Human Rights Regressing in Many Balkan Countries – Amnesty Report

As a number of Western Balkan countries join the global trend toward authoritarianism, human rights are suffering, the latest Amnesty International report warns.

A young female protestor blows a whistle and holds a cardboard by Amnesty International reading ‘Free media cannot be silenced’ near the Turkish embassy in Berlin, Germany, 03 May 2017. Photo: EPA/CLEMENS BILAN

A draft law in Serbia aims to allow the authorities to use both public and private CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology for the remote identification of citizens, raising concerns about mass surveillance of people during public assemblies or protests.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the assembly of the country’s Serb-led entity Republika Srpska has passed a law making defamation a crime punishable with a fine of up to 1,500 euros.

Romania’s parliament adopted a law increasing criminal penalties for acts of “outrage” against public officials and “disturbing of public order and peace”, among other offences.

In Hungary, some bookshops faced fines for selling books that deal with homosexuality in their youth sections and for failing to sell them in closed packaging.

These are some of the steps being taken in the wrong direction noted by rights watchdog Amnesty International in its latest yearly report on the “State of the World’s Human Rights”, published on Wednesday.

Worldwide, Amnesty says, freedom is under attack and authoritarian practices are on the rise. The number of people living in democratic countries is now the lowest since 1985.

Journalists face attacks and lawsuits

The Balkan region seems to be part of the international trend, albeit at a different speed, it says.

Journalists are often victims of this authoritarian tendency across the Balkan region, the report observes, as they became the objects of smear campaigns, strategic lawsuits or SLAPPs, or outright physical attacks in several countries.

In Serbia, independent and investigative journalists and activists faced “threats, vilification and punitive civil proceedings”, the report notes. In Albania, journalists were subjected to hate speech, physical assaults and a gun attack.

The report notes how Mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj referred to a female journalist as “contract killer” following her investigation highlighting his role in a corruption scandal. In March, a security guard was murdered when unknown assailants sprayed bullets at the offices of Top Channel, Albania’s largest private TV station. Police have been unable to identify the authors of the attack or uncover their motives.

In Bosnia, the Journalists’ Association recorded an increase in attacks on journalists, with over 70 cases recorded in 2023, of which only a few were investigated. In Kosovo, journalists also faced “increased hostility”.

In North Macedonia, changes in the law regulating civil liability for insult and defamation reduced fines imposed on journalists. That welcome change, however, failed to curb the growing use of strategic lawsuits or SLAPPs. Journalists in Croatia are facing currently at least 945 SLAPPs, “mostly filed by public officials”.

The report said press freedom in Montenegro had improved, however, as the Appeals Court quashed proceedings against investigative journalist Jovo Martinović, wrongly convicted and imprisoned for drug trafficking.

Gender-based violence is a serious concern

The report highlights that gender-based violence remains a serious concern in Serbia where 27 women were victims of feminicide and in Albania, where 12 women were murdered last year by their partners or family members; in Kosovo, where there were six such deaths.

LGBTI rights remained under attack from religious groups in Serbia and North Macedonia; Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced he would never approve the Law on Same Sex Unions.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was identified as one of the most hostile places in the world for LGBTI people. Albania registered “no progress” in this field.

Rights of refugees increasingly violated

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (R) and Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama (L) shake hands at Chigi Palace in Rome, Italy, 06 November 2023. EPA-EFE/GIUSEPPE LAMI

The Balkans is also becoming a hotspot for refugee rights violations, the report underlines; to the old issue of Greece prosecuting rights activists who help emigrants is added new ones, including the plight of some 35,000 arrivals who were registered, some 2,500 of whom are estimated to be stranded there.

A controversial agreement between Albania PM Edi Rama and his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, to build a camp in Albania to host refugees rescued in international waters in the Mediterranean became the latest concern.

Albania, a country that once exported droves of asylum seekers, agreed to allow Italy to place thousands of migrants there each month in facilities built at Italian taxpayer’s expense.

Costing an estimated 800 million euros, the operation is seen as a political coup for PM Meloni as she tries to reassure her right-wing base that she is acting against illegal emigration – even though the number of these processed in Albania, at just 3,000 per month, is just a faction of the total arrivals – and even though many of those processed in Albania will have to be transferred again to Italy.

Human rights organisations and others have expressed concern about the wider impact this could have on the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, including automatic and therefore arbitrary detention.