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Serbeze won the prize of 4,000 euros for her story about the challenge facing a new court in protecting witnesses to crimes allegedly committed by former guerrilla fighters often regarded as heroes in Kosovo. 

The second prize of 3,000 euros went to Masenjka Bacic for her article about the threat to abortion rights in Croatia. 

The third prize and 1,000 euros was awarded to Elvis Nabolli for his story about the resilience of the cannabis industry in Albania. 

“Serbeze Haxhiaj has written a powerful and brave story about a controversial topic that Kosovar society has been reluctant to address”, said jury member Kristof Bander. 

Ten talented journalists from Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Greece spent more than six months of 2016 pursuing in-depth stories and investigations around this year’s fellowship theme, ‘Trust’. 

The book “Trust: Misplaced. Betrayed. Restored” brings together their work and was presented at the award ceremony in front of 150 guests including media partners from Europe, prominent public figures and more than 50 members of the Fellowship’s alumni network from across the region. 

The jury members who selected the winners were Florian Hassel, Central and Easter Europe correspondent for the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute, Kristof Bander, of the European Stability Initiative, Milorad Ivanovic, executive editor of the Serbian edition of Newsweek, Elena Panagiotidis, an editor for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Gerfried Sperl, columnist of Austrian daily Der Standard. 

With the conclusion of this year’s programme, the 10 fellows join the BFJE alumni network, which already consists of more than 80 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, enabling them to travel, report and write their stories and develop their journalistic skills. 

A project that promotes the development of robust and responsible press, the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence has evolved into a decade-long platform that has helped shaping journalism standards in the Balkans and the very careers of participating reporters. 

The fellowship will issue a call for applications for next year’s programme in January 2017.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, supported by ERSTE Foundation and Open Society Foundations.  

 

Journalists who dare to criticise the government of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic regularly become the target of smear campaigns, Gordana Igric said in the article about attacks on independent journalists and press freedom published by Deutsche Welle on December 2.  

Human Rights Watch backed Igric’s claims with official statistics from the Independent Journalist Association of Serbia (NUNS), the article added.

Figures show that, in the first seven months of this year alone, there were 33 attacks on journalists in Serbia, including physical attacks, threats and intimidation, it said.

“Even Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, seen in the West as a reliable partner, is not averse to wild attacks on independent media outlets. He has, for instance, called some online platforms, a number of which received EU prizes for journalistic excellence, ‘scum’,” it continued.

Igric told Deutsche Welle that is one of the reason for the continued problems was the EU and Germany’s “tepid message about the importance of democratic values in Serbia”.

“Investigative journalist networks such as BIRN, CINS and KRIKS have been vehemently attacked by government officials and other media outlets with close government ties. Labels like ‘enemies of the state’ and ‘foreign henchmen’ were almost always part of these defamation campaigns,” the Deutsche Welle article said.

Under the theme of ‘Trust’, journalists from the Balkans have over the last eight months produced a series of in-depth stories which were published in prominent local and international media, and collected in an e-publication that will be showcased at the ceremony.

An international jury of journalists and scholars will announce the three best stories from this year’s collection.

In addition to this year’s fellows, Fellowship media partners from Europe and guests from public life, more than 50 journalists from the region who are members of the programme’s alumni network will gather to celebrate excellence in journalism.

The event will be followed by the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence bi-annual alumni meeting, at which peer-to-peer exchange and collaboration will be promoted through debates, case study presentations and pitching for regional journalistic projects that will be supported through the alumni fund.

A project that promotes the development of a robust and responsible press, the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence has evolved into a decade-long platform that has helped shape journalistic standards in the Balkans and the careers of participating reporters.

It fosters quality reporting, initiates regional networking among journalists and advances coverage of topics that are central to the region and to the EU. For journalists in the Balkans, the programme serves as unique opportunity for professional development.

BIRN Serbia’s award-winning journalist Aleksandar Djordjevic was one of the interviewees in Al Jazeera English’s weekly ‘Listening Post’ media programme on November 6.

The report deal with alleged media censorship and government control of the press in Serbia, as well as the financial and professional challenges that newsrooms and journalists in the country face.

Djordjevic spoke about an exhibition that the ruling Progressive Party organised last summer to promote its case that there is no censorship in Serbia because critical media a free to ‘lie’.

“The problem with the current ruling party and its allies is that they do not understand a basic premise – not all negative reports or criticism about those in power should be considered a lie,” Djordevic told Al Jazeera.

“The name of the exhibition, ‘Uncensored Lies’, shows how those in power do not understand the clear difference between lies and criticism,” he added.

Among the news reports on display at the ‘Uncensored Lies’ exhibition was an investigative story written by Djordjevic.

“The story revealed irregularities in the awarding of a state tender which possibly cost taxpayers 120 million euros. The EU deemed the story to be award-winning investigative journalism. Serbia’s Interior Minister put it another way: He said that he could not believe that the EU would fund news outlet that lies,” Al Jazeera reported.

However, EU foreign affairs spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told the programme that the Brussels has no political agenda when awarding grants to media.

“The rules under which we support the independent media are extremely clear – we do not intervene into editorial policy in any way which in turn means that the views presented by those that win the grants are theirs only,” Kocijancic said.

Read more about the campaign against BIRN led by the Serbian government and pro-government media on our page BIRN under Fire.

Serbia’s notorious pro-government tabloid, Informer, on Monday – under the front-page headline reading, “America and the EU paying liars and racketeers” – accused the investigative media organizations KRIK, CINS and BIRN, as well as the daily Kurir, of being financed by Western countries to destabilise the country.

It quoted an analyst called Dragomir Andjelkovic as saying that Serbia should follow Russia’s example and adopt a special law curbing NGOs in Serbia.

Russian law allows prosecutors to declare foreign and international organizations undesirable and shut them down.

Slobodan Georgijev, an editor with BIRN whose photograph was published on Informer’s front page, said the article marked “another step towards the criminalization of journalists.

“We’re talking about criminalization by the people who are in power. They are creating an atmosphere to label us as foreign mercenaries in order to force us to make excuses for doing our job,” he said.

Branko Cecen, head of CINS, said labelling journalists as spies was becoming a common way to frustrate their work in Serbia, but added CINS was going to continue with its work, despite the growing pressure.

“Russian law on NGOs has practically stopped the NGO sector in that country, so what Andjelkovic says might be a verbalization of the wishes of some in the Serbian executive,” Cecen told BIRN.

Since President Vladimir Putin took power in Moscow, 120 journalists have been killed in Russia, he noted.

Stevan Dojcinovic, head of KRIK, called the latest Informer article just “an update” on its prevous efforts in this field.

“We have two new donors this year, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Civil Rights Defenders, and it’s all public, we’re not hiding this. It just happens that they [Informer] call us once a month without reason,” Dojcinovic said.

“This has been going on for so long that you simply need to get used to it, although I am far from underestimating it,” he added, referring to the tabloid.

On November 4, Informer wrote that the Serbian Security Service, BIA, had received information from Russian colleagues that the Americans intended to push Serbia into crisis.

Informer claimed the CIA was either planning to assassinate Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and present this as a mafia war, or to kill the loudest critics of the government and blame the murders on the government.

The article caused fury on social media, with some voicing the fears that Informer might be preparing the ground for attacks on government critics and on the independent media.

Tamara Skrozza, a member of the Appeal Commission of Serbia’s Press Council and a journalist for the weekly magazine Vreme, said the latest Informer report added to the feeling of insecurity among many journalists.

“I’m worried about the possible results of this campaign. In my opinion, the security of the mentioned journalists is under serious threat, so if the Prime Minister supports the rule of law, he should be the one to react to this,” Skrozza told BIRN.

She said that tensions in Serbia had risen to unprecedented proportions, creating an even more dangerous environment for critical thinkers.

On October 25, Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic said the authorities in Podgorica would investigate the extent of Russian and Serbian involvement in a alleged coup attempt there.

Twenty people, including the former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie Bratislav Dikic, were arrested in Montenegro on October 16 on suspicion of planning to overthrow Djukanovic.

On October 24, Prime Minister Vucic said the Serbian authorities had arrested several people who were allegedly following Djukanovic and planning illegal acts in Montenegro. However, he also insisted they had no connection to the Serbian state, but had connections to a unnamed third country.

The Serbian Prime Minister also claimed the number of members of “powerful foreign intelligence agencies”, from both East and West, was increasing in Serbia. He added that a senior police officer had also been arrested for “disclosing confidential information” to a foreign intelligence service.

Amid the turmoil cased by the Montenegrin claims, stashes of arms were found near Vucic’s home in Jajince.

Concerns were raised that the weapons were intended for use against Vucic or his brother, especially after Interior Minster Nebojsa Stefanovic on Tuesday said the Prime Minister had expressed fears for his brother’s safety.

Informer has a history of accusing independent journalistic organisations of working against Serbia – as do some politicans.

Last week, BIRN’s Georgijev was labelled a state enemy who “wanted to see something happened to the Prime Minister in terms of an assassination” by the Minister of Social Affairs Aleksandar Vulin during a debate on state television, RTS.