Tag: Hub

Herceg Novi to Host BIRN’s Investigative Journalism School

Herceg Novi and its stunning coastline will be the setting for the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting in 2019.

The school brings together some of the world’s best journalists and trainers for six-days in the Bay of Kotor, known as the southern-most fjord in Europe.

Between August 18 and 25, reporters will have the opportunities to learn cutting-edge investigation skills while enjoying the delights of Adriatic Sea.

Successful applicants will be provided with excellent possibilities for networking – and the possibility of getting a grant for a story idea.

The lead trainer on the course in Montenegro is one of the best investigative editors in the US, Reuters’ Blake Morrison, a three-times finalist for the Pulitzer investigative award.

As part of the school, you will learn how to dig for data, convince difficult sources to talk, transform your research into sparking prose and harness the power of videos.

Who the Summer School is for:

The training course is suitable for both investigative journalists with a few years’ experience as well as those who are more skilled.

We encourage application from experienced journalists that want to learn new trends and work with a new generation of reporters, as well as editors interested in encouraging investigative reporting in their media outlets.

Investigative Story Fund:

The 30 reporters selected to take part, of which 20 will hail from the Balkans, will work together in groups throughout the week to develop an idea for a hard-hitting investigation, which will be presented to a panel of judges on the final day.

The three best story ideas will be awarded with funds and editorial support. 

Montenegrin coast:

Known as the southern-most fjord in Europe, the Bay of Kotor boasts a landscape that you won’t easily forget. The Iberostar Herceg Novi hotel is at the entrance to the bay, surrounded by forested mountains and a crystal blue sea, to which you have direct access.

On the opposite side of the bay you can admire Herceg Novi, the city that gives its name to the hotel and that has a history dating back over six centuries.

In a secluded location away from the hustle and bustle but well connected with the airports of Dubrovnik (26km) and Tivat (30km), the hotel is just a few kilometres from the popular tourist spots such as Kotor, Perast and Herceg Novi.

Participants will have the chance to enjoy the idyllic surroundings while honing their investigative journalism skills.

Apply here!

BFJE Fellows Selected for 2019

Ten journalists from across southeast Europe have been chosen for this year’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence. Over coming months, they will tackle in-depth features and investigations on the topic of FREEDOM.

Now in its 13th year, the BFJE programme gives mid-career journalists the funding and editorial support to dig into complex issues of local and international significance.

This year’s participants were competitively selected from more than 80 applications. An independent committee comprising seven senior European media figures evaluated proposals based on relevance, feasibility and originality, as well as candidates’ professional qualifications and motivation.

The journalists come from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

The fellowship programme will kick off with an introductory seminar in Belgrade in late April. In addition to receiving funds for research, the journalists will get mentoring from seasoned international editors as they conduct reporting trips to countries in the region and the European Union. The programme will conclude in December with an award ceremony.

Here are the fellows for 2019:

  1. Angel Petrov (Bulgaria)
  2. Ani Sandu (Romania)
  3. Dina Djordjevic (Serbia)
  4. Jelena Prtoric (Croatia)
  5. Katerina Topalova-Dejanovska (North Macedonia)
  6. Kostas Zafeiropoulos (Greece)
  7. Milena Mitrovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
  8. Stavros Malichudis (Greece)
  9. Shkumbin Ahmetxhekaj (Kosovo)
  10. Vedrana Simicevic (Croatia)

Radovan Karadzic Trial E-Book

BIRN published an e-book entitled ‘Radovan Karadzic: Wartime Leader’s Years on Trial’, ahead of the former Bosnian Serb wartime president’s final trial verdict on March 20, 2019.

The e-book, which is downloadable free of charge, contains all BIRN’s reports on the case, from the period when Karadzic was on the run to when he was caught and extradited, and throughout the whole of the trial that followed.

Published in English and in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, it includes over 570 articles and runs to more than 1,100 pages.

This is the third e-book published by BIRN. The first was an in-depth e-book containing reports and analyses about the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, while the second one was a compilation of reports on Ratko Mladic’s trial.

To download the e-book, click here.

BIRN Publishes Radovan Karadzic Trial E-Book

Ahead of the former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic’s war crimes verdict this week, BIRN has compiled all its reports on the landmark case into a free, downloadable e-book.

BIRN published a new e-book on Tuesday entitled ‘Radovan Karadzic: Wartime Leader’s Years on Trial’, ahead of the former Bosnian Serb wartime president’s final trial verdict on March 20.

The e-book, which is downloadable free of charge, contains all BIRN’s reports on the case, from the period when Karadzic was on the run to when he was caught and extradited, and throughout the whole of the trial that followed.

Published in English and in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, it includes over 570 articles and runs to more than 1,100 pages.

This is the third e-book published by BIRN. The first was an in-depth e-book containing reports and analyses about the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, while the second one was a compilation of reports on Ratko Mladic’s trial.

Karadzic’s trial began in 2009, lasted for 499 days and heard 586 witnesses.

He was initially indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1995. He then spent 12 years on the run, and was finally arrested in Belgrade in 2008 and extradited to the UN tribunal.

The first-instance verdict in 2016 found him guilty of the Srebrenica genocide, the persecution and extermination of Croats and Bosniaks from 20 municipalities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and being a part of a joint criminal enterprise to terrorise the civilian population of Sarajevo during the siege of the city. He was also found guilty of taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

To download the e-book, click here.

Source: Balkan Insight

Royal Norwegian Embassy

DONOR
The objective of the Norwegian support to the Western Balkans is to promote development stability and democracy.

Norway supports many initiatives in Kosovo as well as the region to encourage regional cooperation, good governance through the development of rule of law, civil society, and the media, socio-economic development as well as reconciliation and implementation of transitional justice.

Web: www.norway.no/en/kosovo

Egypt to Probe Fake ‘Cleopatras’ After BIRN/ARIJ Revelations

After BIRN/ARIJ reports lifted the lid on the way millions of fake ‘Cleopatra’ cigarettes were being smuggled into North Africa from the Balkans, Egypt’s parliament has demanded an official probe.

The Egyptian parliament’s Industry Committee has urged the country’s state prosecutor to start a criminal investigation into cigarette smuggling – after a series of in-depth investigative reports published by BIRN/ARIJ revealed that the country’s most popular brand was being mass-produced and smuggled in from the Balkans.

The committee said prosecutors needed to look into whether Eastern Company managers had neglected to stop the flow of counterfeit cigarettes from Montenegro and Albania into the country.

“The defaulters [must be held] accountable for what they did due to inaction and not guarding public money, and so the subject should be referred to the General Prosecutor to investigate it and find out the truth,” the committee said in the official report obtained by BIRN, issued in February.

A series of BIRN/ARIJ reports in December 2018 detailed how both state-owned and private factories in Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Greece were involved in a contraband business that has netted vast profits and cost a number of countries significant losses in tax revenues.

Egypt’s No 1 brand cigarette, Cleopatra, was born in 1961 when then ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser asked for a local version of the smuggled American Kent brand that he liked to smoke. Created by the Eastern Company, Cleopatra is now one of the most widely smoked cigarettes in North Africa and a top seller globally.

The BIRN/ARIJ investigations noted that Egypt, the UK and the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, had considered the flow of cigarettes coming out of Montenegro’s Duvanski Kombinat Podgorica, DKP, “counterfeit”, suspecting they were being channeled to Libyan smugglers who distributed them illegally across North Africa.

Egypt asked repeatedly through diplomatic channels for Montenegro to shut the operation down.

Production did stop finally in 2016, but only after the factory was privatised and came under new ownership.

But the offshore firm that contracted the factory to produce the cigarettes has not given up, according to the BIRN/ARIJ investigations; it set up new production lines in Kosovo and invested 1 million euros in a new operation in Montenegro.

Muhammad Faud, a member of the Egyptian parliament, told the hearing that Eastern’s management had not protected the local Cleopatra brand, which had led its products being counterfeited in Albania and Montenegro.

This had “led to a waste the public money” he said, and to “falsified Cleopatra products that were not manufactured by the Eastern Company taking about 30 per cent of the market”.

Eastern’s parent company, Chemical Industries Holding, has insisted it has done its best to protect the brand. It said registering as many as 548 special trademarks around the world would have cost billions.

It also said that it had a complete dossier of exchanged communications between it and the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Egyptian embassy concerning measures taken to stop violations of its trademark and the manufacture of fake Cleopatra cigarettes.

“As a result of the efforts made, the factory producing forged products in Albania was stopped in 2015 for one year, but later started functioning again,” the company said.

The BIRN/ARIJ reports said the counterfeit cigarettes would have been virtually indistinguishable from the originals produced by Eastern Company in Cairo.

The labels bear the words “Made in Egypt”, as well as Egyptian health warnings and a claim to be produced by “Eastern Company”.

The BIRN ARIJ reports said increased taxes on cigarettes in Egypt from the 2010s onward had created a booming black market for the product.

Meanwhile, lawlessness in neighbouring Libya since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Gaddafi has turned the country into a smuggler’s paradise.

Source: Balkan Insight

BIRN Holds Transitional Justice Reporting Course in Ukraine

A two-day training course on how to report transitional justice issues, organised by BIRN Hub and Hromadske, was held in the Ukrainian capital from March 4-6 as part of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme – Justice Report Ukraine.

Ten journalists – five fellows awarded through the BIRN’s grant scheme and five journalists from Hromadske – were trained by BIRN’s international pool of editors to understand the full breadth of transitional justice topics and to develop techniques to cover them.

The course included guidance on the sources used for transitional justice stories, video storytelling in transitional justice, and writing in-depth features on the issue. The journalists then had an opportunity to pitch stories and discuss them with the trainers and the other participants.

The aim of the project is to strengthen in-depth reporting on transitional justice, in order to contribute to a more informed citizenry that is engaged in the democratic process, while the journalists are assisted to build skills and knowledge to cover topics related to conflict, truth, justice, accountability, memory, institutional reform and other issues related to transitional justice.

Resonant Voices Fellows Selected

Twelve journalists, activists and researchers will spend the upcoming months exploring the many facets of radicalisation and violent extremism in the EU and neighbouring states to help chart a more secure and inclusive future.

We are pleased to announce our very first group of Resonant Voices Fellows who will start working on their topics development during the upcoming workshop in Berlin. Over the next six to nine months, Aggelos Andreou, Yiannis Baboulias, Mirza Buljubasic, Michael Colborne,  Dimitar Ganev, Barbora Hola, Akos Keller-Alant, Nenad Radicevic, Aleksandar Roknic, Ebi Spahiu, Katarina Tadic and Eleonora Vio will conduct research, collect stories and untangle the web of influences to expose and challenge extremist messaging targeting vulnerable audiences.

The selected Fellows will look at more than 15 different countries in the EU and its immediate neighbourhood and will cover a wide range of topics. The research will track the evolution of links, networks and cooperation between extremist groups across borders, investigate disinformation campaigns run by governments and extremist groups and their effects on polarisation and radicalisation, analyse narratives of victimisation and injustice among Western Balkans diaspora communities and examine inter-generational transmission of war legacies.

The Resonant Voices Fellows will shed light on extremist messaging and evolving transnational radicalising influences eroding the fabric of our society and undermining our values. Their work will also contribute to vital communication strategies and targeted outreach as a means to combat these threats.

Learn more about the Resonant Voices Initiative and follow the work of RVI Fellows.

UK Govt Declines Comment on Arms Shipments Reported by BIRN

The British Government declined to comment on whether it will prosecute the brokers responsible for shipping ammunition from Bosnia to Saudi Arabia, as revealed in an article published by BIRN last year.

Creative Commons

The government said it “cannot comment on individuals or companies that have previously been, or are currently being investigated”.

“HM Revenue and Customs, on behalf of the Government, investigates all credible allegations of strategic export control offences, which can proceed to a full criminal investigation. HMRC investigators will recommend prosecution when and where there is clear evidence of a serious criminal offence,” the government wrote in an answer to a question raised by the Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle.

In his question, Russell-Moyle cited BIRN’s last year’s article, according to which the UK failed to warn Sarajevo that almost 30 million Bosnian-made bullets sold to Saudi Arabia would end up in the wrong hands.

The deal was brought to the UK’s attention because two British-based brokers had requested – and were eventually refused – licences to mediate in the Bosnia-Saudi deal.

Though Bosnian officials said they had no record of a broker being involved in the export, a BIRN investigation has established the shipment that left Bosnia in two parts in November 2015 and January 2016, with the approval of Sarajevo, matched the deal for which the UK refused brokering licences in terms of timing, quantity, origin, destination and type of ammunition.

Following BIRN’s investigation into the deal, the British parliament’s committee on arms export controls requested internal correspondence related to the shipment of ammunition from Bosnia to Saudi Arabia.

The committee said it would write a formal letter outlining the information it needs as part of an inquiry into UK arms licences issued in 2016.