Alarm bells should be ringing in Europe, including Albania over the deterioration in media freedom and increasing attacks on journalists and media workers according to the Council of Europe.
In their annual report for 2021, the human rights body documented a 41% increase in the number of violations against journalists when compared to figures from 2020.
“On the European wall maps of media freedom, red lights are flashing. In 2021, 282 alerts from 35 countries have been submitted to the Platform, up from 200 in 2020,” the report states, adding that six journalists died during the year, four of which were deliberately targeted.
Albania received several mentions in the report, the first of which related to the assault of citizens by police during protests. Other countries with similar incidents included Poland, Russia, the UK, and Turkey.
There were in fact a number of attacks against Albanian media workers by police throughout the year, including violent assault, obstruction, and failure to intervene to prevent assault from members of the public.
While overall, the number of police-related incidents decreased in CoE member states, “the policing of public space remains problematic,’ the report notes.
“I am deeply worried by numerous reports of physical attacks on journalists covering demonstrations by law enforcement officers, or of police hindrance and disruption of media workers’ reporting of demonstrations”, wrote the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović in April 2021.
Albania also got a mention for jeopardising journalists sources. It related to attempts by the courts to seize mobiles, computers, another electronic equipment from Lapsi.al after they published details of a data leak related to over 910,000 voters. The list, tailored for the use of the Socialist Party included personal data and perceived voting preferences.
Lapsi refused to hand over their sources and the ECHR intervened to prevent Albanian courts from taking the information by force.
It also referred to Prime Minister Edi Rama refusing to take questions from Kosovo journalists during a press conference with at-the-time German Chancellor Angela Merkel and restrictions to the movements of media workers in parliament.
