The decision of the Swiss foundation Reichard von Grafenreid to reward the aforementioned TV news is scandalous, to say the least, because it imposes an opinion on the Western public about a criminal who "exists" for a crime that has not been proven.
 |
| Illustration: Ivan Maksimović |
As in the anti-Serbian narrative that reigned in the media in the 90s, it seems that it is still enough to say "Serbia" and thereby justify any evil intention. The desire to do what I can to prevent it, as well as the consequences that will arise if it happens, made me contact the mentioned foundation directly and finally start my personal website after a long time of hesitation.
Below is the complete letter translated into English (thanks to everyone who worked on the translation and helped), and it is expected that a version in German will be sent within the day as it is a German-speaking area in Switzerland.
Responding to The Reinhardt von Graffenried Foundation's decision to award a TV report by journalist Peter Balzli
The television video clip of Swiss journalist Peter Balzli about the alleged state's project of "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians from the south of Serbia is surprising and horrifying since it was not done professionally, not only because of the crucial omissions where there shouldn't be any, but also because of the imposed, artificial narrative where a journalist would have to refrain from comments instead of being biased and where only facts should be known.
Swiss Press Award Ceremony April 26, 6PM live on https://t.co/LxO9LpBcAh Nominee Peter Balzli on his story about Ethnic Cleansing by Law in Southern Serbia #film by #rolandlanz @PeterBalzli @srfnews #swisspressaward24 #journalism #video #swisspressvideo #serbia #EthnicCleansing… pic.twitter.com/rbb9OOZrMH
— Swiss Press Award (@SwissPressAward) April 17, 2024
What is more shocking is that this very TV contribution is going to be awarded by The Reinhardt von Graffenried Foundation, which promotes, as they like to say, "the most exceptional of Swiss journalism"!
We were utterly convinced that the time of the mean and superficial anti-Serbian propagandistic media scams was far behind us, that they belonged to the inglorious and dark past of the Western powers who used it as a justification for everything they wanted to obtain and did obtain breaking their laws, and which had no justification at all. That "snake" that darts its tongue in and out, eager for fresh blood, anyone's blood, as long as it serves as a reasonable justification for the powerful to bring on another war and additionally destroy the country, Serbia, which they have almost destroyed in every way, and most of all by killing every democratic process, is not a thing of the past at all. On the contrary, right here we are facing one of those threats again, a threat that this 'peace of work' will also be awarded! That could easily be the spark thrown at a barrel of gunpowder, which will cause the blood of the victims to fall on the hands of Western journalists, once again.
Many can turn their head away, and many do just that - turn their head away from the fact that Albanians are in the decades-long offensive movement against the Serbs, without anyone feeling the need to examine the reasons for such an attitude. That's what propaganda is very clearly and precisely oriented at, and it is the only instruction followed in reporting on this never-ending conflict. That is also a reason why Albanians who live on Serbian land are blindly supported in whatever they do.
Let's move on to the main thing. What's wrong with this story?
We see some of that already at the very beginning. Peter, in his TV report, featured Albanian cameraman Kushtrim Kadriu. My almost two-decades-long, first-hand experience reporting events on Kosovo for the Western media has taught me that you must wonder - what is the issue? Does that sound like a funny or provocative question to you? – Why was the story not done in cooperation with a Serbian journalist? Now, you may say that, in that case, this story "would not have been objective." As a wholly independent journalist who bases his views exclusively on facts and not personal desire or national enthusiasm, I can freely and justifiably say that an Albanian journalist working on a story of an Albanian national interest aimed at the Western media can not be "objective." Appropriation of the Southern Serbian cultural and historical heritage, after politically and legally problematic 'events,' to say the least, is one of the top priorities of Albanian national policy. It can be proved quickly that "the truth is the first victim," even in this case.
TV report of these two journalists begins with the story of the protests in Belgrade and accusations of election theft. Immediately after, a journalist moves to the terrain of Preševo, where it is claimed without any doubt that "in the south of Serbia, they have Albanians deleted from the registry without notifications, which means, among other things, they have lost the right to vote."
The interlocutor that Peter found, Albanian Aljime Bejići, speaks about being allegedly deleted from the register, and that's why she couldn't have any rights. How is this journalist proving this claim to us in a story that is not at all naive but deliberately invented to accuse Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' of the Albanian minority? Her story is the only "evidence" we have for it. To heighten the drama, the journalist claims "even worse" circumstances - Aljime has cancer. Hence, since being deleted from the civil registry, she no longer has health insurance. At the same time, we see a man beside her, turning over some papers in his hands, but we never get to see what they are, what is written there, and how they corroborate her story. If proof was in those papers, why did the journalist miss the opportunity to guide us through them and show them to us? Of course, he should have, but he didn't. He wants the viewer to believe what he intends to impose on us as "truth."
And, I repeat, this is not a story about the functioning of the public service at the local level; it becomes a story that accuses Serbia of a crime of ethnic cleansing! Is the anti-Serb propaganda so powerful that anything can be said about Serbs without any evidence? This story clearly shows us that no additional evidence is needed, and the fact that it could be rewarded shows us that the consequences of such reporting will contribute to new bloodshed.
The next interlocutor is shown in a more naive way.
Haki Emin, in turn, "loses his house: by being erased (from the registry) not only his right to vote is revoked, but also his right to own and sell property or land," the narrator informs us. For that, the camera follows Haki, who leads us to his stable built of solid material, which would not be built by someone facing ethnic cleansing, and shows that he keeps two cows. In today's conditions, raising livestock in households is a real rarity.
Now, Peter personally, addressing the camera directly, tries to unobtrusively and convincingly convince us that all this is true. However, if we consider what he is saying, the attempt is completely unsuccessful.
"My cameraman in Kosovo, Kushtri Kadriu, told me about this, and he has been telling me for years this story, and I thought to myself: This can't happen, no in a country that wants to join the EU. But THEN HE FOUND THESE VICTIMS, and WE COULD HAVE INTERVIEWED THEM just before the election, and the extent of this 'ethnic cleansing,' as the Albanians there call it, is far greater than I could have imagined."
So, we have a case where an Albanian has been telling a journalist for years about the fact that the government of Serbia is carrying out 'ethnic cleansing' of Albanians, which turns out to be even "far greater than he can imagine" but it also took years to "find "victims" of that enterprise – two of them.
Of course, everything is subject to doubt. To me, who has known Albanians my entire life, their stories are well-known, and their true goal is no mystery – it is only and solely to blame the Serbs and nothing else. They can hide everything important and highlight only one detail that will be a "whole" story and such, that it will make a victim out of a murderer. Such was the case with an Albanian in Kosovska Mitrovica who told me about how Albanians are especially upset when, after the army (then still JNA or Yugoslav People's Army) served, a Kosovo Albanian serving his military service in Paraćin, committed suicide. As he says, it was something over the top that they could not overcome. What he was silent about was the Paračin massacre on September 3, 1987, something after 3 a.m., when in the JNA "Branko Krsmanović" barracks, soldier Aziz Keljmendi, an Albanian from Kosovo and Metohija, shot from an automatic rifle in the dormitory of the barracks killing four soldiers while sleeping and wounded five. Two of the dead soldiers were from Bosnia and Herzegovina, one from Croatia, and one from Serbia.
The Albanian who mentioned this case to me entirely omitted this crime committed by a soldier and characterized the suicide event as a consequence of Serbian rage.
And that's not just my experience. Many will confirm this, and some already did, like Mary Walsh, a member of the International Civilian Mission in Kosovo and Metohija, who described the following event in her memoirs:
"However, on August 24, on the way from Skopje to Priština, I was informed in detail about what happened recently in the villages we passed by. Only later did I realize that the Serbian defense forces could not destroy the burnt villages along our road from Skopje to Pristina, as our driver claimed it - a member of the Albanian nationality - out of the blue, the reason that those forces withdrew almost ten weeks earlier. Houses were still burning in the villages we passed.
Later, when I got to know Kosmet a little better, I found out that all those houses, without exception, were Serbian, and some of them were Romas, and that the KLA burned them. This experience of mine was repeated several times: the drivers, all of them Albanian, would show us the destroyed villages in detail, describing the crimes they suffered from the Serbs, only later it turned out that the destroyed villages were Serbian. In the village of Dolac, close to Klina, there was a medieval monastery and a church above it. Whenever we passed by Dolac, every driver would, without exception, point to that poor Albanian village and the mosque that was destroyed by Serbian military forces. However, I found out later that Dolac was a Serbian village, and there was never a mosque in it."
Among more critical cases, I will also mention the violence on March 17, 2004. That's when an Albanian boy lied about two other Albanian boys who had drowned in the Ibar River, accusing Serbs of chasing them with dogs, and thus they ran into the river in fear and drowned. UNMIK police quickly established that there was no persecution, no dogs, and no Serbs in the area. However, this false accusation incited the literal massacre of Serbs led by Kosovo Albanians in which 50,000 KLA thugs participated, causing 19 people to be killed, over 4,000 Serbs expelled, and 5000 Serbian houses and apartments burned or destroyed. As many as 35 Serbian churches were mined or more seriously damaged, and monasteries and numerous Serbian Orthodox cemeteries were desecrated. Six cities and nine villages were ethnically cleansed from Serbs. To this day, they are not allowed to return to their land and homes, like none of the 250,000 Serbs exiled upon entry of KFOR to Kosovo and Metohija. I don't know because the language barrier prevents me from following. Still, I believe that your award-winning journalist has never made a single TV program about this, nor the fate of the exiled and the families of the victims.
Speaking of which, let's get back to Peter's story.
Trying to show us the extent of "ethnic cleansing" about which he speaks, Peter goes to the local representative at the United Nations Human Rights Council. It's an Albanian again, Belgzim Kamberi, who "informs" us that "80% of those removed from the registries were never notified of that. So you have no way to dispute the decision."
This raises the following questions: How do they know they were removed if they were never informed?
Local Albanians rule the Preševo municipality. How come those Albanians didn't mind something like that happening in their municipality, and how come they have never informed anyone or given any proof that it was committed?
Those Albanians do not support the government in Belgrade anyway; they support separatists of Kosovo, and they repeatedly advocate and mention their readiness to wage war against the state of Serbia, to which they belong. There is something seriously wrong with this story because the journalist did not have a local representative at the authority's interlocutor who would wholeheartedly support his story if the story was true at all.
Another question arising from Kamberi's statement is no less important- if 80% of them were never informed about the deletion from registers, that would mean that 20% of them were notified. That percentage of 8,000, as they say, there are, is the number of 1,600 people. How is it possible that not even one out of 1600 people informed about their deletion from the registry did not appear as an interlocutor of the journalist in this story of "ethnic cleansing" that he could support by document informing him of this act? Why did searching for interlocutors go for several days, and only two people were found, without any valid evidence for the allegations they made?
For accusations as serious as "ethnic cleansing" implemented by the Serbian state, proof should be professionally documented. And they are not.
What personally offends and terrifies me is the following Kamberi's sentence: "They (Serbia) no longer use weapons against the minority, but legislation and implementation."
I have already said that none of the participants in this story have any concrete evidence to support their claims, but this statement is a brutal manipulation. Of course, you won't hear anything from your award-winning journalist. Namely, what Kamberi mentioned is happening to the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija by the current Albanian authorities. Serbs have been living in the worst inhuman conditions for 25 years and closed in their limited spaces, so-called enclaves, without the opportunity to progress in any sense.
Freedom of movement is limited by Albanian violence against Serbs - there are frequent examples of that violence, which is so strong that no one records verbal provocations. Most often, it is about beatings on the street, with physical attacks on children and the elderly, including several cases of severe injuries and even attempted murder, both by Albanian civilians and by their police. Attacks on property in the form of arson or theft happen daily, and they are generally recognized as a type of pressure that should force the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija to leave that area and their homes. However, the institutional methods are the most brutal methods by far.
I will not speak more extensively about the mass terrorization of Serbs by members of the so-called "Kosovo Police" about completely unfounded arrests, for which the so-called "Minister of Interior Affairs" Dželjalj Svećlja uses photos for media outlets. Manipulation and cropping of these photos were so blatant that we could not see that the arrested were standing entirely in the background of the protest, and even though those same photos at the time, uncut, were circulating the internet, they passed as truth. Those arrested spend several months in prison; some have been imprisoned for almost a year. Also, it has become a common practice that Serbs who do not want to sell their properties or those who wish to have their usurped properties returned are being arrested for being pressed to give them up, and it's very effective pressure. It is much worse - Serbs can not achieve any rights. To be able to move, drive their cars, and work, they are forced to have personal documents issued by the current Albanian government in Kosovo and Metohija. The main problem is that the national identity in those documents was changed, so they are no longer Serbs but "Kosovars," and only then can they count on some of their fundamental rights and freedoms like freedom of movement. As Serbs, they cannot achieve a single right before the Albanian institutions in Kosovo.
Peter further concludes that "the displacement policy of the Serbian government works. The number of ethnic Albanians is decreasing. And the responsible are winning the elections in Belgrade."
Politics and intentions that he could not prove with anything -that they work and the number of ethnic Albanians is decreasing. Isn't it one of the essential things to state how many numbers that policy contains? How many Albanians had left the south of Serbia as a result of this "ethnic cleansing"? Why could he not find such a number anywhere, even in the form of an assumption, yet he claims it works?
Also, according to the anti-Serbian model propaganda carried out during the 90s, he, in the last sentence, blames the entire Serbian people for the 'terrible crime' they committed, which, by the way, can not be proved even 25 years after bombing campagne of 1999. And while he keeps silent about the heated atmosphere in Serbia provoked by proven election theft by those he considers responsible, the ruling party, he intentionally does so to reinforce the impression that the official state policy of Serbia is - criminal.
The conclusion is meaningless: "Our contribution suddenly attracted enormous attention and aroused great interest because he exposed the motivation behind this whole disaster that the Republic of Serbia coined."
Aside from the fact that he didn't prove anything and that until the last sentence in his report, no motivation is mentioned, I must add the following: He claimed, while creating this particular TV report, how it already "attracted enormous attention and aroused great interest," even before he went to the editing room and even before it was wrapped up and even before it was aired!? I do not know how to understand this, but to see it as Peter's talent is to see into the future. Even if he was sure it would happen, it was extremely unprofessional to claim it before his report reached the public. Just as it is unprofessional to present suspicions as a crime that he claims exists and yet does not present absolutely no evidence for it. Before stating the following, I must emphasize that as an apolitical and independent journalist in Serbia, where the freedom of the press doesn't rule, I am fiercely persecuted and threatened by the ruling regime. I say this so that you don't think I am defending the government in Serbia. By any means, I am not.
Consider the impact of the Serbian Government's policies on the Albanian population. How would your award-winning journalist explain the gratitude of the mothers from Preševo, which they publicly expressed through the portal in the Albanian language in 2018? This gratitude was for the help they would receive from the State of Serbia through the adopted strategy and measures to stimulate the population policy equally at the level of Preševo, that is, the south of Serbia inhabited by Albanians, as well as other parts of the country.
That strategy envisages mothers being rewarded for every fourth child once with 18,000 euros and then monthly with 18,000 dinars in 10 years. Also, mothers will receive for the first child 100,000 dinars once, 10,000 dinars per month for the second child for two years, and 12,000 dinars will be received for the third child monthly for ten years, and for four, the portal Presheva Jonë writes.
In 2018, in Presevo, mentioned as the South of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić was presented with a certificate of appreciation as the first Serbian prime minister in history to visit Preševo. Officials then visited the newly opened outpatient department maternity hospital in Preševo.
"I am happy that mothers from Preševo and Bujanovac will be giving birth here. More than 500 children will be born here annually," Aleksandar Vučić, then prime minister and today president of Serbia.
Significantly, as part of the Open Balkans initiative, the text of the Agreement on Social Security between Serbia and Albania was harmonized. This development has far-reaching implications for the region.
The text contains provisions on pension and disability insurance, health insurance, and health care, as well as provisions on insurance in case of injury at work and occupational disease, which facilitates access to the labor market and employment of workers from Albania in Serbia.
Gentlemen, does this look to you like the moves of the Serbian Government implementing ethnic cleansing of Albanians?
Do you think Peter Balzli's TV show deserves to be awarded as something "most exceptional in Swiss journalism"?
I repeat, and you no longer have any doubt about it, that what we are talking about here is propaganda content and not journalism at all!
And I want to emphasize this: I am not against reporting such problems if they exist!
As a Serbian-born in Kosovo and Metohija and who lives in Kosovo and Metohija, I know very well what it's like to be disenfranchised; I've been living precisely like that for more than 25 years now. I am aware and feel in my own skin and know how important it is that elementary human rights exist in our environment and that they must not be endangered! But abuse and propaganda lead to the opposite, into new conflicts and new bloodshed that must not happen. It must not be encouraged in this way, rewarding such reports.
I understand that the jury's decision is irrevocable, but it should also be applied only to journalists who adhere to journalistic ethics and perform their work professionally, not in cases when unjustified and even amateurish anti-state propaganda is conducted.
It is crucial to understand that this TV-report does not meet the standards of journalism and should not be considered for journalism awards. Therefore, the most appropriate action is to reject the video-contribution by Peter Balzli from the award ceremony. This decision will demonstrate our commitment to professional journalism and our refusal to endorse cheap and malicious propaganda.
Yours sincerely
Ivan Maksimović, Independent journalist
