Attacks on journalists in Kosovo increased over last year, justice operating

Journalists in their reporting continue to be endangered, being attacked in various ways, physically and otherwise. Even when cases are reported to the police, most of them spend years with no access to justice.

The executive director of the Kosovo Journalists' Association, Getoarba Mulliq-Bojaj, says of KosovoPress, 27 cases of attacks against journalists have been reported since last year.

She says many of the attackers have not yet been brought to justice.

Twenty-seven cases of attacks and threats to journalists have been reported so far. As a figure it might be worth a little bit, but we're talking about a place where there's 800 journalists in AGK membership, where if we talk about 27 people we're talking about a 5% of journalists who are attacked, then of course there are even those cases that are reported only to the police, so there's a disrepution between that of AGK and the police, there are journalists who don't want to go public with cases and report directly to the police. We have two recent cases where we received the report from the police, journalists have wanted to remain anonymous, we know who the journalists are, and police have found their attackers or threats. The most serious case this year, but we can't classify any more because it's all attacks and we're willing not to violate journalists' rights, and the attacks are all attacks, however, but at the beginning of the year we have the journalist Visar Duriqi d.m. in February of this year where we have very unpleasant views even for us it's very disturbing that the attackers or criminals are still not put to justice”, Muliqi-Bojaj added.