Serbia: Wave of lawsuits against investigative portal KRIK chills media freedom

KRIK jour­nal­ist Bojana Pavlović, lawyer Kruna Savović and KRIK edi­tor Ste­van Dojči­nović before the tri­al Pho­to: Ver­an Matić

My first thought was what kind of hell awaits the defen­dants Bojana Pavlović and Ste­van Dojči­nović in the next three years, which I believe will be the dura­tion of the tri­al until the final ver­dict. KRIK has 16 sim­i­lar SLAPP law­suits aimed at intim­i­dat­ing, dis­rupt­ing and, I’m sure, destroy­ing the news­room. In addi­tion, the edi­to­r­i­al office sued tabloids and indi­vid­u­als for defama­tion and lies told about them. 

KRIK SLAPP cases – update (November 2024)

The ques­tion inevitably came to me, how was it for our col­league Daphne Caru­a­na Gal­izia from Mal­ta, with 48 SLAPP process­es that the pow­er­ful led against her, with blocked accounts and harass­ment by every pos­si­ble insti­tu­tion in Mal­ta, with­out the much-need­ed sup­port of the media com­mu­ni­ty. And with no inter­na­tion­al sup­port. Yet with a stronger will to con­tin­ue the inves­ti­ga­tions that exposed crime and cor­rup­tion at the top of the EU mem­ber state. Doing her job accord­ing to jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards, believ­ing in the idea of ​​jus­tice, EU pos­tu­lates and val­ues. The car she got into in front of her house, to go to the bank to solve the block­age of her account, which is impor­tant for the family’s exis­tence, explod­ed from a huge amount of explo­sives placed under it. 

It’s the same feel­ing when it comes to Ján Kuci­ak from Slo­va­kia… The lack of strong sup­port and effec­tive pro­tec­tion cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the vio­lent to make deci­sions involv­ing mur­der. Thus demon­strat­ing the mes­sage of what will hap­pen to any­one who touch­es them. Both inves­ti­ga­tions and court pro­ceed­ings take place in a sim­i­lar atmos­phere. Just as it was in our coun­try in the case of the tri­al of the accused for the mur­der of Slavko Ćuru­vi­ja. Today, the chil­dren of Slavko Ćuru­vi­ja, the founders of the foun­da­tion that bears his name, have become the tar­get of SLAPP law­suits against for­mer defen­dants, who were con­vict­ed twice in the first instance, then acquit­ted by a pan­el of which Judge Djord­je­vić was a mem­ber. 

Unsolved cas­es of threats to KRIK jour­nal­ists were run­ning through my head. Since records have been kept (start­ing with 2016), more than ten cas­es of endan­ger­ing the safe­ty of mem­bers of this news­room have been report­ed to the Supreme Pub­lic Prosecutor’s Office. We had raids on the apart­ments of three mem­bers of the KRIK news­room – those in which val­ues ​​are not tak­en, but sources, data are sought, what is being worked on, what is the next top­ic to be inves­ti­gat­ed… I remem­ber the dis­cus­sions at the Per­ma­nent Work­ing Group for the Safe­ty of Jour­nal­ists, when I insist­ed that the inves­ti­ga­tions be com­bined, look for coin­ci­dences, motives… Noth­ing was done. I remem­ber sub­mit­ting request for the mon­i­tor­ing of two mem­bers of the news­room, we strug­gled for a long time to get the job of check­ing the cam­eras done… Even though the mon­i­tor­ing was reg­is­tered, there were no results. Bojana Pavlović was inter­cept­ed by unknown per­sons (some of whom she iden­ti­fied) and tem­porar­i­ly con­fis­cat­ed her phone dur­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of her work assign­ment. No one suf­fered the con­se­quences. 

And not only is there no jus­tice for these brave and very pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists, but they are the tar­get of a whole series of activ­i­ties aimed at pre­vent­ing and stop­ping their work. 

The impuni­ty of threats and vio­lence against jour­nal­ists encour­ages and embold­ens that vio­lence to con­tin­ue. 

And court pro­ceed­ings against jour­nal­ists for pre­sent­ing facts and pub­lish­ing judg­ments against them sti­fle free­dom of speech and the role of jour­nal­ists as a “watch­dog” of the pub­lic inter­est. 

In the case of KRIK, we have impuni­ty for vio­lence towards the edi­to­r­i­al office, but also active process­es aimed at intim­i­dat­ing and pre­vent­ing them from doing their work. 

We also wit­ness joint activ­i­ties from dif­fer­ent direc­tions, by diverse insti­tu­tions and pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als with the aim for KRIK to be destroyed. 

I real­ly think that there is an ongo­ing cam­paign to silence and destroy KRIK, because the news­room is at the same time fac­ing numer­ous threats, endan­ger­ing the safe­ty of jour­nal­ists, pre­vent­ing nor­mal work, numer­ous SLAPP law­suits, threat­ened penal­ties that are a com­bi­na­tion of high finan­cial, prison sen­tences and bans on jour­nal­is­tic work, and con­stant sataniza­tion with lies and slan­der through tabloids, and very often from the high­est posi­tions of exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive pow­er. All togeth­er it presents a pack­age for shut­ting down this news­room, as well as oth­ers that engage in jour­nal­ism in a sim­i­lar way, inves­ti­gat­ing crime and cor­rup­tion and pub­lish­ing the facts. 

…

When you sit in the court­room, even though it is only a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing, you can eas­i­ly see the nature of the process, the inten­tions and the goals. 

I thought that, at the pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing on the crim­i­nal com­plaint, the plaintiff’s lawyers made an error when they proved the fear of the judge and her hus­band with texts from the Informer, for which, accord­ing to defense lawyer Kruna Savović, Ste­van Dojči­nović sued them. The infor­mant was legal­ly sen­tenced to com­pen­sa­tion for dam­ages and the oblig­a­tion to pub­lish the judg­ment in which the lies were proven. How­ev­er, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the judge and the hus­band also present the same evi­dence in the civ­il pro­ceed­ings, the texts for which the tabloid media and authors were con­vict­ed with the force of law. This kind of behav­ior is coer­cive, because it does not take into account the fact that this argu­ment has already been refut­ed by final judg­ments. It rep­re­sents an addi­tion­al effort to slan­der and dis­cred­it the edi­tor and the news­room and it is anoth­er proof that this is a SLAPP law­suit, because regard­less of the inac­cu­ra­cy of the evi­dence, they are used as con­tent to get addi­tion­al time… More­over, through their rep­re­sen­ta­tive, they say that they were exposed to media lynch­ing, with­out a sin­gle proof, except for that from social net­works, from the words of those who com­ment on the news, with­out any influ­ence and respon­si­bil­i­ty of the KRIK news­room. 

There­fore, the val­ue sys­tem relied on by the judge and her hus­band, the lawyer, is a tabloid lie as evi­dence against jour­nal­ists who have been award­ed numer­ous domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al awards for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ethics. When look­ing at this list of recog­ni­tions, it is impos­si­ble to see any log­ic used by the pros­e­cu­tors. 

List of awards and recog­ni­tions: KRIK team KRIK tim – KRIK

Their rep­re­sen­ta­tive claims that awards are a way of financ­ing such projects, with­out a sin­gle proof, but it addi­tion­al­ly reveals the nature of this law­suit – it needs to be proven that they are for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies, even if they inter­pret pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al awards as a way of financ­ing the work of this news­room. KRIK, by the way, very trans­par­ent­ly presents data on donors and dona­tions. And that is why it is nec­es­sary to com­pro­mise that trans­paren­cy by mak­ing insin­u­a­tions. 

Some­one who is sup­posed to pro­tect leg­is­la­tion and con­sti­tu­tion­al order, relies on the infor­ma­tion of those media who are pun­ished almost on  a dai­ly basis for vio­lat­ing the jour­nal­is­tic code, and against those who con­sis­tent­ly inves­ti­gate the patholo­gies of soci­ety and make them pub­lic. 

The plaintiff’s lawyers are push­ing a the­sis that has not been proven – that the judge and her hus­band, the lawyer, are pre­sent­ed as some­one who acquired prop­er­ty through crime and cor­rup­tion. They them­selves insist on that inten­tion because there is no evi­dence that KRIK accused them of such a thing. 

This is also the rea­son why they oppose the hear­ing of jour­nal­ist Jele­na Radi­vo­je­vić, who wrote the text enti­tled “Judge Who Judges”, accom­pa­ny­ing the data­base, in which there is no state­ment or insin­u­a­tion to that effect. The jour­nal­ist also con­tact­ed the judge, who refused to com­ment on pub­licly avail­able data. Pub­licly avail­able facts were pub­lished, the judge was offered to pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and argu­ments, facts, and Jele­na Radivojević’s com­plete­ly neu­tral text about pub­licly avail­able data was pub­lished. All that is enough evi­dence for the indict­ment to be dis­missed. 

Judge who judges | Dušan­ka Djord­je­vić 

… 

The lawyer of one of the plain­tiffs addi­tion­al­ly accused all the jour­nal­ists who fol­lowed the hear­ing of selec­tive report­ing and of putting pres­sure on the court and of work­ing, togeth­er with the defen­dants, on the col­lapse of the con­sti­tu­tion­al order. 

The lack of evi­dence against KRIK news­room is com­pen­sat­ed by seri­ous accu­sa­tions that the edi­to­r­i­al staff, as well as the jour­nal­ists who report, are work­ing to col­lapse the con­sti­tu­tion­al order. With­out a sin­gle proof. Pro­fes­sion­al reports from the tri­al and texts about all the actors of this tri­al are pro­claimed pres­sure exert­ed on the court. Anoth­er mes­sage is that jour­nal­ists should not report on pros­e­cu­tors and the tri­al itself. 

The reports of Vuk Cvi­jić and Per­i­ca Gun­jić from the tri­al objec­tive­ly con­vey what hap­pened in the court­room and pro­vide very use­ful infor­ma­tion for under­stand­ing this tri­al. 

Crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against KRIK: Tri­al by the facts 

The advo­cates of the law­suit against KRIK pro­pose as evi­dence the text from Informer, for which this tabloid was con­demned

It is very clear how the prosecutor’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the judge and her hus­band, the lawyer, use the deep polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion in soci­ety, with strong rhetoric in which it is nec­es­sary to first stick labels and slan­ders on ene­mies, call­ing them for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies, destroy­ers of the con­sti­tu­tion­al order, because that  would make them an eas­i­er tar­get. And dur­ing the tri­al for the mur­der of Slavko Ćuru­vi­ja, the same qual­i­fi­ca­tions that were used by the Milo­se­vic regime in the nineties could be heard from the defense lawyers, such as׃ trai­tor, for­eign mer­ce­nary…

Bojana Pavlović, Ste­van Dojči­nović and the edi­to­r­i­al staff of KRIK are on tri­al for pub­lish­ing pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion on the web­site of the State Geo­det­ic Insti­tute. In the absence of an argu­ment to crim­i­nal­ize pub­licly avail­able facts, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the law­suit try to prove that the pub­li­ca­tion of these data threat­ens the safe­ty of the judge. And they sub­mit a descrip­tion of how it is pos­si­ble “in three steps” with the help of this data to get to the place of res­i­dence of the judge and her hus­band, the lawyer. There­fore, the news­room did not reveal the where­abouts of this fam­i­ly. But the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the judge seem to want to do it at any cost and pro­vide proof “how it can be done in three steps”. Since the edi­to­r­i­al office of KRIK only trans­ferred exist­ing data from a pub­licly avail­able data­base that any­one can look at, if there is any objec­tion to pri­va­cy pro­tec­tion, the right address is the State Geo­det­ic Insti­tute, which cer­tain­ly does not vio­late the laws of this coun­try by pub­lish­ing data that also rep­re­sents the family’s prop­er­ty sta­tus of Judge Djord­je­vić and her hus­band, lawyer Djord­je­vić, with­out any changes. 

… 

This is a typ­i­cal case for com­pli­ance with the EU Anti-SLAPP Direc­tive, which [despite it only applies to cross-bor­der cas­es] still con­tains inter­est­ing mech­a­nisms to com­bat SLAPP claims such as, for exam­ple, giv­ing judges the pos­si­bil­i­ty to dis­miss such appli­ca­tions at an ear­ly stage as unfound­ed.

Since the EU’s anti-SLAPP direc­tive has not yet been inte­grat­ed into our leg­is­la­tion, we will wit­ness anoth­er agony of KRIK sup­pres­sion. 

… 

In addi­tion to threats, the edi­to­r­i­al office reg­u­lar­ly faces law­suits from the pow­er­ful who try to stop the work of KRIK, or at least not to write about them. This inter­fer­ence is very notice­able in the case of Min­is­ter Nenad Popović, who nev­er appeared at the tri­als.

The mere review of the names of those who sued KRIK speaks of the dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion in which this news­room finds itself, and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al, media free­dom and free­dom of speech in gen­er­al. This is where the for­mal and infor­mal pow­er of this state is con­cen­trat­ed. 

The largest num­ber of these law­suits fall under the term SLAPP law­suits, which aim to pre­vent jour­nal­ists from con­tin­u­ing to deal with top­ics they have already researched and pub­lished, to pre­vent the news­room from doing its job through lengthy process­es, to demo­nize the news­room through the tabloid media and tar­get it in order to be con­stant­ly threat­ened. 

… 

I think it is impor­tant to glob­al­ly under­stand the com­plex­i­ty of the prob­lems faced by jour­nal­ists and media in Ser­bia, defend­ers of free­dom of speech and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions. We are not sta­tis­tics. So many attacks, so many threats, ver­bal and phys­i­cal, so many SLAPP law­suits, so many attacks on female jour­nal­ists. All togeth­er it’s very bad, and that’s why we need to pro­tect, stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty and defend our­selves. 

The tri­al on the crim­i­nal charge con­tin­ues on Novem­ber 12 at 2 p.m. in court­room num­ber 13 of the First Basic Court in Bel­grade, 15 Katanić Street.