INTERNATIONAL PRESS INSTITUTE

EXCERPTS FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT ON PRESS FREEDOM

1999 World Press Freedom Review

Kosovo

After a long period of repression, the Albanian-language media enjoyed relative protection in the early part of 1999, before the conflict escalated, because of the international community presence. However, during this period the media were still subjected to all kinds of attack.

The federal Law on Public Information was a favoured weapon. On March 22, Koha Ditore was fined 410,000 dinars (37,000 euros) and its editor, Baton Haxhiu, 110,000 dinars (10,000 euros) following a complaint by the Serbian information minister, Alexandar Vucic. The newspaper was accused of "spreading intolerance and hatred among nations and national minorities in Serbia". Later, two other Albanian-language publications, the daily Kosova sot and the fortnightly Gazeta Shqiptare, were each fined 1.6 million dinars (146,000 euros). Kosova sot suspended publication after copies were seized by the police. The daily Bukju was shut down on the grounds that it was "not duly registered under the law", and the daily Rilindja was closed down in early March for "illegal publication".

Most tragically, the spokesman for the Kosovo Information Centre, Enver Maljoku, was murdered on his doorstep on January 11. His murderers have not been brought to justice. Journalists were also the victims of arbitrary police violence and harassment in the pre-airstrike period.

As soon as the Nato airstrikes began, however, the systematic Serbian clampdown on the Albanian-language media began in earnest. Journalists become number one targets for Serbian reprisals. On the night the air raids began, police raided the offices of Koha Ditore. Finding no journalists they killed a security guard and set the printing works on fire. The newspaper's lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, and his two sons were summarily executed by soldiers. Most Albanian journalists, fearing for their lives, fled the country. Others went into hiding. Foreign journalists were harassed, sometimes beaten and tortured, and had their equipment confiscated. Most representatives of international media were sent immediately out of the country. As very few journalists remained, and their lives were in constant danger, it was consequently very difficult to get details of the atrocities that were being committed in Kosovo during the airstrikes.

On June 13, Volker Kramer and Gabriel Gruner from the German magazine Stern, and Senot Alit, their Macedonian interpreter/fixer, were killed. They died from gunshot wounds sustained near Dulje, a village about 40 km south of Pristina. Serb soldiers later tried to keep German soldiers away from the scene of the murders. Doctors diagnosed that a high-speed bullet – probably from a Dragunov-sniper-gun – had killed the three.

After the Kosovo Accord and the Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, journalists began the long process of rebuilding their media outlets. The international community has a mandate under the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The media comes under the auspices of the OSCE, which created the Media Affairs Department.

The International Crisis Group published a report on Kosovo at the end of 1999 which explained that while "Kosovars remain grateful to Nato and the international community for the peace and their new-found freedom from direct Serbian oppression, their faith has been strained of late by the absence of tangible progress despite the international community's overwhelming presence. Many Kosovars' frustration has been aggravated by the feeling that they are not being sufficiently consulted by the international community and that, after a decade of disenfranchisement and apartheid instituted by the Serbs, they are again being shut out of the process of rebuilding their homeland."

The report went on to say that six months into its ambitious mission to secure and rebuild Kosovo, the international community has not been able to deliver on its promises. So far the multi-billion dollar international presence in Kosovo has failed to make Kosovars of any ethnicity feel safe, to provide regularly such basic services as heat, electricity, and water, to deliver sufficient reconstruction materials to areas in urgent need, to establish a functioning court system, or even to begin the population registration so critical for the production of identification documents and voter lists.

The ethnic tensions persist in Kosovo and journalists have in some instances been guilty of propagating the hatred. Hamide Latife, a former Rilindja journalist who has worked extensively representing journalists in Kosovo, feels that the media needs more financial support and extensive training. In particular, she is concerned about the small media outlets that tend not to attract international support. "We have to start at grassroots level to build a truly independent and pluralistic media," she says.

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