their ideas, and will also have the opportunity to work with experienced editors as mentors to guide them through the process of writing in accordance with BIRN standards.

The call only applies to journalists from Albania and closes on August 25, 2019.

Click here for more information (in Albanian) about the application procedure.

Click here to download the application form (in Albanian).

Ten human rights organisations in Albania on Friday denounced the Prime Minister’s initiative to “regulate the online media”, calling it “a censorship package”.

The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism, MediaLook, the Albanian Institute of Science, the Albanian Media Council, the Albanian Media Institute, the Association of Professional Journalists of Albania, BIRN Albania, Civil Rights Defenders, Res Publica and the Union Of Albanian Journalists urged the Socialist Party-led government to withdraw the proposal, arguing that current laws on defamation are sufficient.

“We encourage the government of Albania to withdraw these two bills and call on parliament not to approve them,” the statement reads.

“These drafts laws risk the increase of censorship and self-censorship in the local media and could contribute to further setbacks on media freedom and freedom of expression in Albania, which, based on the June 2019 assessment of seven international organizations, is ‘deteriorating,’” the statement adds.

The government of Prime Minister Edi Rama claims the country needs “to discipline” the online media in order “to improve the quality of the information and public discourse”.

This draft law gives the Complaints Council the power to oblige electronic publications service providers to publish an apology, remove content or insert a pop-up notice if they are found to have violated provisions on dignity and privacy.

This council has the power to fine media up to 8,300 euros for such violations. A second law subjects online media to the Telecommunication and Postal Authority, AKEP, which will have the power to insert pop-ups on websites if they have been found in breach of the law by the Complaints Council. Failure to comply with AKEP would result in fines up to 830,000 euros.

“These draft laws, in an unprecedented way in democratic countries, seek to impose a regime of administrative control on the online media,” the rights organizations say.

Link: Statement in English

The event was held as part of the project ‘Strengthening Media’s Role in the Fight Against Corruption,’ financed by the Open Society Foundation in Albania.  The project aims to strengthen reporting on corruption in the country through cooperation with civil society, in order to help create a more informed citizenry that is engaged in the democratic process.

The roundtable was moderated by Vasilika Laci from Civil Rights Defenders and saw contributions from a variety of activists, journalists and labour rights groups in Albania.

During the roundtable, the participants suggested a series of key topics to be investigated, including problems with the management of properties of unions, abuse of collective contracts in public companies, the cost of illegal dismissals of public servants, women’s unpaid work in Albania, abuse of labour subsidies, minimum wage and living income and many other topics.

The goal of the roundtable was to draw attention to an upcoming call for grant proposals to fund investigative reporting on the topic of labour rights. The call will be launched in the coming days by BIRN Albania.

Three journalists will be selected by an independent jury and will be mentored by BIRN editors for a period of three months as they produce hard-hitting investigative reports on the topic.

The landmark ruling by the Administrative Court of Appeals in Tirana on Wednesday paved the way for the declassification and publication of written reports and statistical data produced by Albania’s Sigurimi security service.

After almost three years of legal efforts by BIRN Albania, the court dismissed arguments from the country’s current secret service that such information should be kept secret in perpetuity.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed, upheld a first-instance court decision from 2016.

BIRN first made a legal request for the declassification of Communist-era files back in March 2016, demanding yearly reports by the Sigurimi for the period from 1980 to 1989, as well as statistical information on the number of Albanians under active surveillance by the Sigurimi during that period.

The current State Information Service, SHISH, which has controlled a large part of the Sigurimi archive since the fall of Communism, first refused the request, claiming it didn’t have the authority to handle it.

Albania’s Freedom of Information Commissioner ordered SHISH to open the files and to reevaluate their status as secret, based on a 2014 law on freedom of information.

However, SHISH then insisted in September 2016 that the information sought by BIRN should remain a state secret.

BIRN challenged the decision in an administrative court, and won in the first instance in November 2016.

However, the Administrative Court of Appeals has a backlog of some 20,000 cases and the appeal decision only came almost three years after BIRN’s first freedom of information request.

During the hearing, SHISH emphasised that in its opinion, the files and statistics should remain “secrets in perpetuity”, and said that it has “an exclusive right” to decide whether to declassify them or not.

A number of other state institutions in Albania also keep classified information that was labelled as secret during the Communist period.

It is hoped that Wednesday’s court ruling will provide a guidance them on how to handle and publish the information.

For example, an Albanian parliamentary has access to the Sigurimi files, but only provides information from them to people prosecuted under Communism.

Theodoros Alexandritis, a human rights lawyer, told BIRN that the appeals court’s decision was “a brave step” in the right direction.

“The reluctance of the secret service to disclose any info and hold it under wraps forever shows that a culture of secrecy is still prevalent in that institution and that successive governments have not done anything to counter it,” Alexandritis said.

“In terms of the importance, the decision is clearly a brave step by the Albanian courts to bring their approach on this sensitive issue in line with international law standards and the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence,” he added.