Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
She joined the BIRN team in 2014 and is responsible for both finance and administration jobs, producing finance reports, processing invoices and daily track of daily revenue and spending.
In addition, she is managing the daily functioning of BIRN Hub’s Belgrade office.
Snezana has been working in finance administration for almost 20 years. She speaks Serbian and Macedonian.
Slobodan Georgiev, a journalist from BIRN Serbia, was a panel member at the ‘Challenges of Investigative Journalism in the Contemporary World’ discussion on September 3.
The panel was part of a conference on media freedom organized by Newsweek magazine in Belgrade which brought together more than 200 participants including journalists, editors and media experts.
Georgiev pointed out that investigative reporters can face problems if they publish stories that the authorities find uncomfortable.
“The government shaped the media environment in the country and if you do some kind of monitoring or research what the government does and what the people who sit in government do, you find yourself in trouble,” Georgiev told the conference.
He said that after BIRN Serbia published a report on a government contract for pumping flood water from the Serbia’s Tamava mine – which was criticised by the authorities – other media took the government’s line.
“When the Prime Minister had a problem with us, fellow journalists didn’t address the issue about our story, but about who pays us,” he said.
At the conference, BIRN Regional Network Director Gordana Igrić moderated a conversation about crime and organ trafficking in Kosovo with Michael Montgomery from the Center for Investigative Reporting in the United States.
Civil sector groups from six Western Balkans countres urged their political leaders to secure freedom of expression and media independence, also calling for more of a role in their countries’ EU integration processes.
As leaders from the Western Balkans and the EU gathered in Vienna for the second leg of the Berlin Process, about 200 civil society activists and members of think tanks and the media discussed their proposals and concerns for the region.
In joint recommendations presented by BIRN’s Macedonia Country Director and Balkan Insight’s managing editor, Ana Petruseva, on Thursday, activicts urged the Western Balkan states to continue their modernization process both in their own states and in the wider region.
The recomentations were presented to the Western Balkans leaders and EU officials and tackled three main topics – regional cooperation, freedom of expression and creating jobs and prosperity.
Civil society representatives voiced their concerns and put forward concrete demands, saying that greater civil society involvement could help push forward EU integration and reforms.
“Governments of Western Balkans should accept the civil society sector as an equal partner in the EU integration process and commit to funding civil society initiatives and networks that delivered tangible results,” the recomendations read.
Civil society actors say they can contribute toward policies and strategies for enhancing regional cooperation in the area of social development and help improve the institutional and legal environment for civil society regionally.
The recommendations said that improving mutual understanding, exploring and discussing difficult episodes in their common history remain important aspects of regional cooperation in which civil society can and should play an active role.
The recomendations emphasize the role and potential of civil society for EU integration, regional cooperation and energy or infrastructure projects.
The recomendations also urge Balkan leaders to secure freedom of expression, the independence of the media and greater legal protection and working conditions for journalists.
“The legal protection of journalists needs to be increased as well as their working conditions, improved through the social dialogue with employers, which would overall diminish their precariousness in working relations. Media owners should adhere to existing laws in regard to employment and working conditions”, the documents reads, adding that public broadcasters must be independent and regulatory bodies need to become free from direct or indirect government influence.
In the third discussed area – job creation and the labour market, civil activists urged the region’s governments to focus on re-starting production, modernising and supporting the agricultural sector and improve consumer protection.
The Civil Society Forum of the Western Balkans Summit Vienna 2015 is a joint initiative of ERSTE Foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, and Karl Renner Institute, in close cooperation with the Austrian Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs.
BIRN’s summer school for investigative reporting opened in Durres, Albania, with a plea to journalists to channel their curiosity.
Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor at Reuters in New York and the school’s lead trainer, kicked off a packed programme urging journalists to “use our skills of observation, be curious”.
Morrison detailed how journalist can pinpoint sources and find key information during their investigations.
“People(Sources) will believe you if you really try to understand what the problem is,” he added.
Morrison also explained the importance of careful planning in complex stories.
BIRN journalist and investigations’ editor Lawrence Marzouk presented the school’s investigative fund, which provides grants to promising story ideas.
He said that participants will be split into groups and develop investigative proposals to present to a panel of judges on the final day. Two or three stories will receive funding from a pot of around 6,000 euro so that participants can carry out their investigation.
“I will help you to develop the story,” Lawrence added.
Mar Cabra, who heads ICIJ’s Data & Research Unit, outlined how journalists can find data and the importance of data journalism. She revealed how she had used official statistics to expose the worrying use of psychotropic drugs among children in the US.
“I decided to check how many drugs children in foster care in the state of Texas are prescribed and their use of psychotropic drugs,” Cabra said.
She presented a selection of groundbreaking data stories and emphasized that we need to think about data in every story, because “data is everywhere”.
“Try to do data as much as possible, and not only for clicks, use it for investigation,” she said.
In the afternoon, Philipp Grüll’s documentary “Tito’s Murder Squads – The Killing of Yugoslav Exiles in Germany” was screened.
The first day’s working sessions concluded with a discussion about the use of confidential files with Philipp Grüll, Anuska Delic, investigative and data journalist from Slovenian daily newspaper Delo, Besar Likmeta, BIRN Albanian editor, and Marija Ristic, Balkan Transitional Justice assistant editor.
The sixth BIRN Summer School brings together young journalists from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Austria, Kosovo, Palestine, Germany and Georgia to learn from leading media experts how to use social media to uncover crimes, skills for cracking open offshore companies and how to make reluctant sources talk.
The Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2015 is organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and with support of the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), Open Society Foundations and USAID Macedonia.
Marcus Tanner is Editor at Balkan Insight
Marcus studied theology at Cambridge before becoming the Balkans correspondent for The Independent from 1988 to 1994.
He returned to London to become the Assistant Foreign Editor of The Independent from 1996 to 2000 before leaving to write books on Ireland and on the Celts and to work briefly in Kyrgyzstan.
He has worked full time for Balkan Insight since 2006, while continuing to write leader-page articles twice a month for The Independent.
His published books are: “Ticket to Latvia”, Dent & Weidenfeld, “Croatia, a Nation Forged in War”, “Ireland’s Holy Wars”, “The Last of the Celts” and “The Raven King, Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library”, all published by Yale University Press.
He edited Marija Mestrovic’s “Ivan Mestrovic, The making of a Master”, published by Stacey International. He lives in London.
Several Bosnian TV stations, including the region’s CNN affiliate N1 and over 30 online media outlets, reported on BIRN’s conference on media freedom challenges in the Balkans held last week.
The BIRN network directors were featured on ‘Reflex’, a talk show hosted by Mimo Sahinpasic on TV OBN in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They discussed the various issues media professionals are faced with in the region today.
Commenting on the situation in Macedonia, BIRN’s director Ana Petruseva highlighted the power the government has over media in the country. “The prime minister’s cabinet decides on everything, from topics to be covered to potential interviewees,” Petruseva said.
BIRN regional network director Gordana Igric told FACE TV meanwhile that the media and civil society in the Balkans should not wait for Brussels’ help but act to ensure their own freedom and avoid becoming victims of political games.
Mirna Buljugic, BIRN BiH’s acting director, gave an interview for N1 in which she raised concerns about the deteriorating situation in the media sector, increasing political pressures as well as physical attacks on journalists in the country.
The cost of ethical and professional media is always high as room for critical opinion is constantly shrinking, concluded Jeta Xharra and Dragana Zivkovic Obradovic, BIRN directors from Kosovo and Serbia for Hayat TV.
In addition, EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn’s video message to the conference about the disturbing media situation in the Balkans was featured on Radio Free Europe, Banja Luka-based portal Buka, klix.ba, news agencies Tanjug and Fena as well as kurir.rs, vesti.rs, beta.informer.rs, bljeask.info, dnevnik.ba and video news site source.ba.
The Unidentified, a documentary about the Serbian commanders responsible for attacks near the town of Pec during the Kosovo War premiered in 2015.
The feature-length documentary reveals the untold story of the brutal atrocities committed during the 1999 war, told from the perspective of the victims and of the commanders who ordered the attacks.
During their campaign in Kosovo, Serbian forces committed some of their worst crimes in the town of Pec and its surrounding villages. Women, children, and the elderly were driven out of their homes, while men were murdered in cold blood and their bodies were burned or buried in mass graves.
Many of the commanders who ordered the attacks currently live free in Belgrade. “The Unidentified” names these officers and poses anew the question of whether, nearly two decades after the war, justice can finally be done.
Writing for The New York Review of Books, Tim Judah called “the Unidentified” an “extraordinary film” and praised its inclusion of the first-hand account of Zoran Raskovic, one of the perpetrators of the attacks.
The film won the “best short documentary” award at the South East European Film Festival in 2016. It was screened at seven film festivals in 2016, and at 10 debates and lectures. The film has reached an estimated one million people via its broadcasts on Al Jazeera Balkans. It has been reviewed or featured in publications including Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Aljazeera Balkans.
The BIRN network celebrated its 10th anniversary from June 12th to 14th with a regional media conference in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, followed by series of team building events, meetings and workshops on Mt Vlasic, some two hours’ drive away.
More than a hundred employees of the organisation from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia participated in two days of events at a hotel on Mt Vlasic.
Programme managers, project coordinators and administrative staff discussed rules, guidelines and a new information management strategy in two sessions led by Dusica Cook, BIRN Regional Operations Manager.
Jeta Xharra, BIRN’s Kosovo Director, used the opportunity to brief the management on the monitoring of elections, courts, procurement, the Kosovo-Serbia agreement, and municipalities.
BIRN journalists attended training sessions on journalistic standards led by Andrew Gray, Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence Editor, and on investigative journalism, led by Lawrence Marzouk, BIRN editor.
Valon Canhasi, BIRN Kosovo’s Social Media Editor, guided journalists on the importance of having a presence on social media and on the latest trends in users’ habits.
Balkan Insight and Balkan Transitional Justice staff held editorial and commissioning meetings, while Ana Petruseva, Balkan Insight’s Managing Editor and Milos Milosavljevic, BIRN’s Chief Digital Officer, held a technical training session for journalists.
Finally, BIRN journalists and management had two sessions – one on databases in the Network and their further development and possible integration, and the other focusing on BIRN’s web strategy.
BIRN Assembly members and Gordana Igric, BIRN’s Regional Network Director, convened for their regular annual meeting where they discussed BIRN’s new five-year strategy.
The BIRN team celebrated the fact that the Balkan Investigative Reporting Regional Network was established in July 2005, ten years ago, since when it has grown significantly, winning numerous national and international awards and merits and becoming one of the most trusted media organisations in the Balkan and Southeast Europe region.
The next meeting of the BIRN network, scheduled for 2017, will see a new round of team building activities, workshops and a checkpoint review of the five-year strategy.
BIRN’s new documentary, which investigates the Serbian commanders responsible for some of the worst attacks of the Kosovo war, was screened for the first time in Pristina.
The new documentary, The Unidentified, which names the Serbian officers who ordered attacks on Kosovo villages around the town of Pec/Peja in 1999 and those involved in the cover-up operation to hide the victims’ bodies, was screened for the first time in Kosovo on Thursday evening at the Architecture Faculty in Pristina.
Marija Ristic, the director of the documentary, which was the result of a two-year investigation, told the Pristina audience that the hardest moments during the making of the documentary were when she was trying to secure interviews with Serbian police officers.
“They started to inform each other. They were trying to prevent other people from speaking out. At one point, we were afraid that we would not manage to prove anything because we could not get police officers to speak about this,” Ristic said.
Kosovo’s Ombudsman, Sami Kurteshi, said he was touched by the story in the documentary, in which both victims and perpetrators are interviewed, but said that for him, it was just one small part of the war.
Kurteshi said that despite the fact that there is little political will to tackle war crimes, such efforts should continue.
“The strengthening of justice is very important. Justice should not be dependent on political will,” he said.
Chief prosecutor at Kosovo’s Special Prosecution, Sevdije Morina, praised the documentary for getting both victims and perpetrators to talk about the crimes.
Morina also said that the Kosovo’s prosecutors are ready to take over war crime cases after the mandate of the EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX, was changed.
“Local prosecutors will soon take over the big cases, like the big massacre at Meja, from the EULEX prosecutor that was responsible until now for the war crimes [cases],” said Morina.
‘The Unidentified’ takes viewers back to 1999, to the villages of Ljubenic, Cuska, Pavljan and Zahac near Pec/Peja in Kosovo, where Serbian fighters killed more than 118 Albanian civilians. Their bodies were either burned or removed, and some of them were later found in mass graves at the Batajnica police training centre near Belgrade in 2001.
The trial of 11 fighters alleged to have been involved in the killings – 10 of them accused of being direct perpetrators – is still ongoing in Belgrade, but the police and army generals who gave the orders have never been prosecuted in Serbia.
BIRN’s latest feature-length documentary, which investigates the commanders responsible for some of the most brutal attacks of the Kosovo war, was screened for the first time in Belgrade.
The new documentary, The Unidentified, which names the Serbian officers who ordered attacks on Kosovo villages around the town of Pec/Peja in 1999 and those involved in the cover-up operation to hide the victims’ bodies, was premiered at the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade on Monday evening.
Marija Ristic, the director of the documentary, said the film was the result of a two-year investigation, during which one of the biggest challenges was to get witnesses to speak out about what they saw.
“War crimes are taboo in Serbia and because of that it was very hard to find everyone involved in these events, and to urge them to appear in the film which includes both victims and perpetrators,” Ristic said after the screening.
‘The Unidentified’ takes viewers back to 1999, to the villages of Ljubenic, Cuska, Pavljan and Zahac near Pec/Peja in Kosovo, where Serbian fighters killed more than 118 Albanian civilians. Their bodies were either burned or removed, and some of them were later found in mass graves at the Batajnica police training centre near Belgrade in 2001.
The trial of 11 fighters alleged to have been involved in the killings – 10 of them accused of being direct perpetrators – is still ongoing in Belgrade, but the police and army generals who gave the orders have never been prosecuted in Serbia.
Ristic, who followed the trial for three years, said she didn’t just want to make a film about the Serbian fighters on trial, but about all those responsible for the attacks and those who ordered the subsequent cover-up attempt.
“We were most interested in the removal of the bodies, because the cover-up is not in the indictment [of the 11 ex-fighters]. And we looked for those who gave the orders,” she said.
Geoffrey Nice, the former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the case of Slobodan Milosevic, said that both crimes detailed in the film were the state’s responsibility.
One of the key pieces of prosecution evidence at the Milosevic trial was the wartime diary of Obrad Stevanovic, a former assistant interior minister, in which he wrote the words “no body, no crime” in a reference to the cover-up plan.
“Stevanovic’s diary contains a reference to the state office. Through it, [the Serbian prosecution] could trace it to the top. The cover-up was the most powerful evidence of the unlawfulness of what Slobodan Milosevic was doing during the war,” said Nice, who took part in a panel discussion at the Belgrade premiere.
Nice said that the others responsible for the crimes and the cover-up should also be prosecuted in Serbia.
“This is an extremely powerful and important film, and the court should be more open to the evidence presented here,” he said.
Ivan Jovanovic, a transitional justice expert and former head of the OSCE department for war crimes and organised crime in Serbia, said that the biggest problem in war crimes prosecution in Serbia is dealing with the commanders.
“Command responsibility is not easy to prove – it depends on the willingness and courage of the war crimes prosecutors and their persistence in requesting the necessary documents from the archives of Serbian Aamed forces,” Jovanovic said.
Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor, said that the prosecution plans to continue investigating the chain of command, referring to the ongoing investigation of General Dragan Zivanovic. Zivanovic is a former commander of the 125th motorised brigade of the Yugoslav Army, and was in charge of 177th intervention squad, whose members are currently on trial for the crimes in the villages around Pec/Peja.
“The War Crimes Prosecution Office is in a very delicate situation as this is an ongoing case. Accusing and proving is not easy,” Vukcevic said at Monday’s debate.
Dragoljub Stankovic, the deputy war crimes prosecutor, argued however that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia dealt with the removal of the bodies during the trial of Vlastimir Djordjevic, former Serbian assistant interior minister.
“We [the War Crimes Prosecution Office] cannot find the legal means to prosecute people who ordered and participated in the body removal,” said Stankovic.
He said that these crimes should be dealt with by regular prosecutors and not his office because they were not war crimes.
But Ristic argued that war crimes prosecutors did have legal grounds to get involved.
“The removal of the bodies is not a war crime, but it is a crime against humanity and as such can be tackled by the War Crimes Prosecution Office,” she said.
Faik Ispahiu, head of court monitoring for Internews Kosovo, told the debate that people in Kosovo closely followed war crimes trials in Serbia, but a lot of anger still exists because they do not believe that justice has been served yet.
“Sixteen years after the war, nothing in particular has been done. Those crimes were committed on the orders of state officials and police and army generals, so they were not done individually,” Ispahiu said.
After its Belgrade premiere, ‘The Unidentified’ will be screened next in Pristina on May 7.
