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Film “The Unidentified”

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.

BIRN Marks its Tenth Birthday in Bosnia

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 Kosovo War Crimes Film Screened in Pristina

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.

New BIRN War Crimes Film Premieres in Belgrade

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.

Fellows for 2015 Selected

The 10 participants for this year’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence have been chosen.

The programme received more than 150 applications and many were of a very high standard, making the final choice extremely difficult.

Members of the programme’s independent selection committee evaluate applications based on the relevance, feasibility and originality of the proposals, as well as the applicants’ professional qualifications, motivation and journalistic approach. The committee is comprised of seven senior media figures from the Balkans and around Europe.

BIRN and its partners in the fellowship programme thank all the applicants and encourage those who were not successful to consider applying again next year.

Here are the fellows for 2015, listed alphabetically by surname:

Fotini Barka (Greece)

Lindita Cela (Albania)

Vladimir Karaj (Albania)

Konstantinos Koukoumakas (Greece)

Jasmina Lazic (Serbia)

Jeton Mehmeti (Kosovo)

Mariya Petkova (Bulgaria)

Damir Pilic (Croatia)

Laura Stefanut (Romania)

Zornitsa Stoilova (Bulgaria)

The Fellows’ topics will be published in due course. They include the effects of the war in Syria, religious tension, human trafficking, education, culture and labour conditions.

The word cloud above gives a flavour of the topics covered in previous years, drawing on the headlines and introductions of Fellowship stories.

BIRN Stories Win Awards in Macedonia

The Macedonian Media Institute on Thursday presented the awards for best investigative stories for 2014. First prize went to Ljubisa Arsic of the weekly Fokus for a series of stories named “Secret manufacturing plant for passports”.

 

Second prize went to Sonja Kolevska–Delevska, of the daily Vest, for a series of stories on rapes of minors at the Educational Correctional Center in Tetovo.

Third prize went to BIRN’s story, by Vlado Apostolov, Saska Cvetkovska and Nela Lazarevic, called “Skopje Landfill Tender Winner: No experience, no investment,” which was written with the support of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting Fund.

Journalist Marija Mitevska won an honorable mention for a story named “Dream of Luxury Hotels Vanishes in Macedonia,” supported by BIRN Macedonia’s project for investigative journalism, funded By USAID.

Vladimir Kalinski also got an honorable mention for BIRN’s story “The pollution in Skopje – crime without culprits”.

Honorable mentions went also to journalists Valentina Stojanchevska, Vlatko Stojanovski and Zhaklina Hadzi–Zafirova.

The Macedonian Media Institute awards have been given since 2001 with a view to improving and promoting investigative journalism. Since 2013, theawards have been named after the late owner and editor of weekly “Fokus”, Nikola Mladenov, who died in a car accident.

 

Serbia Press Council Backs BIRN Against ‘Informer’

The Complaints Commission unanimously agreed to issue a public reprimand to the Informer newspaper following its reports on BIRN’s investigation into the Tamnava mine.

In a session on February 26, the Commission ruled that Informerviolated the section of the Code of Journalists of Serbia related to the veracity of reporting in the article entitled “Wanted to get hold of 23.2 million euro, but are still ‘reputable journalists’ and diplomats,” which it published on January 15.

“BIRN editorial is presented ‘as being part of a media mob and of racketeering the state on behalf of the EU’ and Informerdid not even think that it should all be proved.

“Members of the Commission unanimously decided that Informer had violated the Code of Journalists of Serbia and imposed a public reprimand,” the Commission said.

Since Informer is not the member of the Press Council, it is not obliged to publish the Commission’s decision.

The ruling follows BIRN’s submission of a complaint against Informerto the Complaints Commission of the Press Council on January 23 in connection to the newspaper’s reports on BIRN’s investigation into the Tamnava mine.

In the midst of a public debate on the investigation, “Pumping out the mine and the budget,” Informerpublished false information, slander and unsubstantiated accusations, intentionally or unintentionally ignoring the substance of the topics BIRN dealt with, thus jeopardizing BIRN’s professional credibility and personal integrity, and the safety of BIRN’s journalists.

“The head of BIRN, journalist Slobodan Georgijev, instead of apologizing for the lie, continues to accuse the government of censorship, and claims that he is being persecuted!?!” Informerwrote on January 15.

It also accused BIRN of wanting to get hold of 23.2 million euro. Informer dubbed BIRN journalists corrupt, saying that the EU had paid them to lobby for some EU companies to win the tender in Serbia to clear out the mine.

 

BIRN Macedonia Promotes 2015 Fellowship

BIRN Macedonia has launched the ninth Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, this year on the theme of ‘Values’.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network office in Macedonia on February 18 held a reception to promote the ninth annual Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence. Experienced journalists are invited to send story proposals by February 25 based on the theme of “Values”.

BIRN Macedonia Director Ana Petruseva explained the programme to journalists and editors who wish to apply with proposals for stories that involve cross-border investigations.

“The Fellowship is an opportunity to learn from some of the best journalists and editors out there and for your stories to be published in such renowned world media outlets as the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian and others,” Petrusheva said.

Macedonian 2014 Fellow Marija Mitevska said work on such investigative stories was time-consuming but she nevertheless urged journalists to apply for what she called a “once-in-a-lifetime experience”.

The application deadline is February 25. Journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Greece and Serbia are eligible.

Applicants selected for the Fellowship will receive €2,000 as a bursary and up to another €2,000 for travel and research expenses. They will also attend international seminars and receive one-to-one mentoring for their stories.

Completed articles will be published in English and in local languages by leading regional and international media. In addition, the top three articles will receive awards of €4,000, €3,000 and €1,000.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme is supported by the ERSTE Foundation and the Open Society Foundation in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN.

The application form, guidelines and further information about the fellowship are available online: fellowship.birn.eu.com.

Perparim Isufi

Perparim Isufi joined BIRN Kosovo in May 2014 and currently serves as the managing editor of KALLXO.com.

He edits and writes news, analyses and investigations for KALLXO.com and Gazeta Jeta në Kosovvë.

Isufi has been working in journalism for 12 years at several outlets in Kosovo. He also spent more than three years as a Press Assistant at the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, where he maintained contacts with Kosovo media.

He studied political science at the University of Prishtina.

BIRN’s Response to Johannes Hahn on Media Freedom

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is issuing a statement after Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiation, said he could not react to claims about media freedom violations in Serbia without seeing proof. BIRN is sending its response to all relevant human rights organisations, EU diplomats and international journalists.

„The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network would like to express its alarm and serious concern over the statement of Johannes Hahn, the EU’s Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations who has said that he needs to see evidence of declining media freedom in Serbia.

At a press briefing in Brussels on Monday Commissioner Hahn said that he could not react to claims about violations of press freedom in Serbia without seeing concrete evidence. He said:

“I have heard this several times [concerns about media freedom] and I am asking always about proofs….I am willing to follow up such reproaches, but I need…evidence and not only rumours,” Hahn told journalists.

The recent onslaught on our network is clear proof of what is happening in Serbia. Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s Prime Minister, targeted us, unleashing a wave of attacks in which we were branded as “liars”, “mercenaries” and “traitors’. Some of the material has been detailed here: https://birn.eu.com/en/page/birn-under-fire.

We see fit to remind Mr Hahn that, coupled with the attacks on us, came attacks on the European Commission itself which has funded an investigative reporting project published by BIRN. It was accused of paying BIRN to attack the Serbian government.

In the first week of vicious campaign, 170 reports were published about us. Only four media outlets in Serbia gave BIRN room to respond. No mainstream media reported on the corruption story published by BIRN, which triggered the attacks. By contrast the prime minister’s accusations against us were widely covered.

Mr Vucic’s demonstration of power sends the chilling message that a similar fate awaits any other critical voices. Campaigns have now followed against the Serbian Ombudsman and Humanitarian Law Center.

Other media have suffered significant pressures, and journalists talk of direct pressures and self-censorship which has been documented by the Association of Serbian journalists in December 2014.

The new World Press Freedom Index ranked Serbia in 67th position, a fall from the 54th place it had one year ago.

This ranking is also in line with European Commission’s own 2014 progress report which noted “concerns about deteriorating conditions for the full exercise of freedom of expression in Serbia.” Indeed Commissioner Hahn’s statement stands in a somewhat baffling and stark contrast to the report which warned of a “growing trend of self-censorship which, combined with undue influence on editorial policies, and a series of cases of intervention against websites, are detrimental to freedom of the media and adversely affect the development of professional and investigative journalism.”

In Serbia and the rest of the region, there is a widespread belief that democracy and freedom of expression are less important concerns for the EU than the issue of maintaining stability. We believe that this is a grave mistake and that there is no stability without them. 

BIRN and its partners are deeply concerned that the situation is likely to deteriorate further and we therefore expect the European Commission to express concern over these issues in a clear manner and not to leave any room for doubt about what is actually happening in Serbia.“