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Semira Degirmendžić, Nino Bilajac, Mubarek Asani, and Džana Brkanić are the winners of the European Union’s Awards for Investigative Journalism in 2021 for stories published in 2020.

The awards were presented on Wednesday, December 15, at BIRN’s Reporters’ House in Sarajevo.

Degirmendžić won first prize for the best investigative story in 2020, “Agricultural farm got 10.5 million marks for the purchase of respirators”, which resonated strongly with the public last year.

In her comprehensive research, Degirmendzic revealed that the supplier of the respirators did not obtain the necessary permits from the Medicines Agency to import the respirators from China.

Together with Fikret Hodzic, owner of the supplier company Srebrna malina, Prime Minister Fadil Novalic and the head of the crisis staff, Fahrudin Solak were all involved in the affair.

Mubarek Asani and Nino Bilajac, journalists from the Centre for Investigative Journalism, won second prize for their story about a network of vote traffickers in the northern Brcko District.

“Vote selling network exposed by CIN reporters“ was conducted by the journalists in cooperation with the police and the Prosecutor’s Office, who infiltrated the organisers of the scam as intermediaries between the vote-seller and the local politician to whom these votes were supposed to bring victory.

Both the local politician and the seller were later arrested. This research also resulted in the arrest of eight others – three members of the local assembly members and five intermediaries.

Third prize went to Dzana Brkanic, a BIRN BiH journalist, for her story about fake humanitarian organisations deceiving citizens and collecting donations to build wells in African countries.

The story, “Murky Bosnian Charity Appeals for African Wells Raise Concerns”, revealed the misuse of humanitarian funds and non-transparency of collecting and spending of more than 4 million Bosnian marks.

Inadequate controls over such humanitarian actions and associations is one of Moneyval’s recommendations to Bosnia, which is why this research was extremely timely.

It led to the termination of projects, the closure of the accounts on social media through which the funds were being collected, as well as the confessions of the main actors that evidence on the construction of wells in African countries was photoshopped.

The head of the EU Delegation and EU Special Representative in BiH Johann Sattler, addressing the audience in Sarajevo, emphasized the importance of the work of investigative journalists who reported on some of the irregularities that occurred during the pandemic.

Sattler highlighted that journalists are the ones who have raised important issues in society, including those related to the EU integration process.

In their explanation of this year’s awards, the jury composed of Zlatan Music, Davor Glavas and Slavoljub Scekic said that all three stories

were of crucial importance for Bosnia and the public.

The chairman of the jury, Music, praised the courage of the journalists, and their commitment to the topics, reflected in their research, and presentations with an abundance of details and data.

All three investigations were socially responsible and pointed out irregularities that the government not only ignored but in some cases also participated in, he said.

He added that the number of attacks on journalists was growing, due to the work they do, and he called on them to use all available protection mechanisms.

BIRN director Marija Ristic, said that we need responsible journalism today more than ever, to bring about change and have a greater impact on the public.

The awards were presented at the Reporters’ House, which will become a BIRN space and museum dedicated to journalists and media during the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, and will also serve as a meeting and learning place for all journalists.

The focus of the EU Award for Investigative Journalism is to celebrate and promote outstanding investigative journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well as to improve the visibility of investigative journalism among readers in these countries.

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism is awarded as part of the EU-funded project “Strengthening the Quality of News and Independent Journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey” in 2019, 2020 and 2021 in candidate and potential candidate countries: Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. Awards are given for research stories published between 2018 and 2020. A total of 63 awards will be presented over a three-year period.

The awards in Bosnia and Herzegovina are coordinated by the BIRN Hub, which also runs a regional consortium.

 

 

 

Panelists at a BIRN debate entitled ‘Female Empowerment – Online Practices and Challenges’ in Sarajevo on Monday said that online insults, threats and false accusations are commonly-used weapons to discredit and discourage women who work in the public arena.

Iva Paradjanin, a Serbian journalist whose work mostly focuses on women’s rights and who runs a podcast called Tampon Zona, said that even though online violence against women has become more visible, it is still not taken seriously enough.

“We are working to empower women, to raise awareness that violence is not only physical,” Paradjanin said.

She said that online attacks have a real impact on women’s lives, and those who write offensive comments should not be allowed to remain under the illusion that they are free from any kind of responsibility.

Bosnian journalist Dalija Hasanbegovic Konakovic said that women are often attacked because they are seen as a “weaker target”.

“You should not be silent. You will feel better once you start speaking out. In that way, at least you will know that you are fighting back and that you will not be perceived as weak,” Hasanbegovic Konakovic said.

“What scares me the most is that we are losing the thread of humanity,” said Lana Prlic, a member of parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Federation entity, who came under attack online after posting on social media about her COVID-19 vaccination in September 2020.

“We are mothers, sisters, daughters and so on. Those people who are sending us insults, they are forgetting about these identities,” Prlic said.

In the second part of the debate, moderator Zlatan Music from the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and panelists Samra Filipovic-Hadziabdic, director of the Agency for Gender Equality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Maja Raicevic, director of the Centre for Women’s Rights, and Adnan Kadribasic, a lawyer and expert on human rights and gender equality, said that the main problem is the lack of response, support and goodwill from the authorities, particularly the police and prosecution.

They urged the authorities in the Western Balkans region to start implementing existing laws and sanctioning perpetrators.

“We have a good legal framework that we can use to sanction these acts. There are various possibilities, we just need to know how to use them, and to want to use them. Improving the institutional response is crucial,” said Kadribasic.

The panelists argued that speaking out about violence empowers other women who have had the same experience and gives them courage to speak out too.

“If you stand by one woman who speaks out, you are showing that she is not alone. By our example, we show whether we are united or not. We must stop normalising violence,” said Hasanbegovic Konakovic.

Experts and journalists have warned that Chinese loans and investments in the Balkans lack a desirable level of transparency and say more of a focus is needed on such activities.

BIRN’s new platform “China in the Balkans”, aims to shed light on China’s increased activities in the six Western Balkans countries.

In the last decade, the region has seen China’s influence grow fast, mostly through its Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.

As a relatively new player in the region, China’s investments have raised some concerns related not only to their environmental impact but to political influence, corruption and growing debt.

While these investments are growing in size and number, access to contracts and other relevant data is often difficult or impossible to find.

The interactive map pinpoints various projects undertaken by China in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Greece.

Editor Ivan Angelovski, who in recent months managed the investigation of China investments in the Balkans, said around 130 China business activities worth around 30 billion euros have been disclosed and presented in the interactive map.

“We are looking at anything related to the state, and digging into that was the real task. Governments are sending mixed messages; they are not clear what is a loan and what is direct investment,” Angelovski pointed out.

BIRN editor Ivana Jeremic said that 61 cases of China projects detected in Serbia make up almost half of all the cases presented in BIRN’s new database.

“For these cases that we were able to detect, the estimated value of projects is almost 19 billion euros …  which explains the scope of influence China has in Serbia and importance of loans and investments,” Jeremic said.

“Some projects got stuck because of legal issues or environmentalists stopping some projects progressing because of environmental issues or land expropriation,” she added.

China’s activity in the region gathered speed in 2009. In that year the financial crisis that hit the world a year earlier was storming through the Balkans, and the region was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. 

Greece opened its door through the Port of Piraeus, while Serbia declared China the “fourth pillar” of its foreign policy.

Balkan countries needed money fast, and China needed a friendly corridor from the Mediterranean to Western Europe. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But it has come at a price. 

By BIRN’s own count, the region hosts over 130 projects worth at least 32 billion euros linked in one way or another to China.

The “China in the Balkans” map is a result of BIRN’s research into the various types of cooperation between Beijing and countries in the region.

It shows China is concentrating on taking over metallurgy, mining, energy, and transport in the region, with most of these projects accompanied by allegations of corruption, exploitation and environmental harm.

Plamen Tonchev, head of Asia Unit at the Athens-based Institute of International Economic Relations, said Chinese business activities in the Balkans should be seen as part of a bigger picture.

“The scale is overwhelming. The fact that Western Balkans are small by any standards, the fragmentation of the region, doesn’t help. China is a giant in terms of economic capacity and everybody is dazzled by the Chinese presence,” Tonchev said.

Ana Krstinovska, program manager at the Centre for Research and Policy Making in Skopje, said China’s activities in the region need to be more of a focus for media and civil society.

“We need to develop a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of China’s activities throughout the world in order to see what China is doing here, how we can maximise our interest,” she said, “because China is here to stay and in addition to being a threat to democratic values, it is an economic opportunity that we should not be missing out on.”

 

 

The events will take place in the venue that next year will become the Reporters’ House – a space that will host BIRN’s museum dedicated to media and journalists, the war in the former Yugoslavia, and challenges to contemporary journalism.

Even though the venue is being renovated, we want to open it to the public temporarily, in the hope that BIRN Open House will become an annual series of events at our new museum from next year.

As we work across Southern and Eastern Europe, and due to the global pandemic, we cannot bring all of our participants to Sarajevo, so a limited number of the week’s events will be held online.

First day: Tuesday 14 December

18:00 Offline: Opening programme – Last Despatches: exhibition and launch of a new book published by BIRN that profiles some of the journalists killed during the wars in Yugoslavia. The exhibition is a follow-up to our multimedia project last-despatches.balkaninsight.com, which inspired us to create the Reporters’ House.

The exhibition will be otherwise open to the public without RSVP from December 14 to December 19, from 12:00 to 20:00 at Ferhadija Street 10.

Second day: Wednesday 15 December

15:00 Online: Platform B discussion: Chinese Investments in the Balkans: Transparency Locked. Presentation of our database that mapped the Chinese investments in the region, including more than 100 projects in infrastructure, technology and culture. Read more.

18:00 Offline: Presentation of the EU Award for Investigative Journalism followed by a panel discussion “Investigative journalism and challenges of COVID-19 pandemic”.

Third day: Thursday 16 December

11:00 – 11:45 Offline: BIRN Annual Regional Digital Rights Report: Misinformation, Denial and Threats.

12:00 – 12:45 Offline: Discussion: The Far Right, Violence and Misinformation.

Fourth day: Friday 17 December

10:00 – 13:30 Offline: Meeting: Online Content Removal and Blocking.

18:00 – 21:00 Offline: Screening of the documentary ‘Journalism is Not a Crime’.

Fifth day: Saturday 18 December

18:00 Offline: Book launch and discussion: Poems, stories and dealing with the past.

Sixth day: Sunday 19 December

18:00 Offline: Discussion: Remembering Srebrenica through journalism, oral history and activism.

Seventh day: Monday 20 December

11:00 Offline: Panel discussion and brunch: Female Empowerment Online: Practices and Challenges.

Eight day: Wednesday 22 December

15:00 – 17:00 Online: Presentation of a report on conflict prevention in collaboration with Impunity Watch.

 

 

Together with our partners, BIRN is launching a series of online and offline events aimed to amplify the voices of strong and credible individuals and organisations in the region that promote the core values of democracy, such as civic engagement, independent institutions, transparency and rule of law.

As a primarily media organisation, we want to open space and provide a platform to discuss and reshape our alliances in light of the challenges facing democracies in South-East and Central Europe.

This effort comes at a critical time when the region is seeing several troubling trends: centralized power, reduced transparency, assaults on media, politicized judiciaries, unchecked corruption, online violations and social polarization – all amidst heightened geopolitical tensions and deep divisions in Europe.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Platform B event series will be organised in accordance with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.

The Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.

Next event: China in the Balkans – Transparency Locked

Date: December 15, 2021 (Wednesday)

Time: 3pm-4.30pm, CET

In the last decade, the entire SEE region has seen Chinese influence grow, mostly through the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.  China is a relatively new player in the region, and it has raised some concerns related to the environment, political influence, corruption, and economics. While investments are growing, access to contracts and other data is often difficult, if not impossible to find.

In a bid to bring more information to these discussions and to shed light on the Chinese presence in the Western Balkans and Greece, BIRN is launching its interactive map ‘China in the Balkans.’ A result of BIRN’s research into the different cooperations between Beijing and countries in the region, the map tracks around 130 Chinese-linked projects, including foreign direct investments, but also those focused on infrastructure, culture, technology media and donations sent during the COVID-19 crisis.

Together with our journalists who worked on the project and regional and international experts, we will reflect on the findings of BIRN’s year-and-a-half-long research and discuss the implications of this Chinese presence in a broader geopolitical context.

Panelists inclide:

• Ivana Jeremic, Balkan Insight editor & journalist working on Chinese activities in Serbia
• Bojan Stojkovski, journalist covering Chinese activities in North Macedonia
• Samir Kajosevic, Balkan Insight correspondent for Montenegro & journalist covering Chinese activities in the country
• Irvin Pekmez, BIRN BiH journalist, who covered Chinese activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• Plamen Tonchev, MERICS European China Policy Fellow & Head of Asia Unit Institute of International Economic Relations (IIER).
• Ana Krstinovska, a Skopje-based China expert and founder of the research and consultancy services organisation ESTIMA.

Other panelists – regional and international experts – are to be announced in the coming days.

Moderator: Ivan Angelovski, BIRN investigations editor

Registration

This online event is part of BIRN Open House – a series of events hosted by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo that aim to foster debate about key thematic areas we usually follow through our journalism, but now we want to talk with you about media freedom, justice, accountability, memory, digital rights and many other things. The events will take place in the future Reporter’s House, space that will from next year host BIRN’s museum, dedicated to media and journalists, war in former Yugoslavia and challenges to contemporary journalism.

Upcoming events as of January:

Presentation of BIRN’s report into the position of female journalists in the Western Balkans newsrooms, early January.

 

 

Journalists and writers from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia are invited to register for a two-day online training course on practicing gender-responsive reporting on human trafficking and violence against women.

The main idea behind the training is to examine and expose worrying and increasing trends in the incidence and prevalence of gender-based violence, both in the offline and online sphere in the Balkan region, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The training will be led by experienced activists from NGO ATINA, an organisation that has been running a direct support programme for trafficking and gender-based survivors in Serbia for 18 years now.

Designed to offer a deep insight into ways to avoid the most common mistakes in reporting on human trafficking and violence against women, the training will also offer participants a chance to practice methods of communication with survivors of violence. They should also encourage journalists and writers to apply the methods and lessons learned in their everyday work, raising the quality of their journalism.

There are two available slots for this online training:

• December 8^th – 9^th
• December 22^nd – 23^rd

Applicants must register for one of these three slots only. The number of participants per training day is limited, so time slots should be booked as soon as possible. Scroll down for registration.

The training will be held in the English language, from 10am to 2pm. Each training day will consist of two 1.5-hour-long sessions that will encompass interactive exercises, facilitated discussions, with an evidence-based approach to group work in practicing gender-responsive reporting on human trafficking and violence against women. At the beginning and at the end of the training course, there will be a questionnaire, and participants will be invited to keep a journalistic diary.

Agenda

Day I

10:00 – 10:30  Introduction of participants, topic and activities

10:30 – 12:00  Not victimhood reporting, but promotion of the agency of women

• Proactive role of journalists in understanding the context of human trafficking and violence against women (meaning of the phenomenon, why it happens, who are the perpetrators and who are the victims, what are the main trends and statistics, involvement of journalists in the process of identification, referral, assistance and court proceedings)

12:00 – 12:30  Break

12:30 – 14:00  How to avoid the most common mistakes while reporting on human trafficking and violence against women

• Deconstruction of stereotypes and prejudices

Day II

10:00 – 10:30  Warm-up and recapitulation of the previous day

10:30 – 12:00 Why wording matters

• Communication with survivors and practicing preferred terminology for reporting

12:00 – 12:30  Break

12:30 – 14:00  Reporting on specific types of violence against women

• Understanding of violence and abuse in the digital sphere

For more information, contact: Jelena Hrnjak ([email protected]).

Please register here and select a preferred slot. Upon registration, you will receive an email confirmation, and a Zoom link will be sent to all participants a few days before the training course.

The training is being organised with support from the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade.

Despite that the majority of journalists in the Western Balkans are women, they still face gender-based discrimination and abuse and often do not feel secure in speaking out due to fears of losing their jobs or reputation and not receiving the necessary support, an online panel discussion organised by BIRN was told on Thursday.

Media organisations in the Balkans should have proper codes and procedures to follow in cases of sexual harassment or other kinds of gender-based discrimination, said BIRN’s project coordinator Sofija Todorovic, who moderated the debate entitled ‘#MeToo in Journalism: When Will Balkan Journalists Speak Up?’

This would “enable that every journalist at the media outlet where she works to be aware of the steps she can follow”, said Todorovic.

Dafina Halili, contributing editor at online magazine Kosovo 2.0, spoke of the difficulty of speaking out in a small country such as Kosovo.

“Women journalists are often harassed in the newsroom in front of journalists who then speak in public and on live TV about sexual harassment [as phenomenon] but do not intervene in cases when their colleagues are being harassed [while they are present,” she said.

Halili said that Kosovo has yet to witness a #MeToo movement, as no public figures have yet spoken out about the harassment they have suffered. But she said that it is positive that young people in Kosovo are organising protests and other events for women rights.

Jelena Jovanovic, a journalist at Montenegrin news outlet Vijesti, said that a patriarchal mindset often stops women from speaking out, particularly in rural areas where even domestic violence is kept hidden.

Jovanovic explains the situation is not much different for women journalists who often are faced with gossip that they achieved where they are by sleeping their way up.

“I took the approach saying ‘yes I did it’ to shut people up and at one point it worked but it did not stop, the gossip moved to other colleagues” Jovanovic explains.

Natalija Miletic, a journalist and fixer who works between Serbia and Germany, explained that despite the #MeToo movement, the situation remains difficult.

She said that in Serbia, despite the fact that some media organisations are overwhelmingly staffed by women, “there is no woman editor-in-chief in the mainstream media”.

Zhaklin Lekatari, a journalist, sex blogger and human rights activist in Albania, said that a #MeToo movement does not exist in Albania either, and that there are two main issues women in the country face when considering speaking out about their experiences of abuse and sexual harassment – fear and lack of trust.

“We don’t have a gap in the gender representation of editors-in-chief in Albania, but the [media companies’] policies are not feminist,” Lekatari said.

The panellists agreed that the problem will not be solved by having more female editors-in-chief, but by improving management practices and editorial policies.

Lekatari advised young female journalists to seek support and solidarity – “find support, identify, link groups together and organise them”.

Urging women journalists to come forward and speak to BIRN about their stories, even anonymously, Todorevic said: “The right time to speak up is whenever the women [who have been victims of abuse or sexual harassment] are ready to speak up and if they don’t speak sooner it is everybody’s fault.”

This year’s winning investigations exposed a variety of malpractices in Turkey,  ranging from the mishandling of public funds to the infamous ties between a drug baron and a chief of police.

A total of 53 applicants submitted their stories uncovering wrongdoings and shedding light on issues of importance to the public.

Apart from the three stories that were given awards, two other stories received special recognition from the juries.

At the awards ceremony on June 29, the head of EU Delegation in Turkey, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, highlighted the importance of investigative journalism and of ensuring the safety of reporters.

“In the wake of the attack against an AFP photo-journalist, I state that according to EU values, violence against journalists cannot be tolerated. We are in need of journalism in this age of global disinformation,” Meyer-Landrut told the ceremony in Ankara.

The first prize went to journalist Murat Ağırel, whose series of stories featured how public funds are being misspent in a variety of areas such as health and education. Articles unearthed unlawful purchases and expenses as well as possible money-laundering.

Journalists Hale Gönültaş and Volkan Nakiboğlu got second prize for their stories Iranian Border: Between Bullets and Wolves, which exposed the inhumane conditions that immigrants face on the Iranian border as well as the cruelty of human traffickers.

Third prize was awarded to Fevzi Kızılkoyun for the story Prestigious Baron: Official Car Issued to Turkish Escobar,  which explained how a drug trafficker violated the curfew during the pandemic with the help of a chief of police.

“Today we are here to honour our colleagues who practise this profession by doing it justice. Journalism requires dedication, first and foremost to the public, then to the truth, knowledge, and objectivity,” said Yusuf Kanli, vice-president of the Association of Journalists.

Special recognition jury prizes went to the Hazal Ocak for the story Leak in the Bosphorus – Garden Rented for Only 258 Liras a Month, which showed how public spaces are being taken by top government officials. Ocak’s stories have been banned on the grounds that she has been “interfering with the fight against coronavirus” and she is facing 14 years in prison at an ongoing trial.

Another special recognition prize was awarded to İsa Örken for the story 14 Days as a Seasonal Worker, about the hardship faced by seasonal workers, their poor working conditions and how they try to get by on low salaries. Örken went undercover and worked alongside seasonal workers, documenting their working conditions.

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism is presented annually in six Western Balkan countries and Turkey for exceptional investigations published in the previous year.