Change in the : The Trials of Transition

Alexia Tsagkari Benjamin Arifi Dimitar Iliev

Ivan Cadjenovic Milos Stanic Octavian Coman Shqipe Gjocaj

Tamara Opacic Vladimir Kostic Zdravko Ljubas

fellowship.birn.eu.com Contents

Editor’s Forward / 3 / Unsafe Haven: Smoke and Mirrors: ABOUT THE PROGRAMME / 58 / Life and Death for A Macedonian PARTNERS / 59 / LGBT Refugees Spy Mystery BIOGRAPHIES OF FELLOWS / 59 / Alexia Tsagkari / 4 / Benjamin Arifi / 10 /

Parallel Profits: Lawless Lake: Toxic Taps: ’s Medical Ex-Smugglers Find Arsenic in Water Drug Dealers New Fish to Fry Stirs Cancer Fears Dimitar Iliev / 17 / Ivan Cadjenovic / 22 / Milos Stanic / 27 / Published in 2017 by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Regional Network

Branilaca Sarajeva 14/I, 71 000 Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina

Editor: Timothy Large

Local Editors: Ana Petruseva, Besar Likmeta, Gordana Igric, Gordana Andrić, Dušica Tomović, Jeta Xharra, Marija Cheresheva, Marian Chiriac, Srećko Latal and Sven Milekić Fatal Inaction: Vicious Cycle: Selective Amnesia: Proofreader: Anita Rice How Measles Made Kosovo’s Battered ’s Holocaust a Comeback Women Syndrome Deniers Designed by Miloš Sinđelić Octavian Coman / 32 / Shqipe Gjocaj / 38 / Tamara Opacic / 43 / All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the written permission of the copyright holder and the publisher, application for which shall be made to the publisher. © ERSTE Foundation Open Society Foundations and Balkan Investigative Reporting Regional Network

2017 Party Games: Access Denied: Hide and Seek with Divorced Dads BALKAN FELLOWSHIP Election Cash Fight for Kids FOR JOURNALISTIC EXCELLENCE Vladimir Kostic / 49 / Zdravko Ljubas / 54 /

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 2 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Editor’s Forward

hat is driving change in the Balkans? Judging Much of the reporting bristles with the pent-up how profit-hungry middlemen are contributing to held hostage by a growing number of revisionist Wby the stories in this volume, a better question energy of what might be, if only… If only shortages on pharmacy shelves. Bulgaria has some voices. might be: what is holding it back? For these are tales were enforced and human rights respected. If only of the laxest regulations on the trade in and of societies held to ransom by the status quo. the authorities did their job. If only people stood attempts to clamp down have met resistance. In Serbia, Vladimir Kostic’s investigation into up for liberal values and pluralism. This tension illegal campaign financing by the ruling party In interpreting this year’s theme, 10 journalists between the what-is and what-might-be gives the Ivan Cadjenovic takes us to the biggest lake in highlights a culture of impunity amid creeping chosen for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic stories their power. the Balkans, where Montenegrin and Albanian authoritarianism and clientelism. The failure of Excellence hunted for signs of change in areas as poachers are devastating fish stocks. This is a prosecutors to act is a sign of interference from diverse as human rights, the environment, gender The big catalyst for change, of course, is EU swashbuckling tale of tech-savvy former smugglers deeply embedded political interests. issues, family values, healthcare, electioneering, membership. Half a dozen countries featured who find it pays more to electrocute fish than And in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia nationalism and identity politics. here are already in the club. Five others — Serbia, to traffic guns or narcotics. Allegations swirl of and Montenegro, Zdravko Ljubas shines a light Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey — corruption among the lake’s rangers. What they found were dramas of entrenchment are candidates. Whether the promise of accession on divorced fathers who are fighting for access and intransigence: the stubbornness of vested lives up to its potential is a preoccupation of many An investigation by Milos Stanic reveals that to their children in societies where mothers are interests, the doggedness of corruption and of these narratives. almost a million people in Serbia, Croatia, Hungary seen as natural caregivers. The system is stacked organised crime, the pervasiveness of traditional and are exposed to carcinogenic tap water against them, especially in Bosnia where family bigotries. In the tug-of-war between the actual and the with arsenic levels above the legal limit. His story does not recognise joint custody. ideal, other recurring themes include the rise of highlights the failure of the authorities to protect All in all, these are stories of dashed hope, missed From the freshwater wildernesses of Montenegro illiberal forces, impunity for wrongdoing and the public health and meet European targets. opportunity and frustrated potential. They are to the back alleys of Istanbul, we see the enduring straightjacket of history. narratives of backsliding and dereliction of duty. failure of institutions to safeguard the public good In Romania, Octavian Coman examines the Alexia Tsagkari’s exposé of the persecution of and protect the vulnerable. We learn of tricks used complacency, bungling and that led lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, But they also provide tantalising glimpses of tender by the powerful to rig the system in their favour. to a deadly measles epidemic, offering a cautionary asylum seekers on their journey to a safe haven shoots of positive transformation that just might, We count the human toll of discrimination. tale for the rest of Europe about what happens when in Europe makes for disturbing reading. Many with a little watering, spring up between the cracks authorities fail to bring marginalised communities of intolerance, vested interest and corruption. But do not be fooled by the weight of inertia in LGBT exiles face shocking abuse from host into the fold of national healthcare. these tales from Southeast Europe. While some communities and fellow refugees and are let down Indeed, many of the features and investigations in news subjects have change written all over them, by the humanitarian system. Shqipe Gjocaj reveals how Kosovo’s isolation from this collection suggest a twist on the old maxim, international instruments of justice give rights activists the subtler transitions sometimes speak the Benjamin Arifi’s investigation into one of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: in the loudest about where societies are heading. few levers for change when it comes to protecting Balkans, the more things stay the same, the more, Macedonia’s great political mysteries — who was women from domestic violence. Her portrayal of behind a deadly shootout in 2015 in the town of perhaps, they do in fact change. These days, change in the Balkans is often women in fiercely patriarchal societies caught in a Kumanovo? — shows the level of distrust and insidious and regressive. From the capture of cycle of discrimination and abuse is eye-opening. ethnic division in a country still reeling from a public institutions by political elites to historical corruption scandal that brought down the long- revisionism and a growing intolerance toward Tamara Opacic shows that EU membership entrenched government. diversity, reactionary tendencies are clawing back has done little to make Croatia crack down on Holocaust denial despite new laws against the ground and digging in. In Bulgaria, Dimitar Iliev delves into the murky world Timothy Large belittling of genocide crimes. Here is a country of ‘parallel trading’ of prescription drugs, showing Editor, Balkan Fellowship And yet, and yet. haunted by the ghosts of its World War II past and for Journalistic Excellence

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 3 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Alexia Tsagkari Istanbul, Leros, Kos, Athens

Lara, a transgender refugee from Syria, was stabbed in the back by locals near a camp on the Greek island of Leros. Photo: Alexia Tsagkari

andy knew right away the customer was crowd six months earlier, on December 17, 2016. It dangerous. Most men who cruise Istanbul’s was the last time she saw her alive. Unsafe Haven: Taksim Square looking for sex tend to move S Like Sandy, Warda was a transgender refugee from around nervously or feign nonchalance. But this man had menace in his eyes. Syria. Both had fled war and persecution in search Life and Death for of a safe haven in Europe. They made it to Istanbul “From his style, you could tell he had no money,” where, ostracised by locals and other refugees alike, she recalled. “We warned her not to go with him. they had to sell sex to survive. He looked suspicious. But she didn’t listen. She LGBT Refugees “Three hours later we called her on her phone, needed the cash.” but it was off,” Sandy said through tears, mascara Shunned, abused, murdered. For many Sandy was standing in the same place in Taksim running down her face. “So I went back home LGBT asylum seekers in Turkey and Square where she had watched her friend, Warda, and found her covered in blood. I could barely Greece, every day is a struggle for survival. follow the Turkish man into the Saturday night recognise her.”

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 4 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Sandy showed a picture of the murder scene on her cell phone. Warda was slumped on the floor with a huge gash in her side and lower back. The murderer had disembowelled her, slashed her throat and cut off her genitals.

“Eventually, the police came and took her body,” Sandy said. “We wanted to give her a proper funeral, but they wouldn’t let us. She was buried like a dog.”

Warda was 30, the same age as Sandy. Her final resting place is a cemetery on the eastern outskirts of Istanbul where wildflowers grow by her unmarked grave.

When Sandy contacted Warda’s relatives in Syria after her death, they said she had brought shame on the family. They did not allow the cemetery to put up a headstone.

Police never caught the killer and the murder Warda, seen in a snapshot on a friend’s cell phone, Sandy, a 30-year-old transgender refugee from Syria, went largely unnoticed in Turkey, where rights was murdered in Istanbul on December 17, 2016. says her murdered friend was ‘buried like a dog’. Photo: Alexia Tsagkari activists say hate crimes are increasingly common Photo: Alexia Tsagkari against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, community. Their stories highlight the psychological and physical fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, largest refugee population, according to the UN traumas facing many LGBT refugees as stigma and nationality, political opinion, or membership of a Refugee Agency, UNHCR. For some LGBT refugees in Istanbul, it sealed their persecution follow them on their quest to find asylum. particular social group”. decision to try to get to Western Europe by any means. Ramtin, a 27-year-old gay man from Iran, is one of They also underline the failure of host countries While the convention does not specifically refer to them. Over the summer and autumn of 2017, the Balkan and the humanitarian system to protect some of the LGBT people, an EU directive in 2011 spelled out Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, tracked most vulnerable among the biggest movement of that persecution for or gender At around noon on June 25, 2017, he was standing the progress of LGBT refugees intent on travelling displaced people across Europe since World War II. identity is solid grounds for asylum. on one side of Taksim Square as activists gathered from Turkey to Greece and then on to countries on the other to defy a ban on the annual LGBT further north. All the LGBT refugees interviewed for this story No one knows how many LGBT people are among . wished to be identified by their chosen first names the millions who have fled conflict, poverty and With the closure of well-trodden refugee routes due to safety concerns. persecution in the Middle East, North Africa and It was the third year in a row the city governor’s following an EU-Turkish deal to stem the flow of people South Asia over recent years, with many hoping to office had banned the rally, citing public safety after into Europe, they had to pay smugglers for passage. Hate crimes reach northern Europe. threats from extremist groups. What unfolded was a drama of fear and dashed The 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which obliges Since 2015, some 2.9 million people have applied A little more than a year after a failed military coup hopes as the dream of a better life melted into a countries to protect people fleeing from danger, for asylum in EU countries, according to the EU prompted the government to declare a state of nightmare of violence and discrimination. defines a refugee as someone with a “well-founded Commission’s statistics office. emergency — which critics say it has used to cement authoritarian rule and crush dissent — police were Only Belgium collects data on LGBT asylum in no mood for games. applications, though its latest figures are limited to 2008-2012. During that period, 4.4 per cent of cases Ramtin watched in terror as more than 30 police “They laughed at me and told me I got were based on sexual orientation or . buses, truck-mounted water cannons and tanks blocked all passages leading to Istiklal Avenue, a what I deserved for being a faggot” Meanwhile, some 3.4 million people are knocking pedestrian street off Taksim Square that is normally on Europe’s door in Turkey, host to the world’s swarming with locals and tourists. Ramtin, a 27-year-old gay refugee from Iran

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 5 / fellowship.birn.eu.com His instincts were to join the protesters — but the Yildiz Tar, a spokesman for the Kaos Gay and stakes were high. “There’s a huge amount of hate Lesbian Cultural Research and Solidarity crime going on” Association, an Ankara-based rights group, Arrest could mean deportation to Iran, where a said such moves helped inflame smouldering local court had sentenced him to death in 2015 for Yildiz Tar, spokesman for the Kaos Gay and Lesbian homophobia and transphobia. engaging in “unnatural relations”. It was thanks to a Cultural Research and Solidarity Association relative, who bribed the prison guards in his village, “There’s a huge amount of hate crime going on, that he managed to escape and flee to Turkey, he said. though we don’t have exact numbers since the government doesn’t collect any statistics,” he said, Amnesty International estimates that 5,000 gay men sitting on some stairs in a secluded alley in central and lesbians have been executed in Iran since the Istanbul. country’s 1979 revolution. On paper, Turkey has a long history of tolerating , which has been legal since the Tar cited the case of Muhammed Wisam Sankari, a As anti-riot police began firing tear gas and rubber republic was founded in 1923. gay Syrian refugee who in 2016 was beheaded and bullets, sending demonstrators sprinting across the so brutally mutilated in Istanbul that his friends square, Ramtin made up his mind and ran to safety But growing homophobia in an increasingly could only identify him by his trousers. in a café nearby. reactionary and anti-secular climate makes the country anything but a sanctuary for LGBT asylum Sankari had told police he was in danger after Since arriving in Turkey, Ramtin says he has been seekers, rights groups say. being abducted five months earlier and taken mugged, raped and threatened with death by locals to a forest where he was raped and tortured by and other Iranian refugees. When he reported the In November, Turkish President Recep Tayyip unknown assailants. crimes, police mocked him. Erdoğan said that empowering LGBT people was “against the values of our nation”. A week later, No one has been brought to justice for either , “They laughed at me and told me I got what I the governor’s office of Ankara banned all LGBT Tar said. Maher, a 23-year-old transgender refugee deserved for being a faggot,” he said. cultural events in the city. from Iraq, fled to Istanbul after she was It was not possible to put questions to police in charged with committing ‘unnatural acts’. Istanbul. The Turkish embassy in Athens declined Photo: Alexia Tsagkari to comment on the Sankari case and other matters, including questions about LGBT rights in the country countless LGBT people have been tortured and of 80 million people. killed in areas controlled by Islamic State fighters, rights groups say. Tar said LGBT exiles from some countries, notably Iran, can count on well-established support Since 2011, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, networks to help them make ends meet and navigate Trans and Association, an alliance of the lengthy asylum process. rights groups, has declared Syria the world’s most “They declare their gender identity and ask for dangerous country to be LGBT. international protection,” he said. “This process can “With Syrian refugees, the problem is them coming take years and since they have problems accessing out, saying who they are,” Tar said. “Hence, they are services, nearly all of them have suffered physical or not recorded as LGBT refugees and their special verbal violence.” needs are ignored.”

Meanwhile, LGBT refugees from Syria are often According to a UNHCR report published in 2015, completely on their own, Tar said. LGBT refugees who remain under the radar risk Syrians make up 90 per cent of Turkey’s refugee “severe social exclusion and violence in countries of population — some 3.1 million people, according to asylum by both the host community and the broader the latest UNHCR figures. asylum-seeker and refugee community”. Syrian law criminalises “unnatural sexual For Maher, a 23-year-old Iraqi transgender woman, Ramtin, a gay refugee from Iran, waves an LGBT flag at a park in Istanbul. intercourse” with up to three years in prison, and Warda’s murder was the final straw. Photo: Alexia Tsagkari

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 6 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Sandy, the 30-year-old transgender refugee from Syria who found Warda’s body, decided not to go with them. She knew Amsterdam well, having lived there for seven months after paying a smuggler to fly her there on false documents in 2013.

She was deported back to Turkey after being caught as an illegal immigrant.

“I have a boyfriend here, and a life rebuilt during the last four-and-a-half years,” said Sandy, who had recently undergone by a backstreet doctor in Istanbul. “Amsterdam is not a paradise for us either.”

Around 2,000 kilometres away in Amsterdam, some LGBT asylum seekers share Sandy’s disillusionment in a country once hailed as a beacon of tolerance.

In 2017, an Amsterdam-based charity called LGBT Asylum Support helped around 100 Maher shows scars that she says prove LGBT refugees with their asylum claims. Hassan, a gay refugee from Syria, dreams she was tortured by police in Iraq. of opening his own salon in Amsterdam. Photo: Alexia Tsagkari The organisation says dozens were rejected, Photo: Alexia Tsagkari with authorities increasingly reluctant to give applicants the benefit of the doubt. Back home in Iraq, Maher had led a double life. Maher was standing in the square with her friend, “To be granted asylum, queer refugees need to At the police station where she worked as an Hassan, a gay refugee from Syria, when a group of “People think they have come to a safe place, but prove to immigration authorities and judiciaries administrator, colleagues thought of her as one of men began harassing the sex worker. instead they live in a nightmare,” Sandro Kortekaas, that they are queer, that they fear persecution on the guys. But that all changed when she left her the charity’s chairman, told BIRN in a Skype the grounds of their sexuality, and that such fear is “Hassan wanted to go and protect the trans,” she phone at the office one day. It contained pictures of interview. “The system even doubts that they are well-founded,” he wrote. her wearing a long black wig and women’s clothes. said. “She wasn’t our friend, but we knew her at the gay. How a refugee can go back to a war [zone] or to square. I was really afraid these people were going a place where he will face death?” “Even more than in cases of political, religious or ‘No paradise’ to attack us so I pushed Hassan away. After a while, ethnic persecution, however, the outcome of their the men cut her throat with a knife.” Johannes Lukas Gartner, programme director of claims is largely dependent on the existence of Colleagues who saw the photos had her arrested. human rights group Humanity in Action in Berlin, usually non-existent evidence.” She was charged with committing “unnatural Between 2008 and 2016, 43 transgender people summed up the predicament of many LGBT Undeterred, Maher and Hassan set off for acts”, tortured and imprisoned, she said. After were murdered in Turkey, according to a 2016 refugees in a recent essay. Greece in January 2017, along with Hassan’s three-and-a-half months, she was released on the report by rights group Transgender Europe, Iraqi boyfriend, Mahdi, and Lara, a transgender condition that her brother act as guarantor while though it said the number was just the “tip of the woman from Syria. she awaited trial. iceberg”. They paid a smuggler 800 euros each to take them When she fled the country several months later, Shaken by the violence around them, Maher and in a dinghy from the eastern port of Bodrum to her brother was arrested and sentenced to life three close refugee friends, including Hassan, the Greek island of Leros, 80 kilometres from the imprisonment — a fact that she says weighs on her resolved to try to get to the Netherlands, which they Turkish mainland. every day. saw as a kind of promised land. “The men cut her throat Their journey was in defiance of a 2016 deal between A month before Warda was murdered in Istanbul, Hassan, who was a hairdresser in Aleppo in Syria with a knife” the EU and Ankara requiring Turkey to stop illegal Maher saw another transgender sex worker killed and sports bleached blonde hair, dreams of opening crossings to Greece in exchange for financial aid in Taksim Square. his own salon in Amsterdam. Maher, who says she saw a transgender and faster EU membership talks. sex worker killed in Taksim Square

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 7 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The agreement all but closed the Aegean Sea Breaking point route. In 2015, an average of 6,828 people a day crossed to Greece from Turkey. By December 2016, Across the Aegean, LGBT refugees find themselves the number had fallen to 54 per day, according to in equally precarious environments. UNHCR. “LGBT refugees need additional protection, since As Balkan countries to the north also closed they’re subjected to different forms of violence their borders, many refugees and migrants found and exclusion from access to basic services,” said themselves stranded in camps and urban centres Margarita Kontomichali, coordinator of a support across Greece. programme for LGBT asylum seekers run by an Athens-based charity called SolidarityNow. As of late-November, almost 15,500 people were stranded on islands in the eastern Aegean hoping to On the tiny island of Kos, two hours from Leros be transferred to the Greek mainland. Those whose by ferry, gay asylum seekers sheltering in an asylum claims are rejected will be deported — to abandoned hotel said they were haunted by the fear Turkey if they registered there en route to Greece, of deportation. otherwise to their home countries. “I tried to kill myself twice in the camp,” said Once on Leros, Maher, Hassan, Mahdi and Lara Bassim, a 31-year-old man who fled Iraq after his registered at a camp on Lakki Bay comprised of extremist brother tried to murder him. “I was too dozens of converted shipping containers on the much of a coward to finish myself off.” grounds of a psychiatric hospital. He choked back tears as he showed the scars on his They said the threat of violence was constant, left thigh from the night in 2016 when his brother Bassim, a gay refugee from Iraq, Maher and Hassan look into the camera. from both camp-dwellers and locals on the shows scars from when his own burst into his room, poured oil on him and set his Photo: Alexia Tsagkari brother tried to burn him alive. leg alight. island of 8,000. In May, a group of men stabbed Photo: Alexia Tsagkari Lara as she was wandering across the island’s “My brother is still looking for me. But here in main street. Greece, I don’t feel safe either.” Asked about alleged attacks on LGBT refugees, During the summer, the young man found a job at a “I heard somebody shouting behind me in Greek,” some Greek locals said they had it coming. LGBT refugees say some local aid workers lack the beach bar, where he said he was forced to work 12- said the 28-year-old transgender woman from training and awareness to deal with sensitive cases, hour days for a month without pay while suffering Homs in Syria. “Before I could turn my head, I felt “They’re going to make our sons sissies and while others are downright homophobic. sexual harassment from the owner. a sharp pain in my back and fell on my chest. I think faggots,” said Yiannis Koumoulis, the owner of a that saved my life.” car rental shop. An 18-year-old Syrian gay man who declined to be “I can’t tell anyone because I’m too ashamed,” he said. identified described his frustrations dealing with the asylum procedure. He said he was too flummoxed In June, Maher, Hassan, Lara and Mahdi received permission to leave Leros and travel to Athens, Greek Gateway to Europe in his interview with officials to be honest about the dangers he had faced in Syria for being gay. where they put in a formal request for asylum to the In 2015, bankrupt Greece became exchange for financial aid and faster another Syrian would be resettled to Netherlands. known as the gateway to Europe EU accession talks. the . “The translator was a guy who didn’t translate Their monthly stipend of 90 euros each from as more than a million refugees exactly what I was telling him,” he said. “I can And finally, Turkey would take all and migrants travelled there via Under the deal, Brussels and Ankara UNHCR is not enough to live on, they say. necessary steps to prevent new understand basic English and I’m sure of it. And Turkey before heading on to other agreed that all new “irregular sea or land routes to the EU from nobody told me it was safe to reveal my sexual destinations in Western Europe. migrants and asylum seekers” “When we arrived in Athens, Hassan and I went to crossing to Greek islands as of opening up. orientation.” the supermarket,” said Mahdi, a 32-year-old gay In response to the biggest movement March 20, 2016 would be returned to Iraqi who was forced to leave his home in Kuwait of displaced people since World War In March 2016, Macedonia, Croatia When his asylum application was denied after Turkey. after his homophobic brother tried to kill him. II, the European Union signed a deal and Slovenia shut their borders, several months, he requested a second interview with Turkey in March 2016 to keep Meanwhile, for every Syrian returned leaving tens of thousands of refugees and this time “came out” before officials. Every day “On the way, migrants from Georgia, I think, were people from crossing to Greece in to Turkey from the Greek islands, and migrants stranded in Greece. that he waits for a decision is agony. shouting, ‘Go away, sissies!’ We had to go back to

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 8 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Reporters Roadmap

Istanbul

Leros

Kos

Maher sits on a bed at a hospital in Athens. Photo: Alexia Tsagkari Athens

the apartment, but they were still outside, throwing A basic forged EU passport and a plane ticket would At first, the doctors would not tell Hassan and Mahdi “Stop asking that, Mahdi,” he said in a small, flat stones at the window.” cost them 800 euros each. For 3,000 euros, they could what was wrong with Maher because they were not voice. “The important thing is we are together, the The two live in accommodation in the Kypseli district get a high-quality stolen passport and a place on a relatives. But after two weeks, they revealed she had three of us.” of central Athens provided by the Association for cruise ship that would take them right around the an intracranial brain tumour and had experienced Mediterranean. The deluxe package even included two strokes. He raised his cell phone and took a selfie. Just the the Social Support of Youth, a non-governmental three of them. organisation that helps marginalised youth. bribes for coast guard officials, he said. Her condition is inoperable and she is not expected Despite the support, all four said they were at The man showed them photos of fake documents. to survive, they said. breaking point. In the end, they opted for a 1,500-euro deal that would give them a pretty good forged passport — The tumour may or may not be linked to violence she “From the first moment, all I hear are promises,” most likely Bulgarian or Romanian — and a flight. suffered while in prison in Iraq, the doctors said. As Mahdi said. “I can’t trust anyone here, not even the of the time of publication, Maher could hardly speak They handed over the cash in 50-euro notes, money [aid] organisations. I don’t know what to expect or and did not recognise visitors. how to proceed.” earned from sex work and given to them by friends living in Kuwait. Devastated, Hassan, Mahdi and Lara have no idea Forged documents Towards the end of September, shortly before it was what to do next. In June, Maher, Hassan, Mahdi and Lara decided time to travel, tragedy struck. One evening in late November, Hassan and Mahdi they could no longer wait for the asylum process to were visiting Maher, whose condition seemed to be run its course. It was time to pay a smuggler to get One night, Maher was not herself. She was forgetful, deteriorating. Mahdi kept saying under his breath: them to Amsterdam. confused and having trouble breathing. Before long, she started bleeding from the mouth. “What’s next? What’s next?” Next to the Saint Nicholas church on Acharnon Street, they met a short, Arabic-speaking man who Hassan called an ambulance. It took forever to arrive, Hassan sat on the edge of the bed and put his arm laid out the options. so they piled her into a taxi and sped to the hospital. around Maher.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 9 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Benjamin Arifi Kumanovo, Skopje, Pristina

Buildings stand in ruins in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo after a two-day firefight between gunmen and police that killed 18 people. Photo: Amit Idrizi

ike many roads in ethnically mixed parts of Around the corner on Pero Ilievski Street, an Macedonia, Tode Mendol in the northern explosion awoke Ramadan Baftiu, a part-time taxi Smoke and Mirrors: Ltown of Kumanovo has two unofficial names. driver. The narrow cul de sac was swarming with Ethnic Albanians call it “the Street of Brave Men”. police armed with Kalashnikovs. To everyone else, it is “the Wild Street”. A Macedonian “I barricaded myself in the basement for around 14 In the early hours of May 9, 2015, it became a hours while everything happened just outside,” he warzone. said. Spy Mystery “The shooting started while we were praying,” Over the next two days, units of Macedonia’s anti- recalled Eljesa Mahmudi, imam of the New Mosque terrorist police laid siege to 39 ethnic Albanian Did Macedonia’s Intelligence Agency stage a deadly shootout serving the street’s mostly Albanian community. gunmen holed up in three rented houses on Pero to distract from a corruption scandal? On the third anniversary “We had no idea what was happening.” Ilievski. of the Kumanovo incident, BIRN sifts through the evidence.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 10 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Wearing military fatigues and bulletproof vests, they to go to Kumanovo in the first place? Who was burst into the home of Nezir Murtezi, a pensioner who behind it all? lived two doors from one of the houses under attack. Nor did the trial quell calls for an international “The police shot from my terrace, from my living inquiry into the incident at a politically sensitive time room, from my hall,” he said. “They went at it with for Macedonia as it seeks NATO membership and everything they had.” EU accession talks, both blocked by neighbouring Greece over a long-running bilateral name dispute. It turned out that 31 of the besieged gunmen were from across the border in Kosovo, veterans of war Prosecutors had insisted the group acted on its with Serbia in the late 1990s. They returned fire own, bent on killing in the name of greater rights with sniper rifles, AK-47s and machine guns. for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. They had been under surveillance before attempts to arrest them The battle devastated the neighbourhood. turned into a bloodbath, they said. Explosions turned houses to rubble and incinerated cars. Armoured vehicles crushed walls. All the defendants had denied the terrorism charges, saying they acted in self-defence after police started By 9 pm on May 10, 2015, when the last of the attacking them. Some said they had been victims of gunmen had surrendered, police casualties stood a politically motivated set-up, lured to Kumanovo by at eight dead and 37 injured. Ten of the gunmen, Macedonian authorities where a trap awaited. including the group’s leaders, were killed in the fighting, police later said. Even before the trial, speculation had swirled that the authorities may have orchestrated a showdown in Nikola Gruevski, then Prime Minister, addressed Kumanovo — or at least tolerated the group’s plan to A destroyed car lies on a street in Kumanovo the nation on live television. Grim-faced, he said act there — to stoke ethnic tensions and distract from shortly after the standoff. police had thwarted a “terrorist group” that had Photo: Amir Idrizi a corruption crisis engulfing the government of the snuck across the border, planning “massive killing” day led by Gruevski and his VMRO DPMNE party. at police stations, shopping malls and sports events. Among the conspiracy theorists was Zoran Zaev, is strenuously denied by VMRO DPMNE leaders President Ivanov, who oversees the agency and “One thing is certain,” he said. “Their aim was to then leader of the opposition Social Democrats, including Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov. heads the national Security Council, personally destabilise Macedonia.” SDSM, and today prime minister. He told journalists responded. But taken together with court testimony, snippets Three years later, with a new government in Skopje, a few days after the shootout: “There are strong of wiretapped conversations and forensic clues that Ivanov denied that the agency or the president’s there is anything but certainty about the motives of indications that this case is a scenario orchestrated some of the gunmen may have been summarily cabinet had staged an incident in Kumanovo and the gunmen. by the power holders.” executed, his unconfirmed claims evoke a drama called such accusations “a desperate attempt In early November 2017, the Skopje Criminal Court On the third anniversary of the incident, the Balkan worthy of a spy thriller. to mislead the news with false news and build a sentenced 33 men to a combined 745 years in prison Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, can reveal negative perception of the institutions”. According to the officer, who spoke on condition of on terrorism charges. Seven got life sentences while exclusive comments from a senior officer of the anonymity, the fighters in Kumanovo were recruited Zaev, whose SDSM-led government came to power others received jail terms ranging from 12 to 40 Intelligence Agency that contradict the official and armed with help from the Intelligence Agency, in May, ending 10 years of rule by Gruevski’s VMRO years. Four men were acquitted. account of how the gunmen came to be at Kumanovo. which gave them safe passage to Kumanovo before DPMNE party, has said he favours a retrial. If that But the trial did little to answer a burning question BIRN has been unable to independently verify the police forces pounced. happens, the authorities have indicated they may on many people’s lips: who ordered the gunmen source’s information — and his version of events request outside help to remove all remaining doubts “The conflict in Kumanovo was completely organised about the case. by the Macedonian Intelligence Agency,” the officer told BIRN. “It was a badly organised scenario that Convenient timing? went even worse on the ground.” “The conflict in Kumanovo was completely organised As residents cleared debris after the shootout — BIRN put the claims, which are not substantiated broken glass, twisted metal, charred bricks — it was by the Macedonian Intelligence Agency” with hard proof, to the Intelligence Agency. impossible not to recall the dark days of 2001. A senior intelligence officer at Macedonia’s spy agency

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 11 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The area around Kumanovo had been at the heart of Some critics found it all too convenient for the “Why don’t we make a war [with ethnic Albanians]?” part of well-prepared propaganda against the party, a 10-month conflict in 2001 between state security government. Protugjer says to Jankuloska. just to reduce confidence in it. forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the now- Gruevski had been mired in scandal since February “After all, neither then nor today, half a year since the disbanded National Liberation Army, NLA. “We could smash them in an hour!” Jankuloska 2015, when then opposition leader Zaev started releasing replies. SDSM came to power, has there been any evidence A NATO-brokered peace deal helped Macedonia what he called information “bombs” — batches of at all that would support an assertion that our party A few days after the shootout, Jankuloska stepped dodge all-out civil war, addressing many of the covert recordings that he said proved the government representatives were involved in orchestrating the down. So did Saso Mijalkov, secret police chief and grievances that had fuelled the insurgency, including was behind the illegal surveillance of 20,000 people. event in Kumanovo.” Gruevski’s cousin. Both said their resignations had a lack of political representation for ethnic Albanians The opposition claimed the leaked wiretaps nothing to do with Kumanovo but were to help end Goran Mitevski, director of Macedonia’s who make up at least a quarter of Macedonia’s 2.1 implicated top officials in crimes including election the political crisis consuming the country, which Counterintelligence Agency between 1999 and million people. fraud, abuse of power and covering up murder, they blamed on the opposition. 2001, told BIRN in November 2017 that he had which the government denied, saying the recordings heard unconfirmed reports that the incident “was The 2001 peace deal made Albanian an official were fabricated by foreign agents. Gruevski would himself go on to resign, in January organised by high state officials”. language in municipalities where ethnic 2016, as agreed in an EU-mediated deal to end the Albanians make up at least a quarter of the The wiretap scandal sparked furious protests crisis caused by the wiretap scandal. In June 2017, The Counterintelligence Agency is a separate entity population. It also guaranteed ethnic Albanians and demands for Gruevski’s resignation. Critics he and close associates were indicted for election from the Intelligence Agency. proportional representation in government and wondered if the Kumanovo incident could have fraud and other alleged crimes. Asked what the government would have stood to state institutions. been a set-up to defuse efforts to oust him. gain from staging such an incident, he speculated If Kumanovo was a ruse to deflect criticism from it might have been looking for an excuse to declare In Kumanovo, where 20,000 ethnic Albanians Gruevski has denied all allegations, insisting the the government, it had clearly not worked. account for almost half of the town’s residents, calm wiretaps were doctored recordings released as part a state of emergency amid calls for early elections. of a plot to destabilise the country by unnamed BIRN was unable to contact Gruevski for comment had reigned ever since. The events of May 9 and 10 “But to prove all this, there needs to be an “foreign secret services” in collaboration with his but the VMRO DPMNE, responded to BIRN’s raised the spectre of renewed ethnic strife. international investigation with the involvement of political opponents in Macedonia. questions with a statement in November 2017. foreign experts or agents from the neighbourhood They also raised a question: why now? One of the wiretaps, released on May 15, 2015, is “The accusations of the then opposition are or from other foreign countries,” he said. In his speech to the nation after the shootout, purportedly of a conversation between Gruevski’s completely false and were part of their black Forewarnings Gruevski appealed to “those who criticise the cabinet chief, Martin Protugjer, and Interior campaign led by media under their control for a opposition or the government to stop, because now Minister Gordana Jankuloska, in which they longer period,” VMRO DPMNE spokesman Ivo Even as bullets ricocheted off walls in Kumanovo, we need unity”. apparently toy with the idea of inciting a conflict. Kotevski wrote in an email. “Such allegations were sceptics found reasons to be suspicious.

Countdown to Kumanovo

February 9, 2015 - The government April 10, 2015 - Government of Goshince, making off with a large April 30, 2015 - Opposition leader grows over the wiretap scandal, of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski headquarters in Skopje is attacked by a supply of guns and ammunition. Zoran Zaev calls for a massive protest leading to clashes with police is engulfed in a corruption scandal grenade. Nobody is hurt. on May 17. Some 100,000 people are as the opposition begins releasing expected to attend. “This time we April 26, 2015 - Mirsad Ndrecaj, a May 9, 2015 - Shortly before dawn, leaked wiretaps that it says incriminate won’t go home until the government April 11, 2015 - Someone calling former fighter from Kosovo’s war with gunfire and explosions rock an ethnic Gruevski and close associates. falls,” he says. himself “Commandant Kushtrimi” takes Serbia, claims responsibility for the Albanian neighbourhood in Kumanovo responsibility for the grenade attack Goshince heist. as anti-terrorist police battle 39 April 4, 2015 - Former police general and warns of more bombings unless May 3, 2015 - An explosion goes off gunmen holed up in three houses. Stojance Angelov tells protesters he ethnic Albanians are given equal rights at the headquarters of the largest April 27, 2015 - The ruling VMRO has information that “someone” paid in Macedonia. ethnic Albanian party and partner in DPMNE party announces it will change It is the beginning of a deadly two-day two million euros to ethnic Albanian government in Tetovo. Nobody is killed. the date of its party congress scheduled shootout. Even before the dust settles, “criminals” to impersonate a now- April 21, 2015 - Forty masked gunmen to take place in Kumanovo on May 9-10, critics accuse the government of disbanded insurgent group and cross the border from Kosovo and bringing the event forward to May 2-3. May 5, 2015 - The first of many big staging the incident to divert attention provoke inter-ethnic conflict in the Bullet casings lie scattered on storm a police station in the village Local media cite security concerns. the ground in Kumanovo. protests rock Skopje as public fury from the wiretap scandal. Kumanovo region. Photo: Amir Idrizi

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 12 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Within hours of the siege, social media lit up with Someone calling himself “Commandant Kushtrimi” reminders of a speech made five weeks earlier by took responsibility in an email to media that bore a former police general named Stojance Angelov. the NLA logo and, bizarrely, the forged signature of Little noticed at the time, it now seemed prescient. the governor of the European Bank.

The retired police general is the leader of a small Kushtrimi threatened further attacks until all opposition party called Dignity. On April 4, 2015, he Albanians had equal rights with Macedonians. had addressed anti-government protesters in Skopje. On May 3, 2015, a bomb went off in the northeast “Someone in our country has prepared a monstrous city of Tetovo at the headquarters of the Democratic plan to cause an inter-ethnic conflict,” Angelov Union for Integration, DUI, the largest ethnic bellowed from the podium, without explaining who Albanian party and a junior partner in the the “someone” was. government. Nobody was killed or injured and no one claimed responsibility for the attack. “I have information that somebody gave two million euros to some Albanians who have nothing to do But it was on April 21, 2015 that supposed NLA with the NLA, to some criminals from the Lipkovo fighters really made their mark. region [near Kumanovo]. Their job will be to pretend to be NLA, and kill some police officers or Police announced that 40 masked gunmen wearing soldiers, and cause an inter-ethnic conflict.” NLA badges had crossed from Kosovo and stormed a police station in the village of Goshince, in the Inside one of the houses in Kumanovo In November 2017, Angelov told BIRN his Lipkovo district near the border. where gunmen were holed up. information had come from “people who worked for Photo: Amir Idrizi state security and other services” and that he cross- They tied up and beat four policemen, before making checked it with other intelligence sources. off with the four-person outpost’s remarkably large arsenal of guns and munitions, including dozens of The plan was to pay criminals to recruit — “as machine guns. In July 2017, the senior intelligence officer told for a fourth term as party president. The event had collateral damage” — a group of gullible and BIRN the Intelligence Agency had encouraged been scheduled to take place in Kumanovo on May ideologically driven ethnic Albanians to launch The DUI warned ethnic Macedonians not to fall for the attackers to come to Goshince and steal the 9-10 but was brought forward to May 2-3. attacks in Macedonia, ostensibly to defend ethnic what it called a “provocation”. weapons, though he offered no proof. Albanians from state oppression, he said he was told. Asked about the change of dates, VMRO DPMNE Macedonian news agency Zhurnal quoted the former Five days after the Goshince attack, a man named spokesman Kotevski told BIRN the party rescheduled “I said at the time that people close to the power commandant of the NLA in Lipkovo as saying the Mirsad Ndrecaj, subsequently identified as the late the congress in response to the escalating political holders were the instigators of this bloody act,” he said. secret service had staged the Goshince incident to leader of the Kumanovo gunmen, posted a message crisis that it blamed on the opposition, “in order “I believe that no one wanted to see this tragic outcome, incite ethnic strife and rally Macedonians behind on Facebook taking responsibility for the heist. to bring the full attention and focus of the party’s but I believe that in the moment they lost control.” the government. leadership onto the political crisis”. “The NLA has always hit the target, where our Six days after Angelov’s speech, somebody threw “The government has paid some people to create a enemies hurt the most,” he wrote. “We don’t want He said: “The party didn’t have any information about a grenade outside government headquarters in problem up there to manipulate public opinion,” he war, but when this is imposed on us, we will always the group and their intentions to enter Kumanovo.” Skopje. Nobody was hurt and damage was minimal. was quoted as saying. be there protecting our beloved Albanian nation.” Secret meeting Authorities later confirmed that weapons seized in Goshince were used in Kumanovo. In addition to Ndrecaj, the leader of the gunmen, was a former guns recovered in Pero Ilievski Street, police found fighter of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 65 machine guns and eight rounds of ammunition conflict with Serbia. He was from the western “Someone in our country has prepared a monstrous plan from the same haul buried in woods near the town. Kosovo city of Gjakova/Djakovica. A day after the Goshince attack, the VMRO DPMNE About a month after he was declared dead in to cause an inter-ethnic conflict” announced it would change the date of its quadrennial Kumanovo, media in Kosovo published leaked Former police general Stojance Angelov congress, at which Gruevski was running unopposed recordings purportedly of phone calls between

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 13 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Ndrecaj and a man later identified in court as an by refusing to grant a mandate to Zaev after the ethnic Albanian agent working for Macedonia’s SDSM won enough seats to form a government in Intelligence Agency. alliance with ethnic Albanian parties. In May 2017, Ivanov finally relented. The spy’s name was Shenasi Memedi. The phone recordings published in Kosovo and “I sent you a message but that number of yours picked up by Macedonian media allude to a meeting is not working,” Memedi says in one recording, in Pristina, apparently between intelligence officer apparently made soon after the Goshince hostage Memedi and group leader Ndrecaj. drama. “I saw the reaction yesterday evening.” Memedi: “Tomorrow I will be in Ferizaj [in southern Ndrecaj: “Which one?” Kosovo], with my wife, daughter and sons. I thought Memedi: “The one you wrote on Facebook. That if you are in Pristina, or where are you?” the NLA took over the station.” Ndrecaj: “We are in Pristina.”

Ndrecaj: “And? Did you like it?” Memedi: “I will call you tomorrow then, and we’ll Memedi: “Very good, very good.” meet somewhere for a coffee.” Ndrecaj: “Okay, we will meet in Pristina.” BIRN was unable to contact Memedi, but the senior A wall pockmarked by machine gun fire shows intelligence source claimed he was involved in the ferocity of the firefight in Kumanovo. Photo: Amir Idrizi Memedi: “Say hi to Beg [Rizaj, another leader planning the operation in Kumanovo. killed in Kumanovo].” The senior intelligence officer identified another Ndrecaj: “He says hi back.” man as the “mastermind”: Sinisha Aleksovski, an other indications of involvement of even higher assassination of [US President John F] Kennedy. agent in the Intelligence Agency who also sits on structures.” Point out at least one fact, not rumours, speculation In court, several defendants described at least one President Ivanov’s cabinet as his security advisor. and lies, but a fact that connects the Cabinet of the meeting in Pristina between Ndrecaj and the spy, President Ivanov, who comes from the ranks of the President with your allegations. Memedi. “Everything was under the command of Sinisha VMRO DPMNE and has been head of state since Aleksovski, the president’s counsellor for security, 2009, denied that he or his cabinet had anything to “I want to inform the public, but also to send a They said the purpose was specifically to prepare and Shenasi Memedi on the ground,” he said. do with what happened in Kumanovo. message to all generators of false news: we will not for Kumanovo, and that a meeting was captured on sit with folded hands.” video. One of the alleged gunmen, Andi Krasniqi, Contacted by BIRN, Aleksovski declined to “Neither I as president nor my cabinet were involved spoke of a recording three hours and 17 minutes comment. in any way in the Kumanovo case,” he told BIRN Although Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy long. In a television interview in May 2017, Prime Minister in his written response to questions put to the and the president’s powers are limited, Ivanov is Zaev also linked Aleksovski to the Kumanovo Intelligence Agency. “The president is only a user commander-in-chief of the armed forces and head No such video has emerged. incident. of the information coming from the Intelligence of the national Security Council. He also appoints Agency and other security services.” the director of the Intelligence Agency. “He [Ndrecaj] met Shenasi Memedi and another “Many structures are involved,” he said. “One is guy, Macedonian,” Krasniqi told the court. “I don’t Sinisha Aleksovski. We heard a conversation between Ivanov continued: “From the generation of false Critics see Ivanov as a close partisan of his VMRO know his name, but I know he is from the secret him and a person called ‘NATO Commander’ news, next I expect them to associate me with the DPMNE party. In March 2017, he sparked outrage service.” Mirsad Ndrecaj from Kosovo, a famous criminal Nasuf Bekiri, another defendant, said co-leader and bandit who worked in these areas: Kosovo, Beg Rizaj was also at the meeting. Serbia, Presevo, Kumanovo, Tetovo region, Skopje — and they had communication. “That tape exists and will come out,” he said. “They planned the project, where they should enter, what “Why did they need to be in communication “Neither I as president nor my cabinet were involved they should do.” at all? There are serious indications for Sinisa Aleksovski. I think he is the head of the intelligence in any way in the Kumanovo case” BIRN asked the Intelligence Agency if its officers service that was with Gjorge Ivanov, but there are Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov had met with members of the group in the run-up

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 14 / fellowship.birn.eu.com to the shootout. President Ivanov responded, saying: “Your question is to the wrong address.”

He wrote: “Point the question to officials of international organisations and foreign embassies, state organs and political officials who have had constant communication with the leaders of the group.

“Question them about the threats of assassination, extortion, blackmail, physical violence and why they didn’t report the events, the contacts and the nature of the conversations to the Agency of Intelligence and Ministry of Interior. There are many.”

Former Counterintelligence Agency director Mitevski said there was no way the gunmen could have made it to Tode Mendol Street in Kumanovo with all their weapons without the collusion of the Beg Rizaj, left, and Mirsad Ndrecaj, alleged An Albanian flag hangs among the debris Intelligence Agency. leaders of the Kumanovo gunmen, pose for of a heavily damaged building. a picture posted on Facebook. Photo: Amir Idrizi “When I say that there had to be support of the secret service, I mean that they had the chance to take action near the Kosovo border or in some other open space where civilian casualties would be leaders of the group and the unidentified second Forensic reports shown to BIRN by a defence lawyer eliminated,” he said. spy mentioned by the gunman Krasniqi. indicate that Rizaj and Rexhaj were both killed by a Reporters Roadmap single bullet to the forehead. “According to the prosecution’s information, the Memedi was excused from testifying in court on the group was followed by a drone entering Macedonia grounds of state secrecy after his boss, Intelligence The reports give no idea of the distance the bullets from Kosovo. The conclusion is that the secret Agency Director Zoran Ivanov, sent a letter to the flew before impact. service had secure information about the time and court. Mirsad Ndrecaj and Beg Rizaj are both dead. “In my experience, the estimated distance is always place the group would enter Macedonia.” Mystery surrounds their deaths too. Court written,” defence lawyer Naser Raufi said. “This is Beg Rizaj, left, and Mirsad Ndrecaj, alleged leaders testimony and forensic evidence suggest they may the first report I’ve seen without it.” of the Kumanovo gunmen, pose for a picture posted not have been killed in the fighting as reported. Aleksandar Stankov, director of the Institute on Facebook. Two days after the shootout, Macedonia’s foreign of Forensic Medicine in Skopje, which made ministry said in a letter to the Kosovo embassy in the reports, disagreed that such information Shots to the forehead Pristina Skopje, seen by BIRN, that Ndrecaj and Rizaj were should have been included by default — Without video proof and assuming the meeting captured alive, along with a man named Arben though he said it was easy enough to calculate happened as described, the only people who could Rexhaj who was later counted among the dead. if required. confirm what was discussed were Memedi, the two The ministry subsequently called this a mistake. “The distance of the shooting is not mentioned in the protocol, but the prosecution or lawyers could ask for this information,” he said. “They could have called us and asked for additional answers.”

Skopje Based on the reports and photographs, defence “This closeness occurs only when someone is executed” lawyer Raufi said it was likely the leaders were shot Kumanovo at close range. Defence lawyer Naser Raufi

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 15 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “This kind of similarity can only be achieved from a Even the father of one of the police injured in very near distance, for example one metre,” he said. the shootout believed the conspiracy theories. “Everything was made up by politicians,” he told “There is no possibility that this happened during BIRN, declining to be identified. “Eight policemen fighting, as the prosecution asserts. The indictment got killed for nothing.” says the fighters, or the executed leaders, were not face-to-face with the police at any moment of the Since the siege, destroyed homes have been battle. This closeness occurs only when someone rebuilt with red brick, thanks to a government is executed.” compensation fund.

Defendant Andi Krasniqi said in court that Ndrecaj One still stands in ruins, on the corner of Tode and Rizaj were both alive as the last of the group Mendol and Pero Ilievski. It belongs to Irfan Lutfiu, surrendered at around 9 pm. a barber who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for joining the group after they came to Kumanovo. Another alleged gunmen, Rufki Dogani, said he saw Some hope to leave it untouched as a reminder of them alive in a police station after the shootout. the carnage.

Conspiracy theories “It was so terrifying,” said Imam Eljesa Mahmudi. Perhaps not surprisingly, relatives of the accused “We’ll never forget what happened. This was a gunmen see them as heroes who went to Macedonia scenario that somebody prepared … Thanks to to fight for the rights of marginalised ethnic Allah there were no civilian casualties.” Albanians, only to be betrayed by the authorities Many people in Kumanovo and across the country who enticed them there. now pin their hopes on an international investigation Fadil Elshani, the father of defendant Bajram Elshani, to settle once and for all what led to the shootout. In came to Skopje in July 2017 to attend the trial. September 2017, Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski said he would ask for such an enquiry. “Our sons came for patriotic reasons,” he said. “If they came here for terrorism, they would have killed “This would help the public find out the truth in children, old men or women.” a proper way,” he said. “It would be a procedure in which all citizens can believe”. Ylber Ndrecaj, the brother of the group’s leader, Mirsad, spoke to BIRN in Pristina after an event Benjamin Arifi is a Macedonian television journalist commemorating the two-year anniversary of the working as a news editor for TV SHENJA in Skopje. siege. This article was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, supported “They didn’t go there on their own,” he said. by the ERSTE Foundation and Open Society “This case was approved by many politicians from Foundations, in cooperation with the Balkan Macedonia. And I’m telling you this based on very Investigative Reporting Network. secure sources, not just rumours.”

Ethnic Albanians are not the only ones who think the siege was somehow orchestrated by Macedonian officials. Many non-Albanian residents of Kumanovo are cynical too.

“They are people who got money to come to Kumanovo and provoke incidents, with the intention of causing a war in Macedonia,” said one man in Skopje’s main square.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 16 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Dimitar Iliev Svilengrad, , Lisbon

Drugs are vanishing from Bulgarian pharmacies as traders scoop them up to sell overseas. Photo: Iliana Kirilova

adia Miteva has artificial knees and hips. Without it, she is in agony. Parallel Profits: Wire runs along her upper vertebrae to “The pain tears you from inside,” Miteva, 44, said. Nstabilise her neck bones. When she speaks, “Sometimes you just want to rip off your skin.” she presses a red button on a tube in her throat, installed during recent vocal cord surgery. Twice this year, supply problems meant she was Bulgaria’s Medical unable to get RoActemra at the nearest pharmacy “It’s collateral damage from the rheumatic disease,” that stocks it, an 80-kilometre bus ride away in the she said. provincial town of Haskovo. Drug Dealers For Miteva, who runs a community centre in the It normally takes 24 hours for the pharmacy to get southern Bulgarian village of Sladun, near the hold of the drug. But for 43 days in the spring and Lax controls over the ‘parallel trade’ of expensive town of Svilengrad, only one thing keeps her severe 36 days in late summer, the orders did not come pharmaceuticals makes Bulgaria’s health care rheumatoid arthritis at bay: a weekly shot of an through. All she could do was wait by the phone system ripe for plunder. Patients are the losers. immunosuppressive drug called RoActemra. and endure.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 17 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Miteva was not the only one cut off from treatment. From unscrupulous pharmacists to criminals who According to the Association of Rheumatic Illnesses, stalk online support groups to purchase drugs, BIRN ‘We need the state to regulate trade in a proportional RoActemra shortages hit pharmacies in other uncovered thriving underground activity to siphon way to protect our health needs’ southern towns too, including Dimitrovgrad, Stara pharmaceuticals from the healthcare system. Zagora, Kazanlak and Panagyurishte. Atanas Koundourdjiev, former deputy minister of health Meanwhile, health officials say some hospitals may be “Some people constantly have trouble finding falsifying data to inflate the amount of drugs needed the medicine,” said Boryana Boteva, president of for expensive cancer treatments, creating a surplus import around 40 drugs from countries where prices wide parallel market worth around five billion euros the association that supports 30,000 sufferers of of vials of precious medicine that can then be resold. are cheaper including Romania, Greece, Hungary, a year, according to the latest sector analysis by Swiss rheumatic diseases across Bulgaria. Authorities say drugs pilfered through such scams Italy, Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania. consultants Birgli, done in 2013. RoActemra is just one of dozens of drugs that health are almost certainly being re-sold abroad. “It helps the process of regulating prices in the That is no surprise given that a pack of RoActemra experts say are disappearing from pharmacy shelves ‘Exporters are mocking us’ EU market for original pharmaceutical products,” 162 mg costs the German healthcare system 1,782 in Bulgaria as middlemen scoop them up to sell in said Daniela Daritkova, chief of the Bulgarian euros, almost 70 per cent more than in Bulgaria. other EU countries at a profit. Champions of parallel trade see it as a way for parliament’s health commission. healthcare systems to bring down costs. In Germany, While parallel exports account for 10 per cent of Such distributors are drug dealers of an exclusive pharmacies are legally required to source at least five Dimitar Petrov, deputy director of the National activity in Bulgaria’s pharmaceutical market, certain kind. They specialise in patented pharmaceuticals, per cent of their stocks through parallel imports. Health Insurance Fund, NHIF, put the value of medicines are in such demand that 50 per cent of exploiting price differences across borders. Under Bulgaria’s legal parallel drugs market at around 153 stocks are shipped abroad, according to internal health EU rules on the free movement of goods and services, It is not only richer countries that benefit. In Bulgaria, million euros in 2016. ministry analysis cited by a ministry spokesman. it is all perfectly legal. three distributors are authorised by the BDA to Germany is the top target for exporters in a legal EU- RoActemra is one of those drugs, the spokesman Known as “parallel trading”, this is how it works. told BIRN. Authorised distributors import medicines from Asked about Nadia Miteva’s missing RoActemra, multinational drugmakers to countries such as BDA chief secretary Svetlin Spirov said: “We can’t Bulgaria, Greece or Portugal where they are priced be sure if the same vials went somewhere in parallel relatively cheaply in line with benchmarks used by trade. For one batch number, there might be 100,000 national authorities. vials. So a single vial is untraceable. This would be They then export some of the pharmaceuticals solved if every pack had a data matrix code.” — typically around 10 per cent — to countries Transparency advocates see a real-time tracking like Germany, Britain or the Netherlands, where system as the key to pre-empting shortages and medicines cost much more. stamping out illicit trade in Bulgaria. They also want Distributors repackage the drugs with labelling in greater powers for authorities to control exports. the language of the new market, sell them at the “We need the state to regulate trade in a proportional higher prices and pocket the difference. way to protect our health needs,” said Atanas More than 320 distributors are authorised to conduct Koundourdjiev, former deputy minister of health. parallel trade by the Bulgarian Drug Agency, BDA. Legislation introduced in 2014 allowed the BDA While many countries have measures to prevent to block any parallel exports it saw as problematic, shortages in drug stocks at home because of parallel but the constitutional court decided that the law traders exporting to other EU states, Bulgaria has some contravened EU principles of freedom of commerce. of the laxest controls in Europe, health experts say. A former senior health ministry official who Further disruption happens in the shadows of declined to be identified said the ruling came after Bulgaria’s parallel drugs market as fraud and theft lobbying from distributors. Nadia Miteva stands outside a hospital in the take a bite out of supplies, an investigation by the southern Bulgarian city of . A shortage Distributors are still legally required to notify the BDA Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, of drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis left of their intention to export drugs, a month before her in agony earlier this year. reveals. Photo: Dimitar Iliev they do so, but all the agency can do is monitor flows.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 18/ fellowship.birn.eu.com And even that is difficult given the sheer volume of notifications clogging up the system. Bribes and Incentives

“We’re helpless,” said the BDA’s Spirov. “The Sources from Bulgaria’s health increase their market penetration, so sales of drugs in their declarations to to re-export,” one source said. “Of exporters are just mocking us.” ministry, National Health Insurance they team up with distributors to bribe independent consultants providing those 50 [sold abroad], 30 per cent Fund and hospitals independently doctors to prescribe their medicines market analysis. Meanwhile, they divert of the profits flow back to designated Between July 2016 and July 2017, distributors described a scam in which vendors are instead of rival products. some of the profits from parallel trade doctors [as bribes].” informed the BDA of their intention to export 78,220 said to collude with distributors and to a secret pot of money. Distributors are happy to foot the bill The result is that more drugs are being packs of RoActemra 162 mg. doctors to boost sales of medicines for these bribes because they see it as The local agents complete the deception re-exported in reality than on paper, using profits from parallel trade. That number dwarfs the 6,000 packs imported to a chance to drum up more business by reporting the falsified domestic sales sometimes leading to shortages. Bulgaria from Roche, the manufacturer of the drug, According to the sources, who declined with the drug producers and get on back to their head offices, so the drug “Yes, I’ve heard of such schemes,” said during the same period, according to data from the to be identified, this is how it works. their lists of preferred distributors. producers are none the wiser. drugmaker. Decho Dechev, head of the St Ivan Some unscrupulous local agents for To free up money for the backhanders, “For example, out of 100 packs Rilsky Hospital in Sofia, which is not Boryana Marinkova, CEO of the Bulgarian Association international drugmakers are keen to the distributors exaggerate domestic imported to Bulgaria, 50 might go implicated in any wrongdoing. for Medicines Parallel Trade Development, an industry body, said the discrepancy was due to the fact that distributors file separate notifications of BDA sharper teeth. In addition to allowing the ‘Illegal trade all around’ BIRN found plenty of evidence of illegal sales to intent to export to multiple EU countries for any agency to ban exports under certain circumstances, distributors by pharmacies. Illicit parallel trade in medicines in Bulgaria is given drug, whether or not they actually send them. amendments to the law would bring penalties for worth around 50 million euros a year, NHIF deputy Invoice data from the Revenue Agency obtained by wrongdoing into line with EU standards. “These 78,000 applications are only the technical director Petrov said. BIRN showed that six distributors bought medicines sums of numerous intentions,” she said. “This Because the NHIF covers the cost of prescription worth 2.2 million euros from pharmacies between Fines for flouting the law are 1,500 euros for a first figure can’t be seen as actual exports at all.” medicines, it is illegal for pharmacies or individuals April and August 2015. offence and 2,500 euros thereafter. That compares to sell drugs back to distributors. New legislation before parliament would give the with respective fines of 30,000 euros and 50,000 Although the sales were against the law, the pharmacies euros in Portugal. still declared income from the transactions to tax authorities, suggesting they may be more afraid of the Under the new legislation, pharmacies could Revenue Agency than they are of the BDA. be fined up to 25,000 euros for selling drugs to distributors while parallel traders could be fined According to the invoice data, a company called 50,000 euros for illegal exports. Falcons 2000, which is registered in the tiny western town of Slivnitsa and owns several small However, the Bulgarian Association for Medicines pharmacies, sold 368,000 euros of medicines to a Parallel Trade Development said the new legislation distributor called Chirita. was unnecessary. Falcons 2000 declined to comment. “The existing legal framework provides sufficient mechanisms and tools for control,” CEO Marinkova Asked about the illegal purchases, Chirita owner said. Amir Mohamed confirmed the transactions and justified them on the grounds that they made sound She urged the health ministry, tax authorities and business sense. BDA to step up enforcement of existing laws through regular audits of wholesalers and pharmacies. “Pharmacies can buy those medicines straight from a producer on promotion, with a discount of up to 30 Asked about the problem of drug shortages caused per cent,” Chirita owner Amir Mohamed told BIRN. by parallel trade, Marinkova said: “The law states “A store-to-store [manufacturer-to-distributor] deal clearly that all wholesalers are obliged to cover local couldn’t get such a low price.” market demand first and only after covering the national needs can they export the excess quantities A company called HG-Hristo Jelev, which owns a A customer pays for medicine at a pharmacy in Sofia. of medicinal products.” pharmacy in the mountainous town of Kotel in Photo: Iliana Kirilova

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 19/ fellowship.birn.eu.com central Bulgaria, sold 114,000 euros of drugs to Illegal trading in pharmaceuticals is all over the distributor MN 2011, registered in Asenovgrad, internet too. Classified ad sites, health forums and according to the Revenue Agency data. social media are teeming with announcements enticing patients with prescriptions for sought- Pharmacy owner Hristo Jelev acknowledged that the after drugs to sell their medicines. sales were against the law but said that the fact he paid taxes on them mitigated any wrongdoing. Kiril Yordanov, the author of one such post, said he would pay 990 euros for a medication called Humira “I don’t have working capital and those payments are and other treatments for rheumatoid arthritis. advance financing for future supplies,” he told BIRN. Humira usually costs 820 euros in Bulgaria and Distributor MN 2011 declined to comment. 1,878 euros in Germany. In April, BIRN called him and pretended to be interested in selling a pack of a biopharmaceutical called Enbrel. ‘The National Health Insurance Yordanov sounded business-like. He spoke of batch numbers and expiry dates. He stressed the importance Fund can’t cope with the of new-looking packaging without any blemishes. pharma mafia’ BIRN phoned him again in mid-July, this time with no pretence, to ask why he was buying up drugs. Ilko Semerdjiev, former Health Minister “I buy the medicines for myself because I don’t fit the criteria of the commission,” Yordanov said, Staff at the St George Hospital in Plovdiv measure out expensive cancer medications. The BDA has little power to stop illicit transactions. referring to the panel of medical experts who approve Photo: Dimitar Iliev expensive treatments for patients like Nadia Miteva. “In 2016, the agency carried out around 40 checks in pharmacies, all of them planned in advance, none in BIRN discovered that Yordanov’s wife, Yordanka response to real-time alerts,” former deputy health Ilieva Barzakova-Yordanova, is a pharmacist listed in Cancer treatments are among the most expensive Uni Hospital was not implicated in any wrongdoing. medicines. They account for 50 per cent of spending by minister Koundourdjiev said. the register of the Plovdiv branch of the Bulgarian To understand what the experts were up to, it is Pharmaceutical Union. the NHIF, or around 153 million euros last year. The purpose of such checks was to see if pharmacies important to know that doctors decide how much have the correct documentation for the medicines In 2015 and 2016, she worked for a distributor, Agilis That is more than five times the fund’s spending on of a chemotherapy drug to prescribe based on a they stock, he said. Pharma in Plovdiv, which exported 30.8 million euros of cancer drugs in 2000, according to Jeni Adarska, head patient’s body weight. The heavier the patient, the drugs to EU countries between January 2015 and May of the Association of Patients with Oncology Diseases. more treatment is called for. But industry insiders say many drug sales to 2017, according to National Revenue Agency figures. distributors are done completely under-the-table, The increase reflects a rise in cancer rates worldwide The results from the fund’s spot checks were eye- with no paper trails. A question of weight — but the NHIF suspects it is also fuelled by thefts opening. at hospitals. “There are hospitals where the average weight of “There is no need even to look at invoices,” said In 2017, she started working for Mylan NV, a global patients is 108-110 kilograms,” said Petrov. the marketing director of one of Bulgaria’s biggest pharmaceutical company that makes and distributes One senior source at the fund said at least eight distributors, who declined to be identified. “The generic and patented drugs. hospitals were thought to be doctoring patient data That compares with an average weight for men illegal trade is all around us.” to order more drugs than required, presumably to and of 72.5 kilograms in 2016, BIRN contacted Barzakova-Yordanova and asked sell the excess amounts to parallel traders. according to the National Statistical Institute. He said organised criminals were part of the racket, if her husband had supplied medicines procured buying drugs without prescriptions from pharmacies through internet sales for export via Agilis In early 2017, the NHIF started spot checks at The assumption was that doctors must be misstating and then selling them straight to distributors. Pharma, Mylan or other distributors. She declined oncology departments. patient weights to justify excessive orders, Petrov to comment. said. Once correct doses are measured out, the For example, certain pharmacy chains in Sofia and “The fund experts entered like a police squad and surplus amounts can be quietly set aside. the southern city of Plovdiv regularly give 15 per cent Agilis Pharma and Mylan also declined to comment started to measure the weight of each oncological discounts to tough-looking “smart guys” who come in when asked if Barzakova-Yordanova had supplied patient,” said Lucia Dobreva, former chief of Uni Only one person has been convicted of stealing with handwritten lists of medicines, he said. drugs for export or resale. Hospital, a sleek new private hospital in Panagyurishte. oncology medicine from a hospital.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 20 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Petia Kocheva, chief pharmacist at Marko Markov hospital in the Black Sea city of Varna, was found Safeguards protective clothing measured out doses guilty last year of purloining 39 vials of Herceptin, of cancer treatments into vials, careful not to waste a single grain as they used to treat breast cancer, in a case the health in Portugal dissolved powders into liquid under an minister at the time, Petar Moskov, described as With relatively low drug prices, Portugal extractor hood. “morally much lower than drug trafficking”. is a major parallel exporter of patented medications, including cancer drugs. Cameras monitored the space inside A Varna court sentenced her to four-and-a-half But the government has put in place and outside the storage facility, where years in prison but a regional court subsequently robust measures to monitor stocks and two enormous refrigerators kept suspended her sentence. prevent shortages. chemotherapy drugs under strict temperature control: 2-8 degrees Celsius. The Varna court ruled that she simply took the vials, A real-time electronic tracking system worth 22,000 euros, from the hospital pharmacy. The helps the health ministry’s agency for Hospitals in Portugal procure drugs controlling drug supplies, INFARMED, keep through a transparent tender process. prosecution said Kocheva knew the oncology department A pharmacist prepares vials of chemotherapy drugs tabs on the whereabouts of medicines had undocumented vials of the drug in their refrigerator at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon. along every stage of their journey from Photo: Dimitar Iliev “I buy and distribute to patients — so she thought the crime would go unnoticed. producer to patient. oncology medicines worth 36 million distributor to manufacturer. This makes have strict procedures to make sure euros yearly,” Gouveia said. The prosecution called a pathologist, Dobrinka A database called the Information System it almost impossible for medicines to be every milligram of precious cancer Radoinova, for expert opinion on the matter of the for Health Technology Assessment, In Bulgaria, tendering is done by diverted for illicit parallel trade. medication is accounted for. alleged extra vials. SIATS, provides instant notification of any distributors and there is no cap on how shortages, allowing authorities to suspend Electronic tracking systems led to a At the Portuguese Institute of Oncology, much money can be allocated by the The pathologist analysed the medical history of 75 exports to other EU countries if local needs year-on-year fall in drug shortages of the pharmaceutical department houses National Health Insurance Fund, NHIF, breast cancer patients at the hospital, comparing are threatened. almost 15 per cent in 2016, according around three million euros worth which reimburses distributors for 100 how much Herceptin was actually administered to Humberto Martins, one of the of cancer medications, according to per cent of the price of oncological drugs. Meanwhile, an information-sharing with amounts paid for by the NHIF. directors of the National Association of department chief Antonio Gouveia. system called Via Verde [Green Road] Health experts say this makes cancer Pharmacies in Portugal. She concluded that there was a big discrepancy lets users connect the dots electronically In a state-of-the-art dispensary, medicines especially tempting for between the two — enough to fill about 76 vials of from prescription to pharmacy order to Hospital oncology departments also pharmacists wearing gloves, masks and parallel traders. Herceptin, worth some 42,700 euros. Contacted by BIRN, Vasil Popov, director of oncology at the Mark Markov hospital, denied any wrongdoing “One of the reasons for overspending on medicines Reporters Roadmap morphine, they only stole oncology medications, on the part of his department. is their re-export,” Neicheva said, according to a local media reported. transcript of the meeting published by the NHIF. Phoenix CEO Yulian Nedelchev declined to Statistical oddities are cause for alarm for health “That’s the reason, and we all know it. If ‘healthy’ comment on the theft but the BDA told BIRN the officials in Bulgaria trying to protect the public parallel trade is in the region of up to 10 per cent, in stolen medications were worth 600,000 euros. purse from fraud. Bulgaria it is 50 per cent.” Ilko Semerdjiev, who had a brief stint as health “There are two possibilities,” BDA chief secretary In October, three masked thieves broke into minister between January and March this year, put Spirov said. “One is that the medicines went to a warehouse in Sofia belonging to German it harshly in a post on Facebook in July. parallel trade, but it’s unlikely that a hospital pharmaceutical distributor Phoenix. Despite in the EU would purchase them like that. The “The NHIF can’t cope with the pharma mafia,” he a selection of drugs to choose from including other is that they went to Bulgarian hospitals and wrote. “Overspending on reimbursed medicine is just Sofia were exchanged for medicines with older batch one part of it. The other is the re-export abroad. Thus Lisbon numbers, which could then be re-exported.” we have double and triple profits — from medicines paid for by the state and profitable reselling in the EU.” In February, BDA chief Asena Stoimenova Deputy Health Minister Lidia Neicheva said in a ‘Morally much lower described the insidious effects of parallel trade meeting of the supervisory board of the NHIF in late than drug trafficking’ before the parliamentary health commission. October that parallel trade was costing the state dearly “Bulgaria is not the first country to face the problem as the fund scrambled to make up shortages. Petar Moskov, former Health Minister of shortages, but is the last to solve it,” she said.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 21 / Svilengrad fellowship.birn.eu.com Ivan Cadjenovic Podgorica, Virpazar, Shkoder

Snow-capped peaks loom over the waters of Lake Skadar along the Montenegrin- Albanian border. Photo: Darko Vuckovic

ome do it the easy way on Lake Skadar, poking In a flat-bottomed boat under the cover of darkness, electrodes into the water to zap carp and eels he shines a torch into the shallows where carp nestle Lawless Lake: Swith 110 volts from a transformer hooked among the reeds. When he spots one, he hurls a up to a car battery. As the stunned fish bob to the three-pronged harpoon. He rarely misses and can Ex-Smugglers Find surface, they scoop them into the boat. skewer more than 100 in a night. Others unfurl nets and stake them to the muddy “If I couldn’t kill a fish or two, I’d have to kill someone,” bottom. Tell-tale rows of sticks dot the shorelines the burly poacher told the Balkan Investigative New Fish to Fry straddling Montenegro’s southern border with Reporting Network, BIRN, with a smile. Albania. Declining to be identified, the 45-year-old father of On the biggest lake in the Balkans, rangers say But for one Montenegrin poacher on the biggest three explained how his family has spearfished for it is easier to catch a drug trafficker than a lake in the Balkans, the old ways are best. What used generations in the lakeside Zeta region just south poacher amid warnings of ecological disaster. to be done with lanterns is today done by flashlight. of Podgorica.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 22 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Harpoons are strictly illegal on Lake Skadar. So 1993 under the provisions of the Law on National is fishing with electricity, spearguns or dynamite. Parks and Law on Nature Protection. And all means of fishing, including rods and nets, But the task of thwarting poachers falls to just 13 are outlawed during the spawning season between rangers working for the NPCG’s National Park mid-March and mid-May. Protection Service Department, run by Ivanovic. Not that the ban deters the poachers. At any one time, only four gamekeepers are out on Locals who live in the national park on the the 600-square-kilometre lake. Montenegrin side of the lake joke that at night “There are as many as 10 Viber [mobile messaging the area becomes a virtual Las Vegas of twinkling application] groups dedicated to monitoring and flashlights. reporting every step we make,” Ivanovic said, While poachers risk fines of up to 20,000 euros and lamenting his team’s outdated boats and equipment. three years in jail, few are ever prosecuted. “We need night binoculars. And above all, we need The poacher from Zeta said rangers had caught to be armed.” him several times and let him go. While gamekeepers are not allowed to carry weapons, there is no shortage of guns in a region synonymous “They’re mostly people from this area,” he said. with arms-smuggling during Yugoslavia’s dying “Sometimes, some of them join me.” days in the 1990s. Conservationists warn of ecological disaster in As war and sanctions compounded hyperinflation one of Europe’s last freshwater wildernesses as in Serbia and Montenegro, the last two republics of poachers stun, spear, hook and net millions of euros Yugoslavia after its breakup in 1992, the gunrunners worth of fish each year with almost total impunity. of Lake Skadar found it profitable to smuggle Much of the haul is sold in the nearby markets of organised nature of poaching and the corruption — the country has robust laws for protecting the other commodities across the lake from Albania: Podgorica and the lakeside Albanian city of Shkoder, that allows it to flourish. environment, regulating fishing and managing its cigarettes, fuel, clothes and drugs. where Lake Skadar carp is considered a delicacy. national parks. In a region known as a major smuggling route This continued until the fall of Serbian strongman “Most people have this vision of Lake Skadar as a during Yugoslavia’s violent breakup in the 1990s, ‘We need to be armed’ Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, after which giant ATM machine in which instead of entering a they say tech-savvy criminals find it pays more to smugglers started turning to poaching, locals and PIN code, they can steal as much fish as they like,” catch fish than to traffic guns or narcotics. It is also Two international treaties also protect Lake Skadar: conservationists say. the Ramsar Convention on safeguarding wetlands said Danilo Mrdak, an ichthyologist and professor easier to get away with. By the time Montenegro declared independence of biology at the University of Montenegro in and the Council of Europe’s Bern Convention on “It’s more difficult to catch a poacher on Lake in 2006, illegal fishing was a fully fledged criminal Podgorica. nature conservation. Skadar than to arrest a drug dealer,” said Drazen industry. While local fishermen have long seen the lake as Ivanovic, the chief ranger in charge of policing the Montenegro’s side of the lake — two-thirds of Ivanovic estimates that poachers plunder between a birthright to be exploited, environmentalists say Montenegrin side of the lake, which is a protected the water — is managed by the Public Enterprise seven and nine million euros worth of fish from the the biggest threat to fish stocks is the increasingly national park. National Parks of Montenegro, NPCG, set up in lake each year in Montenegro. “With technology, everyone is connected and information spreads around the lake at lightspeed. It’s taken on the form of organised crime. Unfortunately, we’re hardly able to scratch the surface because we’re limited by resources, ‘If I couldn’t kill a fish or two, equipment and men.” ‘There are as many as 10 Viber groups dedicated

I’d have to kill someone’ Principles of conservation are enshrined in to monitoring and reporting every step we make’ A Montenegrin poacher Montenegro’s constitution and — on paper at least Drazen Ivanovic, chief ranger for the Public Enterprise National Parks of Montenegro

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 23 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “I’m not happy with the number of reports filed for Poachers from tightly knit communities in the Zeta criminal proceedings or the quantity of poaching region described a thriving trade that relies on equipment confiscated,” he said. “But bearing in trusted middlemen to make the 20-minute drive mind how few people I can rely on, I can’t complain.” between the lake and Podgorica while the fish are still flapping. In the first six months of 2017, authorities pressed criminal charges against 17 people after rangers One said a skilled poacher could earn 1,000 euros a confiscated equipment including a transformer, a month through electrofishing. The average monthly shotgun, two boats and three electrodes, the NPCG said. salary in Montenegro is around 500 euros.

The public company also initiated misdemeanour “I’ve been using the same secure dealer for 10 proceedings against 20 people after confiscating 42 years,” he said. “He probably sells to restaurants nets, three harpoons and a number of lamps and and market vendors. He pays the best.” gas containers. The Fishing and Agriculture Inspectorate, part of Such actions bring little comfort to conservationists the agriculture ministry, told BIRN in July it was worried about declining fish stocks. monitoring markets and restaurants for illegal fish sales. But it said it had received no reports of A report published in October by Germany’s criminal activity. international development agency, GIZ, highlighted a number of threats to fish protected under national Out on Lake Skadar, there was plenty of evidence of and European conservation legislation. lawbreaking.

“Economic species such as carp or bleak are One chilly night in May, during the fishing ban, two exploited haphazardly and sometimes illegally with Montenegrin ichthyologist Danilo Mrdak. rangers were on a midnight patrol near the mouth of little if any knowledge on the status of stocks and Photo: Mladen Ivanovic the river Moraca, dragging illegal nets out of the water. maximum sustainable yields,” the report said. Some nets were longer than 100 metres and full of Mrdak, the ichthyologist from the Faculty of Natural carp. One net got tangled in the speedboat motor; it Sciences and Mathematics at the University of for professional fishermen, which indicates that the from the northern mountains of Montenegro via the took an hour to cut it free with a razor. Montenegro, estimates that poaching accounts for species is under high pressure and therefore there’s river Moraca. They said they had little hope of catching poachers 60 per cent of all fishing activity on Lake Skadar. little chance for a fish to survive long enough to Outside Podgorica’s biggest indoor market, BIRN red-handed since criminals usually slip behind reed grow before being caught,” he said. In his view, electrofishing is the biggest enemy of saw vendors illegally selling carp from the back of beds in shallow water inaccessible to the rangers’ the 30 indigenous and more than a dozen non- Thriving market trucks during the height of the spawning season. bigger boats at the first sound of their engines. native fish species that live there. “Indirect proof of this is the extremely high price Still alive in plastic bags, some with harpoon Sometimes gamekeepers can only look on helplessly In 2013, he led a study that found the lake’s population for large carp specimens.” wounds, the fish cost around five euros a kilogram, as poachers, just metres away, taunt them from flat- of bleak had fallen by 90 per cent due to overfishing. at least double the price at other times of the year bottomed fibreglass boats. Locals say the tastiness of Lake Skadar carp comes when fishing is legal. Big carp can go for as much He lobbied for a year-round ban on catching the from the purity of the water flowing into the lake as 100 euros. Even if they catch them, there is often little they small, silver fish, to allow stocks to recover. Last can do. year, the NPCG introduced a moratorium on bleak fishing, although ichthyologists will not know until “They wear miners’ helmets with flashlights and next winter if it has worked. hoods so we can’t recognise them, and they never carry any personal documents so we can’t verify In the meantime, Mrdak wants a year-round ban their identities,” said Radonja Maras, a garrulous for carp. ‘They never carry any personal documents ranger several months into the job.

“Over the last few years, we’ve observed that larger so we can’t verify their identities’ On a daytime trip in a hired boat, BIRN saw carp specimens are becoming extremely rare, even Montenegrin ranger Radonja Maras poachers brazenly defy the fishing ban around

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 24 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “Once they took a harpoon and some fishing nets away from my father, but they soon returned everything,” he said. “It’s dangerous only when a new gamekeeper comes along. But they lose the will to do their job very soon, after their first paycheque.”

Rangers said they earned between 200 and 300 euros a month.

In 2013, the National Park Protection Service Department made headlines after it emerged that a ranger had submitted an internal report complaining that three colleagues had stopped him from confiscating a generator used for electrofishing.

According to the memo seen by BIRN, the reason the rangers gave was that the owners of the generator were working for a powerful local businessman.

None of the three rangers lost their jobs or were suspended, though one had his salary docked by 20 per cent for two months as punishment, A poacher takes to Lake Skadar as night falls. according to the NPCG. A traditional Lake Skadar boat is seen on the Photo: Darko Vuckovic shore of the Albanian side of the lake. Ivanovic, who took over as head of the department Photo: Mladen Ivanovic in 2016, is one of the few rangers not from the area. He comes from the Kuci region near the Grmozur island, the site of a former prison on governmental organisation devoted to safeguarding Albanian border northeast of Podgorica and now said it would take at least 30 well-trained rangers to the northwest part of the lake near the town of fish stocks in Lake Skadar. lives in the capital. provide 24-hour protection on the lake. Virpazar. The NPCG said that while it had not received “It’s usually based on nepotism or bribe-taking, Asked about allegations of corruption among th reports of corruption among rangers, it recognised In sight of ruins of the 19 -Century jail nicknamed and often they are themselves the poachers.” gamekeepers, he neither confirmed nor denied the the need for more gamekeepers and would soon be the Montenegrin Alcatraz, they were setting nets accusations but said he needed younger staff from Radenovic and fellow anglers from the Carp hiring two more. and casting rods. outside the region who had a better understanding Protect Team keep watch over the lake and inform of ecological matters. It also plans to upgrade rangers’ equipment, including On the nearby Gostilj river, poachers were throwing authorities whenever they see electrofishing. electrodes into the reed-filled water and scooping boats, GPS devices, binoculars and cameras, the “My level of trust is such that I have to use the same NPCG’s communications office said in an email. up fish after fish. A long-time poacher told BIRN he had heard of two or three men to cover the entire protected area, illegal fishermen paying bribes to rangers or giving In early November, police arrested an alleged poacher When a rangers’ boat appeared in the distance, all so they have to work overtime,” he said. them a percentage of their sales — though he after a tip-off. They said they caught 34-year-old activity stopped. claimed never to have done it himself because he Ivanovic blamed officials at the NPCG for not Milorad Maras with a transformer, batteries, an knows most gamekeepers personally. Corruption allegations grasping the challenges facing his department and electrode and a quantity of fish in his boat. They charged him with illegal fishing, which he denies. The sight of the gamekeepers is not always a deterrent. According to activists and local fishermen It turned out the man was the son of long-time interviewed by BIRN, the guardians of Lake Skadar ranger Milenko Maras, who had been on patrol on are sometimes part of the problem. ‘The rangers are partly responsible the same part of the lake shortly before the arrest. “The rangers are partly responsible for high rates Maras said he had not seen any illegal activity and of poaching,” said Zeljko Radenovic, an angler for high rates of poaching’ that his son must have been “framed”, though he and activist at the Carp Protect Team, a non- Goran Radenovic, angler and ecological activist did not say by whom.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 25 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The NPCG said it would launch an investigation. ‘It would be like letting the thief Across the border in Albania, Lake Skadar is managed by the Organisation for the Management enter freely into our house’ of Fishing in Lake Skadar, OMP. Arjan Cinari, head of the Organisation for the Management of Fishing in Lake Skadar in Albania Scandal has dogged the public company since BIRN reported allegations in 2014 that the OMP was running a protection racket for poachers who fish with electricity. “I found out that in Montenegro they use electrical part of EU negotiations dealing with the environment. ‘Paradigm of society’ power for poaching and transformers that can release 800 to 1,000 volts,” he said. “The new legislation will improve on the current Arjan Cinari, head of the OMP, has always denied legal framework, expand the powers of rangers wrongdoing. He added that his rangers often see flashlights and to protect fish, reform penal policy and introduce evidence of electrofishing near Pothum, a Montenegrin modern technology when it comes to the issue of Speaking outside his office in Shkoder, with border village on the northeast part of the lake. permits and collection and processing of data for panoramic views of the lake behind him, he freshwater fishing,” said Deniz Frljukcic, an advisor reiterated that he and his men had nothing to do Denik Ulqini, a biologist at the University of at the ministry’s Directorate for Fisheries. with illegal fishing or bribe-taking. Shkoder, said poaching blighted both sides of the border equally. Jovana Janjusevic, a member of an alliance of “This has never happened,” he said. “It would be environmental groups known as Coalition 27, like letting the thief enter freely into our house.” “I think we must produce assessments of fish described illegal fishing as “a burning issue in the populations for the entire lake and prompt the Cinari said it had been an uphill struggle to change area of environmental protection where we haven’t [Albanian] state to get involved in protecting the attitudes towards poaching among locals when he noted any significant and systematic progress”. lake,” Ulqini said. took the job a decade ago, but now most illegal fishing “Gamekeeper services need to be adequately took place on the Montenegrin side of the border. Montenegrin head ranger Ivanovic also disputed equipped and inspections should be strengthened Cinari’s claim that the Albanian side had fewer in terms of people and prevention,” she said. Reporters Roadmap problems. For ichthyologist Mrdak, it all comes down to “We keep seeing night-fishing activity, poaching, political will in a country plagued by corruption and flashlights, generators, all on their side,” he said. abuse of power. “Very often their poachers cross illegally into our waters and they mostly fish here, on our side.” “This is the paradigm of our society as a whole,” he said. “You can’t expect this to be an exception in a The NPCG and OMP have no agreements for society where so many things go wrong.” joint management of Lake Skadar, and the two organisations have only met twice since the He said too many people had their heads in the sand Albanian government transferred stewardship when it came to protecting one of the jewels of the of the lake to the OMP in 2014. Balkans. Standing at a lookout beside the lake, he

Virpazar pointed at the water and adopted a sarcastic tone. Podgorica Both Albania and Montenegro are candidates for joining the European Union, and “If you look around, you can see for yourself the conservationists hope environmental issues dolphins are jumping high and everything is just will take centre stage during accession perfect,” he said. “There are more fish swimming negotiations. in the lake than you can imagine.” Shkoder In Montenegro, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is working on amendments to laws on freshwater fishing ahead of talks on Chapter 27, the

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 26 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Milos Stanic Komletinci, Novi Becej, Budapest

Jelena Terzin, a resident of the Serbian town of Kikinda, fills a glass with yellowish water. Photo: Nenad Mihajlovic

hey always knew there was something funny But that started to change in 2014 after an about the water. information-technology engineer named Mirko Toxic Taps: Matijasevic stumbled across analysis of water TIn Komletinci, a village in eastern Croatia samples on the website of the regional public a stone’s throw from the Serbian border, it gurgles water utility in the nearby city of Vinkovci. Arsenic in Water from the tap with a whiff of ammonia. Its colour varies from pale yellow to reddish brown. It tastes The test results showed arsenic levels 13 times the like rust. legal limit. Stirs Cancer Fears However unpalatable, few people thought to doubt Matijasevic, 55, had no idea at the time that its safety. For 28 years, since the construction arsenic in groundwater is a proven carcinogen, Almost a million people in Serbia, Croatia and Hungary of a local plant to supply homes with treated according to the World Health Organization, are exposed to carcinogenic drinking water with arsenic groundwater, villagers have been holding their WHO. People who are exposed to it over many levels above the legal limit, a BIRN investigation reveals. noses and drinking it. years have a greater chance of getting skin, lung

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 27 / fellowship.birn.eu.com and urinary tract cancers, numerous studies EU law and adopted by many non-EU countries show. including Serbia.

But he had read enough murder mysteries to know But BIRN discovered dozens of cities, towns and arsenic is a poison. villages where arsenic levels dwarf that amount, despite national commitments to clean up water “I think money is the reason the local government supplies. Readings in one Serbian town, Novi Becej, isn’t talking about this analysis, since this water reached 27 times the legal limit. that is unfit for drinking shouldn’t be sold for these ‘’ [expensive] prices,” he wrote on his blog Serbia’s autonomous Vojvodina province has by far about daily happenings in Komletinci, where a the biggest problem, with more than 630,000 people tamburitza folk concert usually qualifies as big news. reliant on carcinogenic tap water.

He uploaded a screengrab of the analysis and Around 173,000 people in Croatia and 100,000 pressed publish. in Hungary are exposed to arsenic values above the limit. Reaction to his blog post in the village of 1,600 was initially dismissive, Matijasevic recalled. From neglecting to inform communities of risks to bungling opportunities to fix water supplies, the “The water company in Vinkovci is where the ruling investigation lays bare the failure of authorities to party [the Croatian Democratic Union] employs protect public health and meet European targets in their people, so any negative article is considered an economies where safe water is still a luxury. attack on them,” he said. “And when you attack the ruling party, you’re not considered a good citizen.” Crisis in Vojvodina

But Matijasevic’s discovery got some people thinking. Five million years ago, a shallow sea covered an area Mirjam Beslic, a 28-year-old mother of two, travelled known as the Pannonian Basin, stretching over parts 280 kilometres to Zagreb to have a 12-centimetre of modern Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and Romania. A resident of Komletinci fills plastic water sample of her hair tested at the Institute for Medical bottles at a cistern near the main square. By the time it dried out, the sea had deposited Research and Occupational Health. Photo: Aleksandar Latas sediment several kilometres thick.

The tests showed arsenic levels of more than three Today, communities across the basin get their times the normal amount for an adult woman. years. The whole village should file a lawsuit for Around 923,000 people are exposed to carcinogenic drinking water from bores drilled deep into that damaging our health.” water from public networks across a vast lowland sediment, which is high in inorganic arsenic “I haven’t had problems up to now, but my doctor spanning eastern Croatia, northern Serbia and resulting from the decomposition of minerals told me I’ve been exposed for a long time and the Last May, Josip Saric, a member of the board of southern Hungary, the investigation showed. and ores. risk of getting cancer is bigger,” she said. directors of the local water utility between 1997 and 2007, won a fourth term as mayor of the municipality Thousands more in western Romania who drink Unlike organic arsenic, often found in fish, research When local authorities finally declared Komletinci’s of Otok, of which Komletinci is a part. from their own wells may also be at risk. shows the inorganic variety accumulates in the body water supply unfit to drink last April, after local over time and can be deadly. media picked up the story, anxiety turned to anger. His office did not respond to emailed questions All four countries prescribe maximum arsenic about how long the municipality had known about levels of 10 micrograms per litre, µg/L. That is Decades of studies on exposure to arsenic in “I’d prosecute all former water company directors the excessive arsenic levels and what it is doing the threshold recommended by the WHO, set by drinking water worldwide have found links between and mayors,” said Ivan Miljak, 60, a retired waiter to clean up supplies. Nobody was available for who was lining up with other villagers to fill plastic comment from the local water utility. bottles from a cistern provided by the municipality near the main square. Komletinci is just one of scores of communities on the edge of the Balkans where pipes gush with ‘Of course people should be concerned, “They all knew about it and kept it a secret to arsenic-tainted water above the legal limit, an serve their own interests. I say we should be investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting because arsenic has a long-term effect’ exempt from paying water bills for the next 28 Network, BIRN, reveals. Greenpeace toxicologist Gergely Simon

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 28 / fellowship.birn.eu.com bladder, kidney, liver and lung cancers. Toxicologists “Of course people should be concerned, because say it also harms the cardiovascular system. arsenic has a long-term effect,” he told BIRN. “Obviously, many deaths will still occur due to No specific research exists on how arsenic has arsenic exposure.” affected health in Serbia’s Vojvodina province, the part of the country that lies on the Pannonian Basin In Serbia, BIRN mapped arsenic levels higher than sweeping north from the Danube river. There are 10 µg/L across the whole of Vojvodina province, likewise no studies for eastern Croatia. using data obtained through 41 freedom-of- information requests to local water companies and But a 2012 study in Hungary, Romania and offices of public health. The data was collected Slovakia, conducted under the EU Arsenic Health between January and October 2017. Risk Assessment and Molecular Epidemiology programme led by the London School of Hygiene The investigation revealed that 95 cities, towns and and Tropical Medicine, found strong evidence villages in Vojvodina — with a combined population of an association between long-term, low-level of 630,000 — are in the danger zone. They are all exposure to arsenic in drinking water and Basal Cell served by water plants lacking the technology to Carcinoma, the most frequent form of skin cancer. filter arsenic from groundwater.

That was true even at levels moderately above the Water is safe to drink in Novi Sad, the capital of 10 µg/L legal limit. Vojvodina and Serbia’s second-largest city. But the central city of Zrenjanin, population 77,000, is Local media in Hungary have since reported that A glass of clear bottled water makes a stark among the worst hotspots, with arsenic readings up contrast with yellow tap water in the 300 deaths in the country each year are linked to to 194 µg/L over the past year. Serbian town of Kikinda. long-term exposure to arsenic-tainted drinking Photo: Nenad Mihajlovic water. Reports cited research from Hungary’s Subotica, a city of 106,000 near the Hungarian National Public Health and Medical Officer border, has levels up to 99 µg/L in places, although The most alarming results came from the central “The water was proclaimed ‘technical water’ 10 Service, ANTSZ. the local public health office says 80 per cent of Vojvodina town of Novi Becej, where 13,100 years ago,” said Mayor Sasa Maksimovic, meaning residents have clean water thanks to a purification people are exposed to water with arsenic levels that it is only deemed suitable for industrial use. Martha Varga, director of the water department at the plant built in 1991. up to 273 µg/L. Public Health Institute, which is a part of ANTSZ, But few residents interviewed by BIRN knew it declined to confirm the figure. But Gergely Simon, The Vojvodina provincial inspectorate for water Although that is more than 27 times the legal limit, was dangerous to drink, and the website of the a toxicologist at environmental group Greenpeace safety did not respond to questions about which authorities have not issued a ban on drinking tap local water utility, Komunalac, makes no mention in Budapest, said there was cause for alarm. authorities have or have not banned drinking water. water. of any risks. Komunalac did not respond to questions.

“Most people, certainly 90 per cent, drink water The Price of Clean Water from the tap and that’s how it’s going to be as long as an official statement banning the water is Projects to flush arsenic out of happened in rural parts of Hungary to utility bills when a newly built January that water bills would not not issued,” said Nevena Subotic, an opposition groundwater are a boon to public after purification programmes pushed purification plant starts operating. be any higher than they are in member of Novi Becej’s parliament. health but a drain on public finances. up utility charges. Belgrade or Novi Sad, the capital According to a contract between the of Vojvodina. Local authorities typically pass on “The wells are not registered, and city and the Italian company that built Nemanja Vaskovic, owner of a bar and restaurant on the costs of purifying drinking water since groundwater is polluted with the facility, published on the local The average monthly wage in the bank of the Tisa river in Novi Becej, buys bottled to consumers in the form of higher arsenic in central, southern and water company’s website, purification Zrenjanin was 371 euros last water for his family, but only because he detests the monthly bills, causing some people to eastern parts [of Hungary], they’re will add 0.28 euros per cubic metre of year, according to Serbia’s tap water’s yellow tint and off-putting smell. Some put their health on the line by relying drinking water with arsenic,” he said. water to existing costs. Department for Statistics. locals describe it as “pond-like”. on their own wells, health experts say. The average monthly wage in In Serbia’s Vojvodina province, While consumers will bear the Novi Sad was 458 euros and in “I don’t know how high arsenic levels are, but I According to Greenpeace toxicologist residents of the city of Zrenjanin brunt of this extra cost, Zrenjanin Belgrade it was 501 euros. Gergely Simon, that is exactly what are waiting to see what will happen Mayor Cedomir Janjic said in know that water is bad,” Vaskovic said.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 29 / fellowship.birn.eu.com He estimated that he pays at least 30 euros a month for bottled water. The average monthly More Harm than Good? net wage in Novi Becej last year was around 283 euros, according to Serbia’s Department for In 2014, mayors from 25 villages The shiny new plant completed in “As they didn’t clean the pipes from 651 euros last year, according to the Statistics. in southern Hungary gathered in 2016 pumps out clean drinking water, inside, this new water with a lot of Hungarian Central Statistical Office. the picturesque town of Baja, 30 but antiquated plumbing systems oxygen in it started to wash out all the Varhalmi wants to prepare a class- kilometres from the Serbian border, in homes actually make the water dirt from the pipes. In different parts “I’d reckon that 75 per cent of people in Novi Becej action lawsuit for more than 16.5 to prepare a joint bid for EU funds to quality worse, they say. of town, water is bluish, brown and can’t afford bottled water,” Vaskovic said. million euros in compensation, the clean up water supplies. yellow now.” amount he says residents have spent Crumbling infrastructure “Pipes are 35 to 50 years old,” says Three years later, 20 million euros of EU Miklos Varhalmi, a retired engineer Varhalmi said residents were forced on bottled water since the project Antiquated plumbing compounds Novi Becej’s money has gone into construction of a in Baja with a doctorate in national to buy bottled water, which costs started flushing impurities from pipes. water worries. water purification plant in Baja serving security. He was one of the first to around 30 euros a month if they Both the mayor of Baja and the the 25 communities. But locals say the question the effectiveness of the buy three litres a day. The average director of the local water company According to Mayor Maksimovic, 60 per cent of the project has done more harm than good. project. monthly wage after taxes was around declined interview requests. town’s pipes are made of asbestos, another known carcinogen. Meanwhile, the pipes are so old that the town loses up to 40 per cent of its water through leaks, he said. two to three million euros. say when the plant would be completed. plant. It is due to start operating in 2019. The mayor’s office did not respond to questions about “Local authorities are trying to find solutions but In early February 2018, Novi Becej got a grant Near the Romanian border in western Vojvodina, Kikinda’s water supply or specifics of the new facility. right now we don’t have the capacity to build a of 967,000 euros from the Vojvodina provincial the city of Kikinda is a magnet for tourists in winter. They come to photograph long-eared owls nesting purification plant and our first priority is pipeline government’s Capital Investment Directorate to The Kikinda plant is one of very few projects across in the hackberry and pine trees that line Kikinda’s reconstruction,” he told BIRN in August. start building a purification plant. Maksimovic told Vojvodina to tackle the arsenic problem. local media the first of three construction phases broad avenues. Maksimovic estimated that new pipes would cost would be finished by spring 2019, though he did not Officials in the provincial government, including Many are shocked when they see the local tap water. Vuk Radojevic, secretary for agriculture, water “The water is dark and it smells like crap and management and forestry, declined interview ammonia,” said Jelena Terzin, 39, a former requests and did not reply to emailed questions. journalist whose office was in the same building as Among the questions were inquiries about the the city’s main hotel. “When tourists come, they ask provincial government’s investment in water if it’s safe to wash your face and brush your teeth.” purification. BIRN’s investigation showed that only one major Arsenic levels in the city of just under 40,000 were plant equipped to remove arsenic has been built in more than twice the legal limit in 2016, according to Vojvodina during the past five years, in the city of the most recent data available. Authorities have not Zrenjanin. issued a drinking ban, although they have installed a so-called eco pipe in the town centre to allow Delays dogged the joint project by two water residents to fill up bottles with clean water. purification companies, Zillo from Italy and Synertech from Serbia. The work had been “This office unequivocally, in every single report on scheduled for completion at the end of 2015. water that is not hygienically correct, says that water is hygienically incorrect,” said Sanja Brusin Belos, Work stalled when the city failed to guarantee to pay chief of hygiene and human ecology at Kikinda’s the 5.6 million euros it will cost to purify the water office of public health. supply over the next three years. Eventually, Serbia’s central government stepped in with a guarantee. Last May, the city signed a contract for a six- Kikinda resident Jasminka Popov drinks from a million-euro loan from Germany’s state-owned Nenad Obradovic, general manager of Synertech and public ‘eco pipe’ supplying clean water. Photo: Nenad Mihajlovic development bank, KfW, to build a purification overseer of the project, said in January — almost six

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 30 / fellowship.birn.eu.com months after the factory was completed — that the Serbia is a candidate to join the EU and Chapter Reporters Roadmap In Romania, research conducted in the mid-1990s provincial sanitary inspectorate had yet to issue a 27 is the part of EU accession negotiations dealing found that around 45,000 people were exposed to permit for it to operate. He added that analysis showed with the environment, including water quality. arsenic levels higher than 10 µg/L. that water supplied by the plant was perfectly clean. The country already has access to pre-accession EU Călin Baciu, a professor at the Faculty of Environmental The reason for the lack of a permit, he said, was funds, with 160 million euros allocated to tackling Budapest Science and Engineering at Babes-Bolyai University a law preventing privately owned companies from environmental problems until 2020. in the northwest city of Cluj-Napoca, contributed distributing drinking water to the public. to the research. He said he did not know of any EU deadlines place with high arsenic levels in tap water today. Visiting Zrenjanin in late January, Serbian Prime Croatia, the European Union’s newest member, has Komletinci Minister Ana Brnabic said the town would need to until 2019 to comply with EU rules limiting arsenic Novi Becej “The high arsenic water is coming from take over the plant from the private developers to levels to 10 µg/L or lower. BIRN’s investigation the medium-depth aquifer (300-400 m) get around the problem, although it was unclear shows it has a long way to go. that is exploited by artesian wells, but how long that would take. these are not connected to the distribution Data obtained from Croatia’s Institute for Public network,” he wrote in an email. Ninety kilometres away in the northeastern town of Health revealed that 173,000 people in 13 towns Vrsac, workers completed a shiny new purification and villages in the west relied on water supplies Back across the Serbian border in Vojvodina, plant in January worth six million euros, but Vrsac does with readings above the legal limit in 2016. the province’s failure to clean up water not have an arsenic problem and the plant is designed networks leaves a bitter taste. to address other issues with the water supply. Arsenic hotspots included the towns of Djakovo, Garesnica and Cepin, with respective populations Novi Becej, some people joke that the local water In October, the northern city of Subotica announced of 28,000, 11,600 and 11,300. company takes better care of the town’s flowers it had secured 5.5 million euros in financing “The problem of arsenic in drinking water in than its human residents. from the European Bank for Reconstruction and eastern Croatia should be looked at in the context Development to build a water treatment plant to When a heatwave nicknamed Lucifer hit Europe of local water companies,” a representative from treat arsenic. It is due to be completed in October last August, blasting Novi Becej with its hottest the Institute for Public Health said in an email. 2019, according to local media. temperatures in 130 years, employees of the utility She said around 100,000 people in 30 municipalities “Most of these local companies had problems with kept the petunias along the main promenade alive Bozo Dalmacija, chair of the Department of Chemical rely on water with arsenic levels above the legal high arsenic values, which have not been solved through careful daily watering. Technology and Environmental Protection at the limit, compared with almost half a million before because local communities usually don’t have extra University of Novi Sad, said one way to fix Vojvodina’s Hungary joined the EU in 2004. “Everyone’s hands are tied,” said Nevena Subotic, funds, not even for minimum system maintenance water supply would be to build “microsystems” of the opposition member of parliament who criticised let alone for building water purification plants.” “Most of these [levels] are below 20 [µg/L], some of small purification plants in every municipality. them 20-40 at the highest,” she said. “But nobody the government for not issuing a ban on drinking For the period 2007-2020, Croatia has received 225 is obliged to drink water containing arsenic because tap water. “Something like that would cost up to 700 million million euros in EU grants for drinking water projects, there are alternate water supplies in every municipality. “Citizens can’t buy water, and none of the local euros for the whole of Vojvodina,” he said. “We can according to a European Commission spokesperson. emphasise water problems in Chapter 27 negotiations We have continuous communications campaigns.” governments can alone finance building of the with the EU and compete for EU funds.” Despite the grants, the Institute for Public Health BIRN was unable to map arsenic readings for specific expensive plants. It’s a vicious circle and we’re all said municipalities could not afford to finance Hungarian municipalities due to a lack of data. waiting for a saviour to come along.” regular maintenance of water supplies let alone construction of new purification plants. Requests for information from the interior ministry and General Directorate of Water Management Neighbouring Hungary has twice missed EU went unanswered, including questions on how ‘It’s a vicious circle and deadlines to bring arsenic levels down to the legal many purification plants have been built with EU limit, in 2009 and 2012. funds.

we’re all waiting for a saviour But Martha Varga, director of the water department Hungary’s share of EU grants for drinking water to come along’ at the Public Health Institute in Budapest, said a projects amounts to 663 million euros between 2000 national programme to improve water quality had and 2020, according to a European Commission Nevena Subotic, a politician in Novi Becej made dramatic gains in the country of 10 million. spokesperson.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 31 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Octavian Coman Timisoara, Bucharest, Charleroi, Rome

A family doctor in Romania vaccinates a child. Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu

arla was never vaccinated against measles. ward. Her fever worsened, rising as high as 42 Her health would not allow it. Born with degrees Celsius. Fatal Inaction: Kan interrupted oesophagus, she spent her infancy in and out of hospital, often with pneumonia. During the night of December 18, 2016, she started moaning in a way her mother, Florentina Marcusan, had How Measles During a routine stay at the Louis Turcanu Emergency never heard before. She had a rash on her face and chest. Children’s Hospital in the western Romanian city of Timisoara, the toddler was on the same floor as a girl Shortly after 8 am, as a nurse was giving Karla an who had measles. Soon, Karla developed a fever. injection, the girl’s head started twitching. While Made a Comeback the nurse ran to get help, Marcusan held her child. She was transferred across town to the Victor Romania’s failure to prevent a deadly measles Babes Clinical Hospital for Infectious Diseases “When I saw that she wasn’t reacting anymore, I outbreak is a story of complacency, bungling and and Pneumology. The place was so full of measles panicked and put her down, because I knew she had discrimination. It is also a cautionary tale for Europe. patients that at first Karla had to stay in an adult died...in my arms,” she recalled.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 32 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Doctors sent the distraught mother out of the ward while they tried to resuscitate the girl. She waited in the cold in front of the building, smoking cigarette after cigarette and holding Karla’s teddy bear. Forty-five minutes later, at 9.10 am, Karla Iasmina Georgiana Popa was declared dead. She was one year and three months old. The little girl was one of the first 10 victims of a measles outbreak in Romania that as of late November had killed 36 people — mostly babies — and infected around 10,000 since the first cases appeared last January. It is the country’s deadliest epidemic since 2005, when Romania’s two-shot vaccination regime against measles, mumps and rubella, MMR, came into effect.

Measles cases linked to Romania have been detected as far afield as Belgium, Spain and Ireland,

though those outbreaks are tiny compared with the Florentina Marcusan studies medical epidemic that killed Karla. records of her deceased daughter, Karla. Photo: Octavian Coman The girl’s mother blames the hospitals she stayed in for not doing more to protect her. “I have such hate in me,” Marcusan said, speaking crisis in Romania, where faith in health services According to data from the World Health Organization, health experts also point the finger at the Romanian six months after Karla’s death in her native village is tainted by perceptions of poor conditions and WHO, and the Romanian health ministry, rates for authorities, describing a systemic failure to ward off a of Dubesti, about 90 kilometres from Timisoara. mismanagement. the first shot have fallen 11 per cent over the past foreseeable crisis. decade, and 29 per cent for the second. Despite the availability of free MMR jabs at family “I don’t trust anyone anymore.” From mismanaging vaccines stocks to sounding the doctors, given to children in two doses several years Many are quick to blame the epidemic on a strident alarm too late, they paint a picture of bureaucratic apart, vaccination rates have fallen sharply. A lack of trust is at the heart of the measles anti-vaccine movement, but doctors and public bungling and complacency — with deadly consequences.

The Science of Measles

Measles is one of the most contagious malaise. Two to four days later, a Common complications include If a population is widely vaccinated, human diseases. Before the discovery characteristic rash usually appears. pneumonia, diarrhoea, otitis and measles has a much harder time of a vaccine in 1963, it claimed more croup. spreading, meaning that even people Patients tend to be contagious than 2 million lives and infected some who have not been vaccinated gain from around four days before the In rare cases, measles can cause 30 million people each year. Here are protection because the virus is not appearance of the rash until four swelling of the brain, which can some key facts about the disease. circulating in the community. This is days after its eruption. leave children deaf or mentally known as herd immunity. Measles kills one or two people for disabled. every 1,000 who contract the virus. Measles is most deadly in children under five. Children who are The World Health Organization Sources: WHO, Centers for Disease There is no specific treatment other malnourished, deficient in vitamin recommends that children be Control and Prevention in the United than relieving symptoms. A or who have immunological vaccinated twice. The timing of States, Centre for Surveillance and Measles vaccines. First symptoms often include fever, Control of Communicable Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu disorders such as HIV/AIDS are most doses varies by country but the first coughing, conjunctivitis and general vulnerable. is usually done at 12 months. Diseases in Romania

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 33 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “The immunisation programme can’t be better on average 2.6 million people worldwide, according than the health system that hosts it,” said Eduard to the WHO. By 2016, the global death toll had fallen Petrescu, a coordinator at the United Nations to around 90,000 a year. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, in Romania. Outside the system

Others see a cautionary tale for what happens when The measles vaccination was first introduced in authorities fail to bring marginalised communities Romania in 1979, but it was not until 2004 that — in this case, the Roma minority — into the fold a combined MMR jab became part of the free of national healthcare. national immunisation programme. A year later, a second jab of MMR was added. Normally, children “If you don’t vaccinate continuously, systematically are inoculated at the ages of one and five. and assiduously, the virus immediately fills the gap,” said Adriana Pistol, director of the Centre MMR vaccination rates stood at 97 per cent for the for Surveillance and Control of Communicable first jab and 96 per cent for the second in 2007, Diseases in Romania, part of the National Institute more than the 95 per cent minimum recommended of Public Health under the health ministry. by the WHO to keep a lid on measles. But they had fallen to around 86 per cent for the Before the invention of a measles vaccine in the first shot and 67 per cent for the second by 2016, 1960s, nearly all children caught the disease by when the latest outbreak hit, data from the health the time they were 15. The highly contagious ministry shows. virus is transmitted through coughing, sneezing or contact with infected secretions. The figure was likely even lower for members of the Roma community, the country’s second-largest ethnic minority after Hungarians. Prior to mass inoculation campaigns, major Romanian epidemiologist Adriana Pistol epidemics broke out every two or three years, killing rubs her head in frustration. Pistol foresaw According to a 2012 study by UNICEF and other Romania’s measles crisis but says her efforts to organisations, 45 per cent of Roma children sound the alarm fell on deaf ears. Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu had not received all the vaccines in the national immunisation programme. The Roma of Reteag are relatively prosperous. in Romania, it would have had the D4 genetic Community health workers say Roma families may Houses here are big and new. Some have gates fingerprint of past outbreaks. be cut off by circumstance or choice. Some are not adorned with lion statues. registered with doctors because they lack identification In Reteag, many parents had taken their children papers. Others have itinerant lifestyles. Many children have Italian-sounding names: to Italy before they were old enough for shots, said Ricardo, Francesca, Mateo or Zoro. Mayor Vasile Mihaela Catana, a nurse who acts as a liaison between Discrimination is also a factor. According to a Cocos explained that residents spend a lot of the the local family doctor and the Roma community. 2013 study by the WHO, “the perceived low quality year in Italy, a pattern of migration that dates back of the interaction with medical practitioners to the fall of communism in 1989. “We still have this migration […] I’m afraid of represents a major deterrent [for Roma] from other diseases, like polio, with more dangerous seeking medical help”. Roma traders from the village typically travel to consequences,” she said. Naples to buy up clothes and household goods, The study revealed a range of discriminatory practices which they sell in other parts of Italy. Ana Lingurar, 56, helped nurse two of her eight by health services including use of derogatory grandkids back to health after they returned language, limited physical contact during medical After one such visit, two Roma children, aged from Italy with measles. The boys had not been examinations and segregation in maternity wards. 7 and 9, brought measles back to Romania, in vaccinated, probably because they were abroad January 2016. when they should have received jabs, she said. It was in a Roma community that the latest measles outbreak first got a toehold, around the village of Reteag Health officials know the virus originated in Italy “In Italy, if you’re not on the list of a family doctor, in northern Romania, according to health officials. because of its tell-tale B3 strain. If it had started they’re not interested in your child,” she said.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 34 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “This craziness with measles and ‘outbreaks’ are just inventions of the pen” Vaccine sceptic Ditta Depner

By August 2016, measles cases were reported across Dalida Mosorescu, a family doctor in the southern more than half the country, infecting people from city of Craiova, said in July that she had been waiting all ethnicities, rich and poor alike. for a delivery of MMR shots for two months — even as the health ministry was assuring people that None of this came as a surprise to Adriana Pistol stocks were available. from the Centre for Surveillance and Control of Communicable Diseases. “Some patients understood that I didn’t have them,” she said. “It wasn’t like I was drinking the In 2015, she had noticed alarmingly patchy vaccination vaccines or injecting them into myself. Some were coverage. For example, only half of the children in angry: ‘Hey, lady, I’ve seen on TV [that vaccines are the western district of Timis, home to some 700,000 available]. Why don’t you give the shot?” people, had received the first MMR jab, data from the local health authority shows. Her experience was not unusual. Data obtained

from the local health authority showed that in Dolj Ditta Depner, a Romanian anti-vaccine ‘It isn’t a priority’ district, of which Craiova is the capital, doctors got personality, doubts the science of vaccinology. Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu only 20 of the 4,102 shots they requested in April. She took her concerns to the health ministry, Other months had extreme shortages too. warning of a looming epidemic. A spokesman for the Dolj Public Health District Meanwhile, a health ministry report shows that Voiculescu defended his legacy, saying MMR stocks “Let’s say this is coming: if you have children, go Authority said he had no precise information on the and vaccinate them,” she recalled that she told as of the end of July, more than 224,000 children were adequate when he left the ministry. cause of the shortages. aged nine months to nine years were not vaccinated them. “Say something, goddammit! […] It isn’t a Bodog declined an interview request but the against measles nationwide. The report underlines priority. In many fields, we work as firemen. We do health ministry responded to a list of questions. that authorities had insufficient stocks and budget something only when a fire starts.” The ministry said there had been no MMR to deal with an outbreak. By January 2017, as the death toll in Romania topped vaccine shortages between 2015 and 2017 but that 10, the government was urging parents to vaccinate “If you show up at the local clinic and you want to the new supplemental jab for nine-month-old their kids. The health ministry had also decided a vaccinate your child and there is no vaccine, you babies and catch-up campaigns had put pressure month earlier to introduce a supplemental MMR are less likely to come back next week,” said Robb on supplies. jab for babies aged nine months as a temporary Butler, European programme manager for vaccine- The former technocrat minister, Voiculescu, told crisis measure. preventable diseases at the WHO. BIRN that once vaccine stocks fell below a certain Political instability did not help. Since late 2015, level, the ministry should have scrambled to get But many turned up at family doctors only to be more. “It’s a problem of management,” he said. turned away. Romania had been ruled by a government of technocrats following the resignation of the then prime MMR stocks finally recovered, but only after Health ministry data showed that in April 2017, minister amid public fury over a deadly nightclub fire. the government signed a big new contract with a around 36,000 MMR jabs were available nationwide, supplier in early July. After parliamentary elections ushered in a Social four times fewer than in the same month a year Democrat-led government in January, new Health According to health ministry statistics, 338,445 earlier. Minister Florian Bodog criticised his technocrat doses were available nationwide in July, compared Frustrated doctors said the government was late in predecessor, Vlad Voiculescu, for leaving behind what with 116,193 in the same month a year earlier and ordering extra stocks. he described as a “disaster” regarding vaccine stocks. 227,250 in July 2015.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 35 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The government is pushing for a law to make — teaches courses on natural birth and believes vaccines compulsory. If approved, draft legislation diseases have emotional causes. “You don’t need illegal migrants to bring diseases with them. before parliament could take effect in 2018. “Fever means great interior anger,” she said, Anyone can be a carrier of a pathogen agent” Upset anti-vaxxers sporting a large silver medallion as she sat in a park. Remy Demesteer, infectious disease specialist

The move has vaccine sceptics up in arms. In Depner is convinced measles cases reported August, about 200 so-called anti-vaxxers protested in Brasov were fabricated to scare people into in Bucharest. One banner read: “Mandatory vaccinating their children. For the 3,690 children who were not properly Speaking outside her one-room wooden cabin, she vaccination is mandatory death!” More protests immunised — almost a quarter of those studied — expressed little faith in the authorities’ vaccination followed in the autumn during parliamentary “This craziness with measles and ‘outbreaks’ are close to nine per cent had parents who said they drive. debates on the new law. just inventions of the pen,” she said. were against giving them inoculations, especially “I don’t get it,” she said. “Some did this vaccine, but Some anti-vaxxers worry that MMR jabs may cause MMR jabs. But while the anti-vaxx movement is vociferous, children from here in ‘gipsyland’ still got the disease.” autism, a fear stemming from long discredited their numbers do not fully explain the fall in That was only slightly more than the number of research by a disgraced British former doctor. vaccination rates over the past decade. children who were out of the country when it was ‘It takes only one case’ For Ditta Depner, a well-known vaccine skeptic In February, the Centre for Surveillance and time to get jabs — and fewer than the 13.6 percent Romania’s failure to head off the outbreak allowed in the central city of Brasov, the very science of Control of Communicable Diseases in Romania who were advised by doctors not to have shots on the virus to spread abroad, but only to places with vaccinology is at fault. conducted a study of more than 15,000 18-month- medical grounds. fertile ground, health experts said. old children that shed light on why some were not By far the biggest group — around 42 per cent — The mother of a boy and a girl — both unvaccinated being vaccinated. Authorities in Hungary feared measles may have simply “did not show up at the doctor”, suggesting spread across the Romanian border earlier this year a possible nonchalance towards jabs or lack of faith when 29 cases were reported in the southeast. in health services.

Most people hospitalised with measles in Brasov were from a Roma community 20 kilometres away in the village of Zizin, where local doctor Jan Badan Reporters Roadmap estimates that half of children born in recent years have not been vaccinated.

The outskirts of Zizin are full of muddy streets and ramshackle houses with garbage-strewn yards.

Some Zizin residents had their own theories about the origins of measles. Charleroi

“Things like this come from the trash,” said Constantin Otelas, a tattooed local councilman Timisoara who was unsure if any of his nine children had been vaccinated.

One young man said he thought the virus had

been “thrown from a plane”. Rome Marcela Taranu, 20, said her unvaccinated six- Bucharest year-old daughter had caught measles two weeks earlier. She said she had tried to inoculate the girl some time before the measles crisis hit but was told Marcela Taranu says she did not vaccinate her daughter because jabs were not available. stocks were unavailable. Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 36 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The virus quickly spread among relatives, friends The big surprise was that health workers — more and neighbours. than 300 of them — caught the disease.

Schirvel said many of those affected were from A study published in March by the Sapienza Romanian or Serbian Roma communities living University of Rome showed that only 38 per cent of in the region who fell through gaps in Belgium’s medical staff surveyed in and around Rome thought health system because they travelled or did not keep measles jabs should be mandatory for health care their kids in school. workers.

Not registered with doctors, some went straight to The results angered Giuseppe La Torre, who emergency rooms, infecting others. Only the polio conducted the study. vaccine is mandatory in Belgium, although nurseries in Wallonia ask parents to give their children vaccines “If you’re a paediatrician, medical doctor or a for other diseases too, including measles. nurse involved in intensive care units, in a neonatal intensive care unit, you must be vaccinated against “In three or four weeks, everything exploded,” everything,” he said. Schirvel said. In response to the outbreak, the government Even health workers got sick, accounting for 12 introduced new legislation, passed by the parliament per cent of cases, though there were no fatalities. in July, making it mandatory for children to be Measles had become so rare in Belgium that some vaccinated against 10 diseases, including measles, doctors failed to recognise it, delaying diagnosis. before attending schools and nurseries.

Italy had the worst measles outbreak after Romania, In Romania, the prospect of mandatory vaccinations with 4,794 cases — including four deaths — as of brings little comfort to Florentina Marcusan, the early November this year. mother who lost her daughter, Karla, to measles. Florentina Marcusan leafs through medical records at her parents’ home in Dubesti. Photo: Tudor Vintiloiu Epidemiologist Adriana Pistol described a kind of She sometimes goes to Karla’s grave at night with “virus swap” in which measles originated in Italy and an aching desire to be with her. Other times she then Romanians brought some cases back to Italy. says she prays to fall asleep and never wake up again.

A recent outbreak in Serbia raised similar concerns, protected,” said Remy Demesteer, an infectious But for Giovanni Rezza, director of the Department She said she only knew of the dangers of measles though authorities are more concerned about cases disease specialist at the Marie Curie Hospital in the of Infectious Diseases at the Italian National after it was too late. coming from Kosovo, which is grappling with its Belgian city of Charleroi. Institute of Health in Rome, the outbreak was a “If I did not know, others should.” biggest spike in measles since conflict ended in 1999. problem of prevention, not migration. “You don’t need illegal migrants to bring diseases Epidemiologist Predrag Kon from the Belgrade with them. Anyone can be a carrier of a pathogen Measles vaccine coverage in Italy was around 87 Institute of Public Health said that while the virus agent [a virus or bacteria].” per cent in 2016, according to the health ministry. found in Serbia had the same B3 genotype as in In the South Tyrol region bordering Austria and Charleroi, one of the biggest cities in the French- Romania, authorities had no confirmation that Switzerland, it was as low as 67 per cent. cases came from across the border. speaking Wallonia region of southern Belgium, was at the centre of a measles outbreak that started last According to the European Centre for Disease The disease disproportionately affected adolescents December, infecting almost 300 people. Prevention and Control, nine EU countries discovered and adults, reflecting low inoculation uptake in 104 measles cases between them with a probable the years following the vaccination’s introduction The outbreak was traced to an unvaccinated link to Romania in the year leading up to February in Italy in 1976, according to the Italian National Romanian man who lived in Belgium. He brought 2017: Austria, the Czech Republic, , Germany, Institute of Health. the disease back with him after visiting relatives Ireland, Italy, Spain, Britain and Belgium. in Romania, according to Carole Schirvel, head Research by the institute also shows that the Roma “It takes only one case to reignite an outbreak, of Wallonia’s Unit for Surveillance of Infectious population in Italy was not particularly affected, for the virus to enter a community that is not Diseases. unlike in past outbreaks.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 37 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Shqipe Gjocaj Pristina, Tirana, Podgorica

A performance artist splatters red paint on a pavement in Pristina to protest against violence against women. Photo: Amy di Giacomo

he way she tells it, she was a familiar face have been able to bring the gun because he would at the police station in southern Kosovo have killed me first.” Vicious Cycle: where she had so often sought sanctuary T In the end, it was she who killed her husband. She from her violent husband. cut his throat with a razor. Kosovo’s Battered She was in her early 20s when the marriage descended into a nightmare of abuse. Among Sitting in a grimy office chair in the interview other tortures, he taunted her with a pistol. One room of Kosovo’s only jail for women, on the day, she got hold of the gun and took it to the outskirts of the town of Lipjan just south of Women Syndrome Pristina, she reflected on her 12-year sentence station, fearing for her life. for murder. Kosovo’s international isolation makes it a legal “The policeman who dealt with me happened to “black hole” for victims of domestic violence caught be my husband’s friend,” said the woman, now Eight years and four months served, fewer than in a cycle of discrimination and double standards. 31. “He told me that if I were his wife, I wouldn’t four years to go.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 38 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The judge was too harsh, she said, her eyelashes In one such recent ruling, in March, the court thick with mascara from a vocational beauty class decided that Italian authorities had failed to protect at the prison. What about all the years of violence, a mother and son by not acting swiftly on a complaint the unanswered cries for help? of prolonged domestic violence that resulted in the son’s murder and the mother’s attempted murder Sevdije Morina, deputy head prosecutor in Pristina, by her husband. described the sentence as “a normal conviction” that did not take into account mitigating circumstances. Behind closed doors

“Her husband really made her suffer,” she said. At the Lipjan Correctional Centre for Women and Victims of domestic violence in Kosovo are often at the Minors, a compound of barbed wire and concrete mercy of a justice system that fails to protect them, and surrounded by fields, a handful of women convicted lacks leniency when desperation boils over into self- of murdering their spouses described the horrors defence or retaliation, lawyers and rights activists say. they endured before they snapped. As in other patriarchal societies in the region, Prison rules forbid them from being identified. discrimination and double standards toward violent “He used to beat me, torture me and provoke crime by men and women shape the priorities of me with anonymous calls and messages,” said a overburdened police, prosecutors and judges. 45-year-old inmate serving 11 years for murdering But Kosovo is unique in being cut off from her husband of an arranged marriage. key instruments of European justice due to its Another woman, 24, was serving a 13-year sentence unresolved political status as a country, giving for murder. She said she shot her husband after he activists few levers for change. started attacking their little girl. “We call it the black hole of Europe,” said Hilmi “I didn’t want to kill him,” she said. “I just wanted Jashari, Kosovo’s independent ombudsman, whose to scare him.” office defends the public’s interests. Demonstrators in Pristina express anger following the murder of Diana Kastrati, a 27-year-old student killed by her husband in 2011 Only a tiny number of victims go on to kill. Lipjan “Kosovo is actually the only country [in Europe] after a judge rejected her request for a restraining order. Photo: Amy di Giacomo prison was home to 17 woman convicted of murder; where citizens can’t go to the European Court of six were doing time for killing their partners. Human Rights in Strasbourg.” Such decisions involve rank-and-file members “Human rights must be respected, and when Kosovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian country “Women in Kosovo face economic and social of a justice system buckling under the weight violated, the state would collapse on its knees with that declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is problems,” said Edi Gusia, chief executive of the of too many cases in one of Europe’s poorest the sanctions it would receive [if Kosovo were a not recognised by some nations including Serbia, Agency for Gender Equality, part of the prime economies. member of the Council of Europe] ... It would be Russia and China. minister’s office. the people holding the state accountable.” That means it has been unable to join the Council They determine how police and prosecutors act on “They’re unemployed and economically of Europe, which upholds civil and political rights reports of domestic abuse and whether judges issue Ombudsman Jashari cited Italy as an example of a dependent, since they don’t have inheritance across 47 member states. The court in Strasbourg, restraining orders. country that has improved its response to domestic rights from their parents. Without a home, they France, is the council’s arbiter. violence as a result of years of rulings from the remain in a cycle of violence and in some cases And in extreme cases where victims turn the table on European Court of Human Rights. that has resulted in deaths.” What happens in Strasbourg does, in theory, influence their tormentors, judges have to decide appropriate how Kosovo tackles domestic violence and protects sentences for killers suffering from battered person victims. Kosovo’s constitution states that its laws syndrome, a form of psychological trauma caused should be interpreted in line with rulings by the court. by prolonged abuse. “He used to beat me, torture me and provoke me But since Strasbourg has no power to impose penalties “The European Court of Human Rights doesn’t ask on Kosovo, the constitution’s lofty principles rarely whether you have people to do the job, or whether with anonymous calls and messages” affect decisions made on the ground. you can afford it,” said prosecutor Morina. - a 45-year-old inmate serving 11 years for killing her husband

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 39 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Legally, women in Kosovo have equal rights to violence cases go unreported, the Agency for inherit property but many are unaware of the law or Gender Equality has estimated. are reluctant to use it. In 2016, police received 870 reports of domestic Fatmire Haliti, a lawyer for the Kosova Rehabilitation violence, mostly against women, leading to 243 arrests, Centre for Torture Victims, said a law giving the according to the Directorate of Police in Community president discretionary powers to grant parole and Prevention. Police referred the remaining cases to should be used to counter overly harsh sentences prosecutors or centres for social work. for battered women driven to violence. A survey in 2015 by the Kosova Women’s Network, Since 2010, Kosovo’s Law on Pardon has benefited an umbrella group of women’s rights organisations, 86 men and five women convicted of various crimes. found that 68 per cent of women had suffered domestic violence in their lifetime. “When you look into the women’s profiles, you see the domestic abuse they suffered, the horrible More than 20 per cent of male and female circumstances they were forced to live in, and the respondents thought it was sometimes acceptable motives behind their criminal deeds,” Haliti said. for a husband to beat his wife.

“Most of these women are mothers whose children “Kosovo doesn’t have the capacity to address have to stay in the shelters for abandoned children. domestic violence — neither to protect people from All such factors must be taken into account when it nor to investigate it,” said Tahire Haxholli, head implementing the Law on Pardon.” of the Kosovo police unit that deals with domestic Activists light candles in Tirana following the murder of Fildeze Hafizi, an violence and child abuse. Albanian judge who was killed by her ex-husband, allegedly after years of threats. Heset Loku, director of Lipjan prison, said he Photo: BIRN/Loreta Cuka thought several inmates deserved to be pardoned “It’s a matter of government. There must be a solid due to their vulnerable backgrounds and good budget to help Kosovo police do their job well.” behaviour in prison. The scourge has long been on the agenda of civil In 2011, Diana Kastrati, a 27-year-old university He fled the country and is thought to be living The justice ministry did not respond to requests society groups helping to rebuild Kosovo after student from Pristina, sought a restraining order in Spain, lawyers for Kastrati’s family say. Since for comment. conflict with Serbia in the late 1990s. after her husband repeatedly threatened and stalked Kosovo is not a member of the International her. A judge denied her request. Police Organization, Interpol, and has no bilateral Rights groups say crime statistics only hint at the But nothing sparked public debate like two high- extradition agreement with Spain, it has no way to scale of abuse behind closed doors in the country profile cases that underlined the state’s failure to Three weeks later, her husband shot her as she get him back. of 1.8 million people. Up to 90 per cent of domestic protect women from prolonged abuse. walked to class. “Diana Kastrati’s death is the state’s responsibility,” said lawyer Artan Qerkini, who represented her parents in a landmark case before the constitutional court. The Legal Landscape “It hasn’t acted in accordance with the legal and Kosovo has robust laws for tackling physical, verbal and mental violence, the Council of Europe’s so-called policy. A 2016 national action plan constitutional dispositions to protect the life of an domestic violence but often fails curbs on free movement and other on tackling on combating domestic violence individual despite serious information that she was at the last mile when it comes to acts of harassment. violence against women. The provides tools to stop abuse, in danger.” implementation, rights groups say. constitutional court can decide if the provide protection and help victims The constitution says laws should state is acting in accordance with reintegrate into society. In 2013, the court ruled that the state had violated The Law on Gender Equality protects be interpreted in line with key these and other treaties. Kastrati’s rights guaranteed by the constitution and promotes equality between men international agreements that Despite these laws and initiatives, and women as a fundamental building Kosovo is not party to because of its A number of initiatives aim to experts say the fight against and the European Convention on Human Rights. block of democracy. unresolved legal status as a country. strengthen women’s rights in Kosovo. domestic violence is hindered by The family is seeking compensation through the old-fashioned mindsets, including constitutional court. Meanwhile, the Law on Protection These include the UN Convention The Programme on Gender the widespread view that violence against Domestic Violence guarantees on the Elimination of All Forms of Equality, launched in 2006, aims between spouses is a private While the case marked an important precedent, the right to live without fear of Discrimination against Women and to integrate equality into public family matter. ombudsman Jashari said that without the possibility

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 40 / fellowship.birn.eu.com of hefty sanctions from Strasbourg, “everything is Prosecutor Morina said lawyers defending violent still at the discretion of public authorities inside the men often plead diminished responsibility for their “I’m going to cut you and then burn you with salt, country”. crimes due to temporary insanity. and pierce you with hot wire” Meanwhile, Zejnepe Bytyqi Berisha, a 39-year-old “Where they want to, the neuropsychiatrists can - the words of an alleged Albanian stalker, as quoted by the woman who killed him woman from a village near the southern town of make a sane person insane,” she said. Suhareka, had endured 16 years of violence at the hands of her husband, Nebi Bytyqi. Prosecutors appealed Nebi Bytyqi’s sentence in August. On decision day, dozens of supporters The man had a long rap sheet. She had reported joined the family in a vigil outside the Palace of least — machismo and aggression go hand in then it’s legally binding for the state to change that him to police repeatedly over 13 years but they did Justice on the outskirts of Pristina. They held a hand. kind of practice.” nothing. giant banner: “Justice for Zejnepe.” In Montenegro, Kosovo’s western neighbour, more than Kosovo is the only country in Europe that has not One night in October 2015, he stabbed her 20 times The appeals court added half a decade to Bytyqi’s 67 per cent of married women have suffered violence by signed up to CEDAW. until the life drained out of her. He also injured sentence, making it 17 years. a spouse, according to a 2012 study by the SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence. Albania ratified the convention in 1994. But like their teenage daughter as she tried to stop him. Kosovo, it has a long way to go when it comes to Activists light candles in Tirana following the Data from the Judicial Council, which oversees domestic violence, justice experts say. Nebi Bytyqi was charged with aggravated murder, murder of Fildeze Hafizi, an Albanian judge who judges in the country of 620,000, shows that which carries a maximum sentence of life was killed by her ex-husband, allegedly after years “We are pretty much the same nation,” said Zoje prosecutors tend to downplay domestic violence by imprisonment. He got 12 years. of threats. Photo: BIRN/Loreta Cuka Jaka, director of Ali Demi prison, Albania’s only jail routing cases to misdemeanour rather than criminal for women. “We have the same mindset and the A key part of his defence was that he was acting out of Regional scourge courts or encouraging reconciliation. jealousy, “based on the suspicion that his wife cheated same approach to the law, Albania and Kosovo.” Last year, almost 90 per cent of domestic violence on him with a policemen from Suhareka”, as Bytyqi’s Across the Balkans, domestic abuse blights The recent murder of a judge has come to symbolise cases — more than 2,000 of them — went to defence lawyer put it outside the courtroom. patriarchal societies where — for some men at Albania’s failure to protect women at risk. Fildeze misdemeanour courts in Montenegro. Many Hafizi was killed by her ex-husband in late August involved serious bodily harm. Fewer than 30 per after years of threats. cent resulted in fines or prison sentences. A few days after the murder, demonstrators in “I was talking to some of the prosecutors and they Tirana threw red paint at the justice ministry and said, ‘Violence cases are not our priority. They’re marched on parliament. “Killing does not make you easily solved, and we have huge cases of corruption a man, it makes you a killer,” one placard read. and organised crime,’” said Maja Raicevic, head of the Women’s Rights Centre, a non-governmental Not everyone was outraged though. On social organisation in Podgorica. media, plenty of people defended Hafizi’s killer, who has been charged with murder and admits to Over the past three years, five Montenegrin women the crime. have been murdered by partners. “To hell with that whore who built a career with “Four of them repeatedly reported violence to the her husband’s money and kicked out the man police and different institutions and didn’t get who made her what she was,” one Facebook user proper protection,” Raicevic said. wrote. But she said rights groups were starting to lean According to the General Directorate of Prisons, on international conventions, especially the UN 816 men were serving murder sentences in Albania Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of as of July, compared with 14 women. Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, known as the world’s bill of rights for women. At the Ali Demi prison, a cluster of red-roofed buildings overlooked by guard towers in a residential

The Ali Demi prison in Tirana is “If the CEDAW committee decides there were district of Tirana, many of the women doing time Albania’s only jail for women. violations of women’s rights by the institutions, for murder had killed husbands or stalkers. Photo: Shqipe Gjocaj

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 41 / fellowship.birn.eu.com A recent book by Albanian television journalist Eni Reporters Roadmap Some experts see echoes of such thinking in the Vasili documents the circumstances that led to way many men treat women today. some of their crimes. “The meaning of gender roles and norms about Fatbardha Gjonaj from the northern village of Mat what it means to be a man, a woman, a boy or a was sentenced to 12 years for murdering a stalker girl, have their references in the Kanun,” said who threatened her with rape at gunpoint. Nita Luci, an anthropologist at the University of Pristina. “They’re enshrined in everyday life and “If you don’t come with me, your brother will be dead find support in every social institution.” in a week,” she recalled him saying on the day she killed him with her father’s automatic gun, when Criminal justice experts also point to double she was 26. “And I’m going to take you and lock you standards in attitudes towards male and female in a deserted house. I’m going to cut you and then convicts, regardless of crimes. burn you with salt, and pierce you with hot wire.” Podgorica When men fall foul of the law, families often In January, Gjonaj was pardoned. Pristina do everything they can to get the best lawyers, selling land, cars or tractors or taking out loans. ‘Real men’ By contrast, many women who break the law are If you want to end violence against women, say Tirana shunned by family and friends, even when they legal experts, start by breaking the cycle where it themselves have been victims of violence. begins — with young men.

“We rarely speak about violence against children “During my experience in the correctional system in and violence against teenage boys,” said Morina, Albania, I noticed double gender standards regarding Kosovo’s deputy head prosecutor. violent crimes,” said Klejda Ngjela, a project manager at the Albanian Helsinki Committee, a human rights “Our families are quite authoritarian and a lot group in Tirana. of these young men get beaten up and violently abused by their fathers, uncles and grandfathers, While the Kanun’s influence on modern Albanian and demanding that they be ‘real men.’” Kosovo society is debatable, it traditionally placed a “There was little tolerance for women who killed. premium on men’s lives, justifying revenge killings of On the other hand, there was an evident tendency Women often bear the brunt of this brutalisation, relatives of men who spilled male blood, for example. to justify men who have killed their wives, especially especially in traditional communities in Kosovo when jealousy and domestic affairs were regarded and Albania where customary laws have long The flip side is that women’s lives were deemed far as motives.” devalued women. less valuable. Back at Lipjan prison in Kosovo, women prisoners Since the Middle Ages, customary Albanian “The blood of a woman is not equal to the blood were filing in and out of their cells ahead of laws known as the Kanun, or Canon, of Leke of a man,” the Kanun says, speaking of marriage. exercise hour. Dukagjini have served as a means for regulating Elsewhere, it compares a woman to “a sack, made to social life. endure as long as she lives in her husband’s house”. “When a man kills someone, it’s manhood,” said one inmate. “When a woman does the same, it’s called tragedy.”

“The blood of a woman is not equal to the blood of a man” - the Kanun, or Canon, of Leke Dukagjini, a body of customary Albanian law

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 42 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Tamara Opacic Zagreb, Jasenovac, Kielce, Belgrade

A rabbi prays during a service in 2016 to remember victims of the Jadovno concentration camp in western Croatia. Photo: Nenad Jovanovic

he mugshots show Ivo Goldstein, a Jewish his father’s arrest in the newly created Independent librarian and book dealer, looking bright- State of Croatia, NDH, during World War II. Selective Amnesia: eyed and calm — even after nine days of T This puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist confinement in a Croatian police cell. One of the prints bears the number 28888 and a date: April 21, 1941. Italy was set up after the invasion of the Kingdom Croatia’s Holocaust of Yugoslavia by Axis powers in the spring of 1941. Seventy-six years after they were taken by a police It was led by ultranationalist dictator Ante Pavelic, photographer, the photos hang as a triptych on whose fascist Ustasa movement had sought a Deniers the bedroom wall of Goldstein’s son, Daniel, in Croatian state by any means. a drab apartment block in Zagreb’s Zaprudje neighbourhood. Modelled largely on the German SS, Ustasa units Despite laws against the denial or diminishment of genocide wasted no time in implementing Nazi-style racial crimes, the EU’s newest member state has done little to Daniel, 85, is a historian and human rights activist. laws, rounding up and killing Jews, Serbs and Roma crack down on voices downplaying World War II atrocities. He was nine when his childhood was shattered by along with anti-fascists.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 43 / fellowship.birn.eu.com The Ustasa built concentration camps across the NDH, which spanned most of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina along with parts of Serbia and Slovenia.

Ivo Goldstein was one of the first Jews to be arrested, in the industrial city of Karlovac.

He ended up at the Jadovno camp in the foothills of the Velebit mountain range near the Adriatic. Records show he was killed there, four months after his arrest, at the age of 41.

After the war, Daniel changed his surname to Ivin (son of Ivo) in memory of his father. He says he would have been killed too if he had not joined — at the age of 10 — the anti-fascist Partisan movement led by Croatian-born communist Josip Broz Tito, who would rule Yugoslavia for 35 years after the war.

“Shortly after I joined the Partisans, my close relatives were killed in the NDH camps, including my grandparents who had been looking after me Daniel Ivin holds a photo of himself aged 13. The until then,” he said. “My uncle, who was killed in Imperial War Museum in London recognises Ivin Auschwitz, didn’t manage to save himself either.” as the youngest living Partisan. Photo: Tamara Opacic Given his life story, it is no surprise that Ivin is angry about a growing number of voices in Croatia seeking Critics say such revisionism is tantamount to belittlement or condoning of genocide crimes “In some cases, these are persons responsible for to whitewash Ustasa crimes during World War II. Holocaust denial. that was introduced in the run-up to Croatia’s EU killing Jewish citizens during the Holocaust, which Those crimes include the murder of tens of accession in 2013. should suffice to disqualify them.” thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma at the notorious “Denying that Jasenovac was a death camp makes me Jasenovac concentration camp, often referred to as feel so bitter,” Ivin said. “I consider revisionists who Efraim Zuroff, who has spent more than 40 years Nobody knows how many Serbs were killed by the Auschwitz of the Balkans. claim that kind of thing to be criminals because they hunting Nazis for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Ustasa units during four years of slaughter that are killing victims for the second time with their lies. I describes Croatia as a country that has gone from historians say surprised even Pavelic’s Nazi In a political climate that has lurched to the right since don’t know how the government can allow it.” being one of the cradles of the Holocaust to a backers in Germany. The US Holocaust Memorial Croatia became the EU’s newest member in 2013, “cradle of Holocaust distortion”. Museum puts the number between 320,000 and Ustasa apologists openly express their views on social Rights activists say successive governments led 340,000, an estimate that includes Partisan and media, in lecture halls and on prime-time television. by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union He groups Croatia alongside some Eastern Serb royalist fighters. In the 1980s, demographer party, HDZ, have turned a blind eye to neo-fascist European states that he says have selective amnesia Vladimir Zerjavic estimated that 197,000 of the Bookstores stock monographs disputing overwhelming nostalgia, allowing to thrive. about the wartime records of collaborators, dead were civilians. evidence that Jasenovac was an Ustasa extermination quislings and local anti-Semites, including camp. Prominent politicians have cast doubt on the Meanwhile, they accuse state institutions of failing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary and The extermination of Jews is well documented. genocidal nature of Pavelic’s regime. to enforce legislation prohibiting public denial, to some extent Poland (see box). Some 30,500 of 39,000 Jews living in NDH territory were murdered by the Ustasa or sent to Nazi death “What is specific to these countries is that they camps elsewhere in Europe. would like to turn former fighters for independence and against communism into national heroes,” Many survivors moved to Israel after the war. ‘They are killing victims for the second time with their lies’ Zuroff said in a phone interview from his office at Croatia’s Jewish community now numbers a little Daniel Ivin, son of a Jewish librarian murdered in an Ustasa-run concentration camp the anti-fascist organisation in Jerusalem. over 500, according to the latest census in 2011.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 44 / fellowship.birn.eu.com At Jasenovac in central Croatia, the Ustasa did their veterans of Croatia’s 1991-1995 conflict that was killing with knives and hammers in a complex of emblazoned with the words “Za dom spremni” sub-camps near today’s Bosnian border. [“For homeland ready”], the Ustasa equivalent of the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil”. Painstaking and scientifically verified research by the Jasenovac Memorial Site has established the President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic has identities of 83,145 victims, though a final death downplayed the use of the slogan, calling it an count has yet to be established. “old Croatian salute” — a description challenged by mainstream historians who say it was an Ustasa The research shows 47,627 Serbs, 16,173 Roma invention. and 13,116 Jews perished at Jasenovac during the war, along with several thousand dissident Croats After months of criticism for allowing the plaque to and people of other nationalities. Of those, 20,101 stay in Jasenovac, the government moved it to the were children. nearby town of Novska in September.

For the past two years, representatives of Serbian Many saw the response as too little, too late. Judge Sanja Zoricic Tabakovic says there is Igor Vukic, secretary for the Society for Research of fear in Croatia’s Jewish community. the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, says Jasenovac was not and Jewish communities along with anti-fascist Photo: Tamara Opacic an extermination camp during World War II. organisations have boycotted state commemoration “When fascist events start happening in a society, Photo: Tamara Opacic services for Jasenovac victims in protest at what this brings about a sense of uneasiness among they see as government leniency towards Ustasa Jews,” said Sanja Zoricic Tabakovic, a judge and The latest annual report by Croatia’s independent “They [members of the society] are using sympathisers. representative of the Jewish community in Zagreb. ombudsman, published in May, cites a rise in hate documents from the state archives, the same ones They were particularly incensed by the installation, “But when institutions don’t react, this causes fear speech and Holocaust distortion. we have used for years, and interpret them any way last November, of a plaque near Jasenovac by because you don’t know where that really can lead us. that suits them,” she said. “For example, the fact “There are more and more media propagating and that a person died in Jasenovac camp in 1943 and spreading prejudices and stereotypes, publishing was declared dead in 1946, they use as evidence that texts that incite hatred against minorities, the person was killed in 1946.” rehabilitating the Ustasa regime and diminishing or denying crimes committed in World War II,” the Igor Vukic, the society’s secretary, defended the report says. theory.

Among the more vocal of the revisionists is the “We say this is what we’ve found, and we haven’t Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac really concealed anything that doesn’t support our Camp, a non-governmental organisation whose claims,” he said. members include journalists, teachers, university professors and Catholic priests. Dealing with the past

The society champions a theory that Jasenovac was Last December, the government said it would create merely a labour camp under Ustasa rule and that it a special council of experts tasked with making only became a death camp when it was taken over by recommendations “aimed at dealing with the past” Tito’s Partisans after the war. — a response to the controversy surrounding the veterans’ plaque at Jasenovac. The theory flies in the face of countless official documents, testimonies and studies by Holocaust Vukic said the Society for Research of the Threefold experts and world-renowned historians. Jasenovac Camp asked the government to be part of the council, mandated to consider such matters Natasa Matausic, a historian and president of as how history should be taught in schools and the board of directors of the Jasenovac Memorial anniversaries commemorated. Site, said there was no evidence that Yugoslav A plaque engraved with the World War II-era slogan According to Vukic, the proposal had the support “Za dom spremni” [“For homeland ready”] hangs on a communists ran a concentration camp at Jasenovac wall in Jasenovac before it was moved in September. of Bozo Petrov, then parliamentary speaker Photo: Tamara Opacic after the war.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 45 / fellowship.birn.eu.com and president of a junior party in the coalition Asked if the society engaged in such denial, Vukic government of the day. ‘What they really do is a denial said: “When it’s about genocide, it is often linked to Serbs. If it’s about that, we do deny it. ” Vukic said “friends from the country, Europe and of genocide and the Holocaust the world” had sent messages backing the society’s He continued: “Of course we don’t deny the participation to Petrov, whose Bridge of the that took place in the NDH’ Holocaust… When it comes to Jewish people, Independent Lists, MOST, billed itself as a non- Natasa Matausic, president of the board nobody who is serious, nobody who is smart can ideological party in Croatia’s polarised politics. of directors of the Jasenovac Memorial Site deny or fail to be compassionate about that.”

In mid-February, a fortnight before the council was But examination of the Facebook profile of the officially set up, Petrov wrote to Prime Minister Andrej society’s president, a Catholic priest named Plenkovic forwarding the messages of support. Stjepan Razum who works at the Croatian state “I am using this opportunity to deliver to you archives, revealed several videos of prominent proposals that representatives of the Society for Holocaust deniers accompanied by his approving A screengrab of Stjepan Razum’s Facebook profile Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp should comments. “They [the office of the speaker of parliament] be included in the work of the council,” he wrote in On May 17, Razum shared a video of Richard forward all received proposals,” she said. Prominent revisionists a letter seen by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Williamson, a British Catholic bishop convicted Network, BIRN. In the end, the government turned down the of Holocaust denial by a German court in 2013, in Razum declined a telephone interview request but society’s request to be part of the council. BIRN did not see the forwarded proposals or have which Williamson says: “I believe that the historical agreed to answer questions by email. information on whom they were from. Matausic from the Jasenovac Memorial Site believes evidence is hugely against six million Jews having Asked about Williamson’s views, Razum wrote: “I the Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a Petrov declined an interview request, but MOST thank God that I am living in the Republic of Croatia, Camp should be banned. deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.” spokeswoman Ruzica Popovic said the fact that which is a free and democratic state and the benefits of he forwarded the messages did not mean he “What they really do is a denial of genocide and the Above the video, Razum commented: “Courageous this are that we are free to think, free to speak, free to endorsed them. Holocaust that took place in the NDH,” she said. man! Congratulations!” use FB [Facebook], free to comment, free to research,

Pogroms in Poland

in 1941 and the murder of 42 instances of anti-Semitism by extremist Holocaust denial has been illegal since whitewashing Polish complicity in World Holocaust survivors in Kielce in 1946. groups — have soared since the start 1998 in Poland, where Nazi occupiers War II crimes and cracking down on of Europe’s refugee and migrant crisis killed millions of European Jews during suggestions of Polish guilt. “What she said is stupid,” said in 2015. World War II in death camps built as Bogdan Bialek, organiser of annual In August 2016, the government part of Germany’s ‘Final Solution’. commemoration in the south-central According to Never Again activist introduced a bill to criminalise the city of Kielce. “It would be better to deal Maciej Kaluza, PiS sought to ride a Polish anti-fascist fighters formed one of use of the term ‘Polish death camps’ with something useful.” wave of xenophobic sentiment during Europe’s largest resistance movements instead of ‘concentration camps in parliamentary elections that year and and many Christian Poles helped rescue occupied Poland’. If passed, the law At the 71st anniversary of the pogrom has continued to seek political capital Jews from extermination. could send offenders to jail for up to in July, young people wrote the names from intolerance. three years. of victims on chalk outside the house But historians say pogroms by local anti- in Kielce where Jews were bludgeoned “PiS doesn’t officially support far-right Semites show that some Poles at least Meanwhile, Education Minister to death. organisations, but at the same time were willing collaborators in crimes Anna Zalewska came under fire last it doesn’t do anything to stop them,” against Jews. summer for appearing to question According to Polish anti-fascist Kaluza said. in a television interview Polish organisation Never Again, hate crimes Critics of the ruling Law and Justice involvement in two well-known and instances of hate speech — PiS did not respond to emailed Party, PiS, say the government has gone Poles mark the 71st anniversary massacres: the burning of at least including the use of fascist symbols and questions. too far in pandering to nationalism by of the Kielce pogrom. 340 Jews in a barn in Jedwabne Photo: Tamara Opacic

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 46 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Collaborators in Serbia

Most of the territory of today’s The Nazis installed Nedic as leader of “To rehabilitate a Nazi regime, one For as many years as lies were told, In 2015, a Belgrade court annulled the Serbia was occupied by Nazi the so-called Government of National would have to be a Nazi — and now the truth must be spoken.” communist-era conviction of Dragoljub Germany between 1941 and 1945, Salvation. He fled to Austria after Nedic was not one of them,” said ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, a Chetnik leader But historian Milan Radanovci, but the country had no shortage of the war and Yugoslav Communist Aleksandar Nedic, great-nephew of executed in 1946 for high treason and author of Punishment and Crime collaborators, historians say. authorities declared him a war the wartime leader and a self-styled collaborating with the Nazis. - Forces of Collaboration in criminal before his death in 1946. Serb nationalist. Belgrade’s higher court is deliberating Serbia and a strong opponent of During World War II, royalist on the possible posthumous The process for his rehabilitation, Sitting on a bench outside a Socialist-era rehabilitation for Nedic, said only a resistance fighters known as Chetniks rehabilitation of Milan Nedic, leader of initiated by Nedic’s descendants, apartment in Belgrade’s Banovo Brdo minority favoured exculpating the openly collaborated with Axis powers Serbia’s Nazi-backed regime between has divided opinion in Serbia, quarter, he said that whatever the court wartime leader. as they targeted Bosnian Muslims and August 1941 and October 1944. which is in negotiations to join the decides, the hearings provide a counter- Croats along with Communists. “It’s never happened that a European Union. narrative to communist-era history that According to the US State European country has legally In May, the Higher Court in the western he calls false. Department’s 2016 international Outside court hearings, anti-fascist rehabilitated their quislings,” he town of Valjevo rehabilitated Nikola religious freedom report, Nedic’s protesters have faced off with “It’s like losing weight,” he said. “For said. “He was well aware of tens of Kalabic, commander of the notorious government was responsible for supporters dressed in black who claim all the years you add kilos, that’s how thousands of Jews, Roma and Serb Chetnik Mountain Guard Corps accused Aleksandar Nedic, great-nephew killing 90 per cent of Serbia’s Jewish he gave refuge to 600,000 Serbs from many it takes to get rid of them. It’s civilians taken to concentration by post-war Yugoslav authorities of Nazi of Milan Nedic. population during the Holocaust. across the Balkan region. the same with historical rehabilitation. Photo: Tamara Opacic camps and then executed.” collaboration and other crimes.

free to be involved in scientific work, free to travel, free those committed by communists, including the killing While Croatian nationalists sought to downplay views, this year resigned as honorary head of the to wonder, free to congratulate…” of Ustasa and NDH prisoners and civilians by Yugoslav the numbers in the late 1980s and 1990s, Serbian Alliance of Anti-Fascist Fighters and Anti-Fascists Partisan forces right after the war. nationalists blew them out of proportion in a bid to after videos from 1992 emerged of him questioning Rights activists say distortion of World War II crimes label Croats as genocidal. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the if Jasenovac was a death camp. is nothing new in Croatia. It was especially prevalent These efforts were partly a reaction to decades of Serbian Renewal Movement party, wrote in 1985 that a during the Balkans conflict of the early 1990s when Yugoslav historiography in which the number of million-and-a-half Serbs were killed in the NDH. “People were killed, but [only] before coming to anti-Serb sentiment was high and Croatia was Jasenovac victims was put at around 700,000, they say. Jasenovac,” he says in one video. “When someone forging its identity as an independent nation. In recent years, prominent Croatian revisionists have came to Jasenovac, he was already practically saved, included HDZ lawmaker Vice Vukojevic, who sat on as a worker.” Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s first democratically a now-defunct commission that put the Jasenovac elected president, wrote in a 1989 book titled death toll at 2,238, and Zlatko Hasanbegovic, a culture No prosecutions Wastelands - Historical Truth that the estimate of minister who described the end of the NDH in 1945 Lawyers say the question of whether public six million Jews killed in the Holocaust was based as “our biggest national tragedy and defeat”. statements like these could be considered illegal on “overly emotional and biased testimonies and boils down to interpretation of the criminal code. on one-sided data in post-war calculations of war President Grabar Kitarovic has formally condemned crimes and in settling scores with the defeated the Ustasa as a criminal regime and expressed her Unlike in other EU countries such as Germany or perpetrators of war crimes”. “deepest regrets to all the victims of the Holocaust Austria, the law makes no specific reference to the in Croatia” during a trip to Israel. Holocaust or World War II-era crimes. Tudjman, who founded the HDZ, wrote elsewhere: “A Jew is still a Jew, even in Jasenovac camp. In But she has also come under fire for being Article 325 of the code says people who “publicly the camp they retained their bad characteristics photographed with a flag bearing an Ustasa symbol condone, deny or significantly diminish criminal acts that were more visible there. Selfishness, slyness, and for listing her favourite musician as Thompson, of genocide, crimes of aggression, crimes against unreliability, stinginess, perfidy and confidentiality an incendiary soldier-turned-singer whose lyrics humanity or war crimes” can get up to three years in are their main characteristics.” People honour the dead of Jasenovac concentration contain the “Za dom spremni” slogan. prison if their actions incite violence or hatred. camp in a service organised by representatives of Serb and anti-fascist groups in April 2017 as an alternative Political scientists say Tudjman was the first politician to the annual state commemoration. Meanwhile, Stjepan Mesic, who served as Croatia’s Police have never filed a criminal complaint related to try to find equivalence between fascist crimes and Photo: Nenad Jovanovic second president and was known for his liberal to this part of the code, the interior ministry said.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 47 / fellowship.birn.eu.com “In Croatia, it has to be done in a way that incites decision [on whether to proceed with a prosecution],” “It is quite true that after a country enters this violence or hatred towards a social group damaged the state attorney’s office wrote in an email. community, after the conditioning is over, some by the crime,” said Vesna Alaburic, a Zagreb-based standards do drop,” he said. lawyer. “It’s a very subjective relation to a felony The third criminal complaint was filed in mid-October that is very difficult to prove.” by three human rights organisations with prosecutors Asked about human rights monitoring in Croatia, in the north-western city of Pula against a blogger European Commission spokesman Christian In Germany, the justice ministry said 93 people were described as a peddler of dangerous hate speech. Wigand said the European Union was working convicted of denying, condoning or relativising Nazi with member states and social media companies to genocide crimes in 2015, the latest year statistics ‘Poisonous cocktail’ tackle illegal hate speech. were available. Six of them got jail terms. “There is a concrete person behind all this, with a “Hate speech and radical propaganda have no place In Austria last year, state attorneys received 75 real name and surname,” said Drazen Hoffmann, in our societies — online or offline,” he said. complaints of denying, relativising, condoning a researcher for rights group GONG and one of or exculpating Nazi genocide or crimes against the authors of the complaint. “His online work is Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center humanity, according to Austria’s justice ministry. dedicated to anti-Semitism, affirmation of Nazi said the onus was on the government to set the tone Four people went to prison for such crimes in 2016. ideas and negation of the Holocaust.” from the top.

BIRN asked Croatia’s 22 local state attorney’s As of publication, it was unclear if prosecutors “They finally have to admit the historical truth and offices if they had ever received criminal complaints would take the case to court. tell people: ‘These are the facts, you have to live with of genocide or Holocaust distortion or denial from them, understand what happened and do whatever individuals or groups. Surrounded by books and old newspapers on the is possible to never repeat it again,’” he said. top floor of a 19th-Century building overlooking Of the 20 that answered, only three said they had. Political scientist Drazen Hoffmann helped Zagreb’s main square, Hoffmann helps run an prepare a criminal complaint against a blogger he describes as a peddler of hate online platform for people to report, among other Reporters Roadmap In 2013, three rights organisations filed a joint criminal speech and Holocaust denial. things, Holocaust denial and fascist graffiti. complaint to prosecutors in the central city of Kutina Photo: Tamara Opacic accusing Josip Miljak, former president of the far- The 31-year-old political scientist said hate right Croatian Pure Party of Rights, of breaking the law threat. In 2015, local judge Robert Strniscak speech started picking up towards the end of by downplaying the slaughter at Jasenovac. acquitted Miljak. During the trial, Strniscak made 2013 when radical elements of the HDZ sensed Kielce headlines himself by questioning whether 83,000 political capital to be gained by fanning anti-Serb According to the complaint by the Center for Peace people really died at Jasenovac. sentiment following fury over the installation Studies, Documenta and the Civic Committee for Meanwhile, in 2016, the Anti-Fascist League of Croatia of Cyrillic signs in the eastern city of Vukovar, Zagreb Human Rights, Miljak disparaged research by the filed a criminal complaint to the state attorney’s office which had been devastated by Serb forces in Jasenovac memorial centre that puts the death toll in Zagreb, accusing documentary maker Jakov Sedlar 1991. Jasenovac at the camp firmly at 83,000. of “public incitement to violence and hatred”. “That was a poisonous cocktail, whose echoes The complaint said he also wrote in an email to The League claimed that Sedlar used his film and outbursts we can still see and hear in the former head of the memorial centre, Natasa Jasenovac - The Truth, which disputes the official public,” he said. “Historical revisionism is Jovicic, that “your lies and hatred of everything that death toll of the memorial site, to target Croatia’s here with a mission to blacken any legacy of is Croatian will contribute to your end”, which she national minorities, especially Serbs. anti-fascism — and also to completely identify and rights activists interpreted as a threat. it with ‘Serbishness’, and that with crimes and Belgrade “[Sedlar] concealed the scientifically established aggression from the ‘90s war.” The local attorney’s office decided not to prosecute facts of the genocidal character of the NDH,” the the criminal complaint on the grounds that there complaint says. The HDZ did not respond to emailed questions was no element of public incitement to Miljak’s and a telephone call. alleged diminishment of war crimes, according to a Sedlar rejects the charge. In May, he received an decision document seen by BIRN. award from the city of Zagreb for his work. Croatia’s EU accession in 2013 was also a milestone, Hoffmann said, noting that no systems were put in The local attorney’s office did prosecute a “Some inquiries are still necessary to gather all the place to monitor the protection of human rights misdemeanour case related to Miljak’s alleged necessary relevant information and notices to make the after accession.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 48 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Vladimir Kostic Belgrade, Skopje

Protesters in Belgrade express anger at what they see as increasing authoritarianism in Serbia after a presidential election in April 2017 marred by allegations of corruption. Photo: Beta

t first, they asked nothing in return.aaaaaaa Victory would hand his party its fourth straight win in presidential and parliamentary polls over Party Games: A A local member of Serbia’s ruling party had six years and further cement Vucic’s position as helped her get a job as a teacher. She knew plenty the most powerful man in Serbian politics. of others who had found work at public institutions Hide and Seek with or companies run by people with ties to the Serbian At one meeting, an official took the teacher aside Progressive Party. No shame in that, especially with and handed her cash: 40,000 dinars, then worth unemployment rates approaching 15 per cent. around 320 euros. It came from a large donation, the Election Cash official explained, giving no further details. Would As presidential elections drew near in the spring she donate it back to the party in her own name? Ruling parties in the Balkans are suspected of using proxy of 2017, the party invited her to weekly meetings. Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s then Prime Minister, “I just got the envelope with the money and the donors to fill campaign war chests with cash from secret sources. was the Progressives’ combative candidate for account number to pay it into,” she said. “Everybody How authorities respond is a test of their independence. head of state. knew what was going on when I went to the bank.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 49 / fellowship.birn.eu.com They already knew how the payments were working. Later, I brought them a payment slip as proof I paid the money.” Fearing she might lose her job, the woman declined to be identified. She said she saw party officials ask others at meetings to make similar donations. “If I didn’t do it, someone else would, so what can I say?” An investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, shows that hers was not an isolated case but part of a pattern by the Progressives of using proxy donors to disguise the true source of campaign gifts -- illegal under Serbia’s law on the financing of political activities. While it was impossible to trace the provenance of cash suspected of being laundered through fake donors, the investigation found evidence of systematic flouting of the law by the party in this and previous elections. Demonstrators compare newly elected The party did not respond to requests for comment. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to North Korea’s dictator. The sign reads: “Do you sleep peacefully Kim Jong Un?” The investigation also highlighted a culture of Photo: Beta impunity. BIRN can reveal that anti-corruption authorities But graft fighters point to Macedonia as a case Agency, ACA, the independent state body charged with But it is a criminal offence, punishable by up to five wanted prosecutors to launch criminal proceedings study in what can happen when prosecutors bare policing the financing of political activities. years in prison, to try to hide the source of donations. in relation to suspected illegal activity during their teeth. Parties in Serbia are legally required to report Many people contacted by BIRN declined to elections in 2014, but not one person has been Following a corruption scandal that brought campaign cash flows, including donations, within comment, but five independently confirmed they indicted, casting doubt on the independence of down the government, Macedonia’s former 30 days of any election. The agency then publishes were given 40,000 dinars by party officials to donate Serbia’s prosecution services. prime minister and close associates are under donor names and amounts as part of its routine to the Progressives in 2017. Analysts draw parallels with other former Yugoslav investigation for using fictitious donors to vetting of campaign finances. All wished to remain anonymous. republics where political elites have taken over state launder cash. They have also been indicted for But this list was like no other. institutions for their own benefit while choking off election fraud. “They called one night and told me to come to the opposition. For one thing, 98 per cent of individual donors to party office,” one man, 27, said. “There were no more Mysterious list In neighbouring Montenegro and Macedonia, the Progressives gave precisely the same amount: explanations on the phone.” In Serbia, BIRN tracked down the teacher and four 40,000 dinars. So many, in fact, that it took the authorities have long turned a blind eye to Collectively, the Progressive’s army of curiously uniform others who admitted to being fake donors from a list of agency a week to enter the 6,789 names into its allegations of illegal financing of ruling parties individual donors contributed more than two million names published on the website of the Anti-Corruption online database. through money laundering and other means. euros to Vucic’s campaign -- more than a third of his There was nothing illegal in the sums. Under overall war chest of 6.5 million euros. Most of the rest Serbian law, individuals can give political parties came from the state budget in line with election rules. “They called one night and told me up to 20 times the average monthly salary, which was almost 385 euros in March. And unlike other The total was considerably more than the combined to come to the party office” countries in the region, Serbia has no limit on income of all 10 other candidates, which came to just - anonymous man who says he was a proxy donor for Serbia’s ruling party overall funds parties can collect for campaigning. over 4.3 million euros.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 50 / fellowship.birn.eu.com That kind of spending power allowed the Progressives The protests also had echoes of mass demonstrations to mobilise mass rallies, plaster the country in 2000 that brought down Milosevic following with billboards and smother newspapers with disputed elections. But unlike those displays of anger, advertisements. anti-Vucic protests petered out after a couple of weeks.

In fact, the party spent 83 per cent of its campaign Although the role of president is largely ceremonial, finances on advertising alone -- in excess of 5.3 critics say the result paved the way for Vucic to million euros, more than the combined total tighten his grip on power in a country where spending of all other candidates. political patronage and clientelism go hand in hand with creeping authoritarianism. ‘Clean as a whistle’ “The results have destroyed the institutions In the end, Vucic won with a crushing 55 per cent of parliament and government, which are now of votes after an election that monitoring groups functions of the president,” said Zoran Gavrilovic, said was marred by vote-buying, intimidation and director of the Bureau for Social Research, a control of the media. The second-placed candidate Belgrade-based think tank. got 16 per cent. With parliamentary elections not due until 2020, “Particularly widespread … were reports of pressure Vucic and the Progressives now look unassailable. on employees of state and state-affiliated institutions to support Mr Vucic and secure, in cascade fashion, Financial fingerprints support from subordinate employees, family As the face of Serbian hopes of joining the European members and friends,” the Organization for Union, Vucic has projected an image of stable Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a report leadership in a turbulent region even as critics at published in June. home accuse him of rigging the system in the ruling Radovan Lazic, president of the board of At 10.25 pm on April 2, shortly after the results were party’s favour. Serbia’s guild of prosecutors, says the in, Vucic stood at a podium at Progressive Party appointment of prosecutors in Serbia is a He became prime minister in 2014, a watershed “political process par excellence”. Photo: Bojana Bosanac headquarters in Belgrade’s business district. The year in which the Progressives won the first man who had served as information minister for absolute majority in parliament since the These sums became the financial fingerprints of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the late ousting of Milosevic. Vucic had previously suspicious activity during Progressive campaigns. 1990s was no stranger to soundbites. served as defence minister and deputy prime His victory was “clean as a whistle”, he told minister following 2012 elections that made the In parliamentary and presidential elections in journalists. Progressives the ruling party. 2012, 98 per cent of 2,300 individual donors all gave 19,000 dinars. The next day, thousands of demonstrators, mostly Suspected money laundering marred both those The sum of choice was 40,000 dinars in later young people, took to the streets in cities all over polls. Other parties had suspicious donors too, campaigns. In 2014, 95 per cent of more than Serbia, blowing whistles and banging pots. including companies that gave generously despite posting losses. But the Progressives were unique in 2,800 donors gave that amount, while in 2017 the “Vucic, you stole the election,” protesters chanted. having thousands of contributors who gave exactly proportion was 98 per cent of almost 7,000 givers. “Do you sleep well, Kim Jong Un?” one placard the same amounts. The exception was parliamentary elections in 2016, read, comparing Vucic to North Korea’s leader. when the Progressives received just 17 donations, Serbia’s Protest Against Dictatorship, as organisers all of 40,000 dinars. Most campaign cash that year called the demonstrations, was reminiscent of came from the party’s own resources, following a recent unrest in Montenegro and Macedonia, where change in the law allowing the mixing of regular protesters called for the resignation of long-time “Vucic, you stole the election!” and campaign funds. rulers, accusing them of corruption, abuse of power The ACA has long had reason to be suspicious of and election fraud. - a chant by demonstrators after Aleksandar Vucic was elected president in April Progressive donors.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 51 / fellowship.birn.eu.com report urged prosecutors to take action regarding or examine witnesses, making it hard to initiate those transfers as well. criminal charges itself. For that reason, it had sent its findings to prosecutors, she said. The United Regions of Serbia is now defunct and the Progressives and the Socialists did not respond The prosecutor’s office said it had sent the report back to questions from BIRN about the specific contents to the ACA for further checks. It declined to comment of the ACA’s report or any potential charges relating further. As of publication, it had not pressed charges. to the 2014 election. Nemanja Nenadic, programme director of corruption The Progressives also did not respond to questions watchdog Transparency Serbia, said prosecutors had about the five self-confessed proxy voters in 2017 a duty to scrutinise suspicious donations to find out and the ACA’s discovery of donors who were on where the money came from. welfare in 2012. “This has never been done and there is no plausible Political interference? excuse for the failure of the prosecutor’s office to do so,” he said. Asked about the agency’s three-year delay in In Serbia, public prosecutors are nominated by the submitting the report about the 2014 election to government and confirmed by parliament, meaning prosecutors, Bozo Draskovic, a former ACA board their election depends on the ruling majority. They Katica Janeva - Lence Ristoska member, blamed “political influence”. - SJO - press conference serve terms of up to six years and can be re-elected Photo: BIRN “Bear in mind that people in the ACA take their almost indefinitely. cue from the board,” he said. “If the board is Unique in the region, the system is a “political independent, it would put pressure on the director process par excellence” that opens the door to In 2012, the agency flagged 33 donations to the party The agency suspected the donations were “actually and others to get the job done, but if it’s under obstruction of justice, said Radovan Lazic, president from people who were on state benefits, according to from illegal activities, among others money laundering”, political influence, people risk losing their job. of the board of Serbia’s guild of prosecutors. a report it published on its website after the election. it said in the report, seen exclusively by BIRN. That’s the essence of the whole thing. And then they delay, in my experience.” “If prosecutors know they will after a certain period “Certain contributions of these people amount to The ACA’s report also highlighted two suspicious of time be elected again by politicians, they have no 50 per cent or more of yearly welfare received,” bank transfers to other parties, one worth 5,600 Jelena Djordjevic, an adviser at the ACA’s Department reason to find fault with them,” he said. “A prosecutor the agency said, triggering speculation that the euros to the Socialist Party of Serbia and one worth for the Control of Financial Statements of Political is even quite motivated not to find fault so he can get oddly munificent welfare recipients were actually 690 euros to the United Regions of Serbia. The Subjects, said the agency had no power to investigate a new mandate.” surrogates for secret donors.

BIRN’s investigation revealed the agency also had serious concerns about the 2014 campaign after a tip- Allegations in Montenegro off from a separate state body, the Administration for Allegations of money laundering of overshadowed by an alleged Russian- Critics say prosecutors are less eager after an anti-corruption group the Prevention of Money Laundering, responsible campaign cash have long blighted backed coup plot and deep divisions to investigate allegations of similar called MANS filed a criminal charge for financial intelligence. politics in Montenegro, where the ruling over Montenegro’s path to NATO money laundering by the ruling against the party for possible Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, have membership, which it achieved in June. DPS, which is still led by Djukanovic money laundering. Four days after the election, the ACA learned held power for more than two decades although he stepped down as prime Prosecutors are investigating Five years later, nothing has come of of 135 bank transactions in which people had under the leadership of Milo Djukanovic. minister last October. deposited 40,000 dinars into their accounts and opposition leaders for possible the case. The special state prosecutor’s immediately transferred the same amount to the Critics describe Serbia’s tiny neighbour and involvement in the alleged coup. In 2011, local media published the office declined to comment. EU hopeful as a fiefdom run by political names of people who denied they had Progressives as donations. They are also looking into allegations Meanwhile, the allegations have not elites. They accuse the DPS of misuse of given money to the DPS although their that Nebojsa Medojevic, leader of discouraged donors from giving to the Almost three years later, in March, the ACA submitted state funds, abuse of office, election fraud names appeared on the State Election the main opposition alliance, the DPS. In the 2016 election, individual a report to prosecutors urging them to launch criminal and vote-buying, all denied by the party. Commission’s list of donors. Democratic Front, laundered money to donations accounted for half of the proceedings in relation to the transactions, worth In October 2016, the DPS scored its finance the coalition during the 2016 Prosecutors started investigating party’s campaign war chest, amounting some 46,000 euros. seventh straight victory in elections election, which he denies. the case in early 2012, but only to some 680,000 euros.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 52 / fellowship.birn.eu.com then Prime Minister and leader of the ruling party In June, the SJO indicted Gruevski and close known by the acronym VMRO DPMNE. associates for election fraud. The former prime minister, who resigned in early 2016 but remained It was at the height of months of unrest dubbed the party leader, could face 27 years in prison if found “colourful revolution” after the paint demonstrators guilty on all charges. splattered on public buildings and monuments. Investigations into money laundering continue, Fury erupted in 2015 after opposition leader Zoran although the window to issue new indictments has Zaev claimed Gruevski’s government was behind closed. Under the agreement that led to its creation, the illegal wiretapping of 20,000 people and other the SJO had 18 months from the receipt of wiretaps to crimes including election fraud, which Gruevski raise indictments. The deadline expired on June 30. denies. There are now calls for the SJO to be integrated Among other things, the SJO is investigating into the public prosecutor’s office so work can allegations that Gruevski and 10 associates financed continue unfettered by the terms of the agreement. the former ruling party through money laundering. Back in Belgrade, Lazic from the guild of Codenamed “Talir” [silver coin], the money- prosecutors said the odds were stacked against laundering investigations cover the period 2009- prosecutors in Serbia asserting their independence 2015. Prosecutors suspect the party laundered at any time soon. least five million euros using fake donors. “I think it’s hard to draw lessons [from Macedonia] Transparency Macedonia had repeatedly highlighted because the situation here is that politicians are concerns about money-laundering to prosecutors, the untouchable while they are in power,” he said. state auditor and tax authorities. Nobody took action, “They also [prosecutors in Macedonia] raised partly because people whose names turned up on donor those indictments only when Gruevski was no lists refused to confirm they had been part of scams. A riot policeman stands by a building in Skopje splattered with paint longer in power.” during Macedonia’s “colourful revolution” in 2015. Anger over allegations of abuse of power eventually brought down the government. “People were reluctant to stand up in public for fear Photo: BIRN of losing jobs, or their shops being closed down or Reporters Roadmap [of being] punished in other ways,” Slagjana Taseva, Serbia is ranked 118th out of 137 countries in terms working late at the office of the new Special Prosecution, president of the anti-corruption group, said. “Their of judicial independence on the World Economic SJO, set up to investigate high-level crime. rule was the rule of fear, literally.” Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Index, just below Bosnia, Mauritania and Mozambique. They heard a commotion outside and went to the Meanwhile, the SJO faced resistance from other state window. These were unsettling times in Macedonia. bodies, prosecutor Ristoska said, including delays World Bank analysis in 2014 showed that 25 per cent The SJO had been created as part of an EU-brokered in delivering requested data and the shredding of of judges and 33 per cent of prosecutors in Serbia crisis agreement following a wiretapping scandal that archived documents. thought the justice system was not independent. had paralysed the country. Out of 20 requests to judges to keep suspects When prosecutors They saw a crowd of people shouting: “Bravo!” and in custody, only two were approved, though are independent... “Way to go!” such requests are usually routine. Skopje Across the border in Macedonia, prosecutors know “It was so encouraging to see that somebody finally “I was ready for anything, but I simply a thing or two about political interference. But some took notice and recognised that what we were doing couldn’t believe that my colleagues, judges are biting back, and graft fighters say their example was the right thing, that we were not alone in this,” or prosecutors, would take so much liberty in offers inspiration for anti-corruption investigators Ristoska said. “That’s when we realised there was their interpretations of the law, simply to justify Belgrade in Serbia and elsewhere. no going back for us.” their wrongful decisions,” she said. “That was a huge disappointment for me.” In Skopje, public prosecutor Lence Ristoska recalled The people outside the window were protesters one night in 2016 when she and colleagues were demanding the resignation of Nikola Gruevski, But the special prosecutors pressed on.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 53 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Zdravko Ljubas Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade

Photo: Care International

he divorce was scrappy but the battle lines “It was especially difficult when I’d take him back were clear. He wanted unfettered access to his to his mother … and he would cry and say, ‘Daddy, Access Denied: Ttwo-year-old son, who lived with his ex-wife don’t go,’” said the father, 35, who is unemployed. 10 minutes away by foot in the central Bosnian city of “Then two months ago, she started to coach him.” Zenica. She wanted him out of the boy’s life entirely. Divorced Dads He used a cell phone to record a video in which the In the end, they begrudgingly agreed a compromise: boy is seen sitting on a plastic tricycle with a smile the father would see the boy for four hours every on his face, saying in a sing-song voice, “I don’t Fight for Kids Wednesday and two full days every second weekend. want to go to Daddy, I don’t want to go to Daddy.’” But soon, the boy’s mother started reneging on In the recording, the father is heard asking: “Who Courts in the Balkans usually side with mothers in the deal, according to the father who declined told you to say that?” child custody cases. Now some fathers are fighting to be identified. Despite the proximity of their the system. Kids are caught in the crossfire. apartments, he often waited weeks to see his son. “Mama did,” the boy replies.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 54 / fellowship.birn.eu.com In his view, this was a classic case of Malicious Parent Syndrome, a pattern of behaviour described “A child needs both by psychologists in which one parent tries to turn a mother and father” child against the other after a hostile breakup. Child psychologist Gordana Buljan Flander It was not possible to contact the mother to hear her side of the story.

In a country where family courts do not recognise joint custody of children as an option, the father says he is trying to get social workers to intervene to make sure he can see his son — though he says what he really needs is a legal remedy. parenting. The country’s Agency for Gender “What I want most is equal or joint custody like in Equality estimated in 2015 that one in five families the West, but that could only happen if the system had experienced domestic violence. In most cases, were changed,” he said. “Now I’m trying to get as the perpetrators are men. much time as I can and I’d be so happy if I could get But psychologists say some centres for social work every weekend with my son.” have failed to adapt to changes in society, with more The man is one of thousands of fathers in Bosnia and more men defying macho stereotypes to assume and neighbouring countries who fathers’ rights the mantle of caregivers. groups say have been cut out of big parts of their Whatever the broader changes in society, fathers children’s lives after acrimonious split-ups. are overwhelmingly the losers when it comes to Mothers tend to get sole custody almost by default, A father and son pose for the camera as they tend a barbecue. Like the image above, child custody, according to data from the statistics this photo was part of an exhibition and campaign organised by aid group Care bureaus of Bosnia’s two ethnic entities, the Muslim- say activists, lawyers and child welfare experts, International to encourage Bosnian fathers to play a more active parenting role blaming a traditional mindset that views women Photo: Care International Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and as best suited to parenting. They also say social the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska. services are often stretched too thinly to fully probe “For me, the only acceptable thing was to continue he didn’t want to see me, but I was never sure what Across both entities in 2016, mothers got custody the circumstances of individual cases. to fight, to find out where they are and to somehow was true because I only had her words to go by.” in 77 per cent of divorces involving couples with But some fathers are fighting back, arguing that reach the children and contact them,” said Samir, a children. Then one day in May 2012, he rang the doorbell sole custody hurts children and infringes on rights father in Sarajevo who asked to be identified only by of his ex-wife’s apartment. No one answered. He Most of those decisions were made by family courts enshrined in European law and international his first name. called the police, who discovered the property had acting on the advice of social workers who interview conventions. Samir has not seen his 13-year-old son and eight- been vacated. parents and occasionally recommend psychological year-old daughter for five years. testing. It turned out she had whisked the kids away to After his divorce in 2009, he says his ex-wife started Sweden, where she has citizenship dating back to In six per cent of divorces involving children, thwarting his court-approved visits with his son: her years as a refugee from Bosnia’s 1992-1995 parents came to some kind of informal agreement two hours during the week and the whole of every conflict. on shared custody, data from the statistics bureaus second weekend. showed. “They left without warning, without an explanation “They left without warning, Nothing was set in stone for his daughter due to or a message or anything,” he said. “It was as if they Unlike in many European countries, Bosnian family her age at the time; Bosnian courts only arbitrate on simply disappeared.” law does not formally recognise joint custody, which without an explanation or a visits with children over the age of three. allows mothers and fathers to share responsibility No joint custody for childcare and parental decisions. message or anything” “She [his former wife] was always finding a way, saying the boy had homework, he was ‘sick’ or he Samir, who says he has not seen his son In fiercely macho Bosnia, it comes as no surprise “When it comes to joint custody, I’d be very careful and daughter for five years was busy playing,” he said. “Then she started saying that social workers find many fathers unfit for with that,” said Aleksandra Marin-Diklic, head of

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 55 / fellowship.birn.eu.com the department for protection of children’s rights at Bosnia’s human rights ombudsman. “I wouldn’t wish it on even my worst enemy” Oliver Canic, founder of the Association for Equal Parenthood, on dealing with social workers “We don’t have a particular position, but as an institution, if we got involved in the issue, we would certainly ask the opinion of academics, family law professionals and certainly those directly involved in The father in Zenica who is fighting for more time of children in Croatia whose parents got divorced working with the people, namely staff of the centre with his son said international instruments like ended up with their mothers, according to the state for social work.” these did little to sway social workers when he made statistics bureau. his case for shared custody. Click to enlarge Just over three per cent ended up in the custody of Child psychologists say authorities may mean well “I argued that such practice is usual in normal both parents. European states that pay attention to human rights,” but are sometimes ill-informed when it comes to “My experience with the social protection service deciding what is best for children. he said. “They stopped me right there, saying it would be impossible, so that was that.” and the court [in Croatia] is such that I wouldn’t “Some ‘experts’ ask me if it’s good for a child to wish it on even my worst enemy,” said Oliver Canic, have two families, as they believe a child should Double standards founder of a fathers’ group in Zagreb called the Association for Equal Parenthood. have only one family from which to explore the Asked if social workers tended to favour mothers world,” said Gordana Buljan Flander, a psychologist in custody disputes, Adnan Podzo, director of the and director of a children’s welfare clinic in Zagreb, Cantonal Social Protection Centre in Sarajevo, said who often lectures in Sarajevo. simply: “The decision on who gets custody is made “The best interest of a child after parents decide by the court, based on recommendations by the to divorce is to have, as much as possible, as Social Protection Centre.” Aleksandra Marin-Diklic, head of children’s equally as possible, both parents, even if they’re rights at Bosnia’s ombudsman, sits at her desk In 2016, the department for the protection of not perfect. When we talk about the rights of a under posters reading “We make decisions in the best interest of children” and “I have rights”. children’s rights at Bosnia’s ombudsman received Photo: Care International child, a child has the right to family. When we 139 complaints, mostly related to rancorous divorces, talk about the needs of a child, a child needs both according to the ombudsman’s latest annual report. mother and father.” Resolution 2079 calls on countries to guarantee “each parent the right to be informed and to have a Many accused social workers of being biased, taking Jasna Bajraktarevic, a prominent Sarajevo-based say in important decisions affecting their child’s life too long or failing to take into account the specific psychologist, agreed. and development, in the best interests of the child”. circumstances of individual cases, according to department head Marin-Diklic. “Children absolutely need both parents,” she said. ‘Children suffer most’ “We shouldn’t be thinking in terms of what fathers “In most cases, children’s rights are infringed Dejan Visekruna, founder of the Tata association, It also requires states to “introduce into their can do or what mothers can do, but for sure, children upon by the parents, but also by the slowness and pours over papers at his office in Belgrade. laws the principle of shared residence following a On his desk is a 468-page set of recommendations need both parents, regardless of whether they make inefficiency of the system,” she said. “In the end, for reforming Serbian family law. separation” and to “respect the right of children to Photo: Zdravko Ljubas a family or are divorced.” children always suffer the most.” be heard in all matters that affect them”. In 1993, Bosnia ratified the UN Convention on Fathers express similar resentments in other Canic said custody decisions were full of double the Rights of the Child, which states that children former Yugoslav republics with similar language standards. whose parents do not live together have the right to and culture: Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. stay in contact with both parents, unless it might “If fathers have jobs, they’re often deemed too hurt them. In Croatia, the EU’s newest member, family law busy to look after children,” he said. “If they’re “They stopped me right there, allows joint custody — but courts still tend to favour unemployed, they’re not seen as stable providers.” The parliamentary assembly of the Council of mothers as sole custodians. Europe, which upholds human rights and the rule saying it would be impossible” Meanwhile, mothers with jobs are often not of law across 47 member states including Bosnia, A Bosnian father fighting Between November 2013 and November 2014, the penalised while those who are unemployed are seen passed a resolution in 2015 on fathers’ rights. for more time with his son latest period for which data is available, 86 per cent as having plenty of time for kids, he said.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 56 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Reporters Roadmap Serbian family law also recognises joint custody, Working with lawyers, Tata has come up with a 468- though courts rarely grant it. page set of recommendations for reforming Serbian family law, including ways to make the custody Serbia has no central data source on divorce cases, process more efficient and equitable. but research into court rulings by a Belgrade- based fathers’ rights group called Tata suggests “Scandinavia has a different approach,” he said. that mothers get custody in up to 95 per cent of “The basic system there is that children spend one acrimonious divorces. week with mother, one week with father … Swedes started it in the ‘80s, through the emancipation of “As a society, we simply believe that the mother women in society. is the parent in charge of raising children,” Zagreb Belgrade said Tata founder Dejan Visekruna, adding “At some point, with the development of gender that most people see the role of fathers as issues, they decided everyone should be equal, limited to spending some time with kids and so they equalised the position of men and women paying alimony. in divorces, giving them the same rights and obligations, even over custody of children.” At the Tata office in central Belgrade, Visekruna’s phone rang repeatedly. Fathers were Bosnia has no fathers’ organisation equivalent calling for legal advice, to book appointments or to Tata in Belgrade or the Association for Equal Sarajevo simply to let off steam. Parenthood in Zagreb.

Visekruna, a 45-year-old former physician who has Which leaves Samir, whose former wife took his experience fighting for custody of his own son, children to Sweden, with little support as he offered reassurance and practical advice. On his reconciles himself to life without his kids. desk was a cup bearing the names of children whom Tata fathers are fighting for. “I love my children whether they are with their mother or with me,” he said. “I wish them all the Under existing family law, joint custody is only best, as every parent would, but the fact that they possible if both parents agree to it. The Association are not with me is not my decision.” for Equal Parenthood is proposing changes to the legislation so courts can grant shared custody based on a request from just one parent.

Psycho-sociologist Bruno Simlesa said the problem boils down to deep-seated attitudes toward gender roles.

“The prevailing opinion in Croatia, but also other countries in this region, is that caring for children is emasculating,” he said. “People believe that real men don’t go to their kid’s school recital. Real men earn money and discipline their kids when needed.”

Scandinavian model

In Montenegro, children went to mothers in 80 per cent of divorces in 2016, data from the statistics bureau showed. That compared with around seven per cent Jovan, Sara, Nikola, Ivana, Goran, Filip, Marija... Names of children involved in custody disputes adorn a cup at who went to fathers and a similar proportion who ended the Tata office in Belgrade. up in joint custody, which Montenegrin law allows for. Photo: Zdravko Ljubas

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 57 / fellowship.birn.eu.com About The Programme Partners

ERSTE Foundation The Balkan news media are increasingly required to report on complex reform issues with regional and European dimensions. Regional journalists, however, are In 2003, ERSTE Foundation evolved out of the Erste Oesterreichische Spar-Casse, underprepared to tackle these issues, lacking resources for appropriate training or the first Austrian savings bank. Being one of Erste Group’s shareholders, ERSTE the funding necessary for in-depth cross-border reporting. Foundation invests its dividends in social development projects in Austria and Central and South Eastern Europe. It supports social participation and civil-society To tackle these obstacles, Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was engagement; it aims to bring people together and disseminate knowledge of the recent established in 2007. history of a region that has been undergoing dramatic changes since 1989. As an active The fellowship takes an international approach and is designed to support quality foundation, it develops its own projects within the framework of three programmes: reporting, initiate regional networking among journalists and to advance balanced Social Development, Culture and Europe. coverage of topics that are of key interest in the region and the European Union (EU). www.erstestiftung.org Each year, ten Balkan journalists are selected to take part. Successful applicants receive both editorial back-up and the financial assistance necessary to produce Open Society Foundations the articles. This ensures participants can travel to research their topic, conduct interviews in person, and broaden their understanding of cross-border The network of Open Society Foundations (OSF) is a grantmaking operation founded phenomenon so that their final stories meet the highest journalistic standards of by George Soros in 1993, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic accuracy and balance. governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. On a local level, OSF implements a range of initiatives to support the rule of law, education, public Fellows must be available to attend seminars and editorial sessions during the health, and independent media. At the same time, OSF works to build alliances across course of the programme. Participants are expected to complete 2,000-word borders and continents on issues such as combating corruption and rights abuses. stories, which will be subject to international-style editorial processes and One of the aims of the OSF is the development of civil society organizations (e.g., which showcase top-quality journalism with a cross-border reporting angle. The charities and community groups) to encourage participation in democracy and society. final articles are disseminated in local languages, English and German and are http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/ republished in the Balkans and beyond.

The coverage of themes crucial to the development of the Balkans and its BIRN integration within the EU is central to the programme. The fellowship sets high The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) is a regional media standards for Southeastern European journalism and helps the industry to focus development organisation, working with Balkan journalists to produce reports on the challenges posed by EU-oriented reforms and to improve understanding on a variety of political, economic and social issues. Its member organisations among Balkan nations, the wider region and the union. throughout the region run a range of training and public debate projects to enhance the capacity and impact of analytical and investigative journalism. Together, they produce Balkan Insight, the leading publication covering the region’s path to Europe. www.birn.eu.com

Media Partners

Prominent German, Austrian and Swiss newspapers, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Standard and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, are media partners of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme. Besides being involved in the selection committee, they actively participate in seminars, support fellows if needed and seek to republish the best articles produced by them. www.sueddeutsche.de http://derstandard.at www.nzz.ch

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 58 / fellowship.birn.eu.com Biographies of Fellows

Alexia Benjamin Dimitar Ivan Milos Octavian Shqipe Tamara Vladimir Zdravko Tsagkari is Arifi is a young Iliev is an Cadjenovic Stanic is a Coman is Gjocaj is a Opacic is an Kostic is Ljubas is a freelance Macedonian award-winning has worked for journalist for a Romanian blogger and executive editor freelance a Bosnian reporter and TV journalist Sofia-based five years as a Serbian daily multimedia feminist activist at Novosti investigative journalist who video journalist working as a reporter known journalist at Blic and a journalist based in Kosovo. She weekly in journalist has worked for based in Athens. news editor and for investigating Montenegrin contributor to in Bucharest. is a regular Zagreb, Croatia. specialising in news agencies She aims to political show organised daily newspaper VOICE, a centre Since 2010, contributor As a journalist, public financing, including AFP, put questions moderator for crime, financial and web for research he has been to Prishtina she focuses on corruption and DPA, BiH Press surrounding TV SHENJA. affairs and arms portal Vijesti. and analysis working as Insight and human rights, crime. Vladimir as well as TV gender, social He is also a and cigarette He writes in Vojvodina. a freelancer, Sbunker where social issues and has won many broadcasters exclusion, member of the smuggling. about society, Specialising focusing on she writes on civil society. journalistic such as BBC, minorities and managerial He leads the education and in crime and social issues and gender, women’s awards ITN, CBS, mental health board of the investigations ecological corruption, he human interest empowerment including France 24, Swiss into geopolitical Association of department issues. is a member of stories. and human European Press TV and FACE context. Journalists in at Bulgaria’s the Independent rights. Prize in category TV in Sarajevo. Macedonia. Standart News. Journalists of investigative He is now a Association of journalism. Deutsche Welle Vojvodina. correspondent.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2017 / 59 / fellowship.birn.eu.com