Freedom of speech

Human Rights House Zagreb said in its annual report published on Friday that "as in previous years, war crimes prosecutions were stagnant" in Croatia in 2019, while hate speech and intolerance toward minorities persisted in the public arena and the digital environment.

The Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, an NGO that promotes media freedom and good practices in journalism, has raised concern that provisions enacted as part of the state of emergency to combat the spread of the coronavirus in Romania could hamper journalists' ability to inform the public.

Supreme Court authorities will rule Monday on the status of the witness protection regime for key whistleblowers who have been summoned to testify by the parliamentary committee conducting a preliminary inquiry into the handling of the Novartis bribery case by the previous administration. 

A delegation from Parliament's preliminary inquiry committee into the handling of the Novartis bribery case by the previous administration petitioned the Supreme Court on Thursday to look into the status of its three key whistleblowers.

Between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. With the aid of the information gained from these requests, BIRN produced numerous investigative pieces and so exposed wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.

"He is the first, because the notion of whistleblower did not exist in the Strasbourg Court's vocabulary until then," Vitalie Zama, one of the lawyers in Guja's case, told BIRN.

"And the first question that was asked was whether or not to protect the whistleblowers; whether freedom of expression exists for them or not."

'I suffered the consequences'

A colourful cast of characters brings an added dose of zest and intrigue to this week's collection of Premium stories as we look at the travails of modern-day sultans, American envoys, local whistleblowers or prime ministers in waiting.

National courts in Europe can now sanction online platforms by ordering the removal of defamatory content around the world. The European Court of Justice has come up with such a decision today in a case brought by a former Austrian politician.

Muslims are subjected to hate speech the most, the Turkish president has said.

Damir Marjanovic, a member of the Sarajevo Canton parliament from the liberal, multi-ethnic Nasa Stranka (Our Party), told BIRN that he has filed the proposal for new legislation to the Cantonal Assembly because there is a real need for a clear and precise law that will enable people to be sanctioned for hate speech.