Global Voices » Kosovo

Balkans: Online Platform Tracks Reports From Areas Hit by Record Snowfall

Danica Radisic — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:12:22 +0000

Since last week, the Balkans have been hit by massive snow storms, the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade, if not longer. After an unusually long period of nearly no real signs of a typical Balkan winter, last week brought what seems to be non-stop snowfall throughout the region, including the seaside areas around the Adriatic that seldom get any snow.

Men shoveling snow from a street in Sarajevo. Record snowfall has paralyzed transportation in the Bosnian capital, where a state of emergency has now been declared. Photo by Sulejman Omerbasic, copyright © Demotix (5/02/12).

Serbia's national television network, RTS, and other media reported on Friday 3 February, 2012, that a state of emergency has been declared by the government, while citizens have been reporting critical situations throughout the country and that municipal services have been doing a poor job of tackling the snowfall in many urban areas.

In an article titled “Serbia Blocked by Snow, State of Emergency in 27 Municipalities, Recommendation to Call Off School Attendance” [sr], the Head of the State of Emergency Sector of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Predrag Maric, is reported to have stated on Friday:

27 municipalities in Serbia have declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall. Maric has told Beta news agency that the most difficult situations are in Sjenica, Ivanjica, Prijepolje, Crna Trava and Surdulica, where the height of snow has reached approximately 2 meters. According to him, power supply is “relatively good,” outages are being fixed quickly and there have been no long power outages.

Maric also announced the possibility of declaring a full state of emergency nationwide, which the Government did on Sunday evening, cancelling school throughout Serbia at least until Friday, February 10, among other things.

Several actions have been organized by the online community in Serbia and the region to fend off the snow and to attempt to regain a functional state in urban areas at least, such as a #lopataup (”#shovelup”), organized by one online community leader, Zoran Torbica, and other local Twitter users.

In the meantime, Al Jazeera Balkans, the recently established regional office of Al Jazeera news network in the region, has joined forces with the team from Ushahidi to set up a platform for tracking verified information on everything from road blocks, power outages to other critical points and information in the entire region.

Ushahidi is an open-source platform for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, which was also used in Serbia just after the earthquake in Kraljevo in November 2010 to map and track damage in the area.

Haris Alisic, who heads the New Media team for Al Jazeera Balkans, launched the platform on Sunday evening, and many members of the online community, including some of the region's GV authors, have joined the Al Jazeera-Ushahidi team in curating, tracking and verifying reports from the region.

The adapted Ushahidi platform can be located on Al Jazeera's official site, while reports can be sent in by anyone using the following channels:

- via SMS to +387644218661
- via Twitter by using the hashtags #kolaps #sneg #snijeg #lopataup #iskljucenje
- via email to oluja2012@aljazeera.net
- or by entering information directly into the form on the”pošaljite izvještaj” tab on the Al Jazeera page

If you would like to volunteer your time to help map critical areas and are familiar with using online tools, please contact the author of this article, or Haris Alisic via Twitter, or leave a comment here on Global Voices, and we will contact you for more information on what you can do to help. We also ask that you all begin reporting from your area on Twitter and using the above-mentioned hashtags on Twitter, which are automatically collected by the platform and then reviewed and verified by Al Jazeera and volunteers.

Macedonia, Greece, Turkey: Bridging the Divides Through Multilingual Reporting

Filip Stojanovski — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:21:51 +0000

Two recent initiatives by civic-minded journalists added value to the e-content in local languages from Macedonia and nearby countries: Diversity Media is offering news analysis through text and audio podcasts in Macedonian and Albanian, and Balkon3.com is enabling “peeking over the neighbors' fence” in Macedonian, Turkish, Greek, and English. The former also started a competition for news bloggers [mk, sq], ending Jan. 31.

Macedonia: Ajvar, Glorified

Filip Stojanovski — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:03:54 +0000

Jovana Tozija wrote lovingly about making ajvar, a traditional favorite winter provision in Macedonia and some other post-Ottoman countries.

11-11-11: Grab Your Cameras and Capture Life

Juliana Rincón Parra — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:39:28 +0000

Only a couple of days until 11/11/11, a date that will have people all over the world recording their lives through film and music. Participate in the 11Eleven project and One Day on Earth to leave your mark on the world.

CCBY by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Global Voices Online has partnered with the 11Eleven Project to help make a snapshot of the human experience. How different and how similar will our lives turn out to be? Throughout the world and in different languages, footage made during that 24 hour period on November 11th 2011 will help answer that question.

11Eleven have established 11 different topics you can focus on: beginnings, heartbreak, make a wish, faith, routine, water, courage, play, darkness, beauty and love, and with these starting points they will be accepting photographs, songs, sounds, video, online content made during November 11, 2011, to turn them into a world music collection, a two-hour documentary and a photography book will be produced and distributed throughout the world.

Upload them and tag them with #11ElevenLIVE, as explained in the following video:

Grammy winning musician Imogen Heap has joined the team as the Executive Music Producer, will be producing the soundtrack for the documentary and will also be in charge of the world music collection.

Proceeds from the sales of the music collection, photography book and documentary will go in their entirety to support charities and organizations including Global Voices Online.

One Day on Earth is documenting videos of the world for the 2nd year in a row. Last year, on 10-10-10 they captured the world experience during a 24 hour span. The result was a geotagged video archive as well as a feature film which will be screened simultaneously in every country of the world thanks to the organization's collaboration with the United Nations.

Following is a behind the scenes explanation of how the project started and highlights of the documentary such as footage from North Korea and a wedding in Kosovo.

The next is a trailer for the documentary, showing some of the footage that was collected on the same day, all around the world.

You can participate on both of these projects on November 11. Sign up, turn on your camera, record the day's events and upload your content. For more information visit One day on Earth and the 11Eleven Project.

The Balkans, Norway: Anders Breivik and Srđa Trifković

Veronica Khokhlova — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:28:54 +0000

Eric Gordy of East Ethnia writes about the Balkan dimension of the July 22 terrorist attacks in Norway: “[…] [Anders Breivik] has the revelation that his path to violent idiocy began with his shock at the Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999. So to the other sets of concerns he understands badly, he added the history of the Balkans, and his main, heavily quoted and cribbed source on that (as well as on some theological topics!) is one Srđa Trifković.”

Serbia, Kosovo, Russia: A Letter to Putin

Veronica Khokhlova — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:33:51 +0000

Eric Gordy re-launches his East Ethnia blog, taking a close look, in one of the first posts, at the letter to the Russian PM Vladimir Putin, written by 21 Serbian “intellectuals”, who are asking “Russia to propose a resolution in the Security Council on the condition of Serbs of Kosovo.”

The Balkans: Trials of Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić

Veronica Khokhlova — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:08:17 +0000

At OpenDemocracy.net, Eric Gordy writes on what there is to expect from the upcoming ICTY trials of Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić.

The Balkans: Turbo-folk and Rock Mashups

Filip Stojanovski — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:50:42 +0000

Mashup clips by YouTube user apostolski, which combine video footage of Coldplay, U2 and Queen with Serbian turbo-folk songs are poised to become the next big viral hit among Balkan social media users and bloggers [MKD]. Some have already “spilled over” into traditional media like TV call-in show Jadi burek [MKD], which “reuses” clips from the net.

Serbia, Kosovo: Comment on Dick Marty's Report

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 02:21:04 +0000

Belgraded.com comments on Dick Marty's “report on organized criminal activities committed by the Kosovo Albanian side during and after Kosovo conflict”: “As it turns out, there are now at least two things Serbs and Kosovars have in common – people who committed crimes during the war and politicians and other nationalistic dipshits who will always try to hide that fact and claim they are the innocent ones.”

Serbia, Albania, Kosovo: More Info on “Yellow House”

Veronica Khokhlova — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 14:39:33 +0000

Sasa Milosevic has collected some of the available information about the “Yellow House” and human organ trade in Kosovo on his blog, The Bloody Yellow House (ENG).

Kosovo, Serbia: Kosovo's PM Accused of Human Organ Trade

Sinisa Boljanovic — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 02:51:05 +0000

THE YELLOW HOUSE

Do you know what the “Yellow House” is? Have you ever heard about it?

The same year Kosovo declared independence, 2008, Carla Del Ponte, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, published (in Serbia) her controversial book “The hunt: me and war criminals,” in which she described in detail how and where some soldiers and leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) committed terrible war crimes against ethnic Serbs, non-Albanians and “non-loyal” citizens of Kosovo in 1999.

According to Del Ponte, the “Yellow House” was a little apartment house in Ripe, a village near the town of Burelj in north Albania, where body parts of prisoners of war were being removed in order to be sold on black markets all over the world.

Many from the region, who then heard about the human organ trade for the first time, were shocked. The book and the information from it caused a lot of different reactions in Serbia.

Below is a selection of comments to an article on this issue that appeared on pressonline.rs on March 22, 2008.

Laza:

It’s terrible what happened and what is happening now, I believe there is much truth in the book. […] Is it possible that nothing was known about it, about the crimes, sufferings, mass graves? […]

Miki:

Surely. Ethnic Albanians did not do it, but their mentors from the West did.

Blek:

Only you, Serbs, have parents, brothers, sisters. Other people who were killed by you didn’t have anyone. How many organs did you sell when you committed the biggest crime after WWII in Bosnia and Herzegovina? […] Srebrenica.

zoran (Bec):

Reading different forums about this monstrous massacre against the kidnapped Serbs, as a man and as a Christian, I find everyone who committed the crime repulsive, those who knew about it but were silent, and who have recently heard about it but tolerate it. […]

Kosovo’s officials denied there had been human organs trafficking in Kosovo. Writing about the issue, the Guardian emphasized that some members of the international community had the same opinion, quoting a statement of Bernar Kouchner, the French foreign minister and former head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, who said this during his visit to the Serb enclave of Gracanica earlier this year:

there was no yellow house, there was no organ trade. People who talk about things like that are bums and murderers.

DICK MARTY’S REPORT

Just two days after the general elections were held in Kosovo on Dec. 12, Hashim Thaci, the outgoing Prime Minister whose Democratic Party of Kosovo won the most votes on Sunday’s elections, was accused by Dick Marty, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly investigator, of organizing and committing the mentioned war crimes.

According to Marty’s report, which the Guardian published exclusively before its official presentation, Thaci, who is also the former head of KLA's “Drenica group,” is allegedly responsible for the kidnapping of more than 300 ethnic Serbs and others from Kosovo during the war, their transportation and murder in Albania, where their organs were extracted and later sold to rich patients in the West.

Below are some of the reader comments to a B92 article about Marty's report:

Polako, ali sigurno, pravda stize do cilja! writes:

[…] If it is proved that you are the culprits, and it will be so, you don’t need to be afraid of Serbs but of your own people who brought you to power.

Skorpion:

As an ethnic Albanian, I am happy that, God willing, all who committed the crimes are convicted. I hate them all and I don’t want to hear about them.

Ode sve u:

bbc, foxnews, reuters, the mirror, the independent, huffington post, the new york times… the whole Western world published the news… the dregs of society have the power in one country/territory in the heart of Europe.

Majna:

[…] CNN is silent, and it’s clear that a question will now be raised of who and why recognized the country that was built on the most monstrous crime in the history of the world.

Writing about the issue in her post titled “Trading organs and principles” (on the blog page of the daily newspaper “Blic”), Jelena Milic pointed out the double standards in Serbia’s official policy in regard to human rights, an obsolete policy that considers human rights a problem of individual states and not of international relations:

[…] Dick Marty’s report, which has linked Thaci to organs trade, has just been adopted in the committee for legal questions of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. It’s very important news in Serbia. For a reason. But. Serbia's [foreign minister] Vuk Jeremic has a shameful record of not voting for and supporting resolutions and declarations which the EU and the Council of Europe adopted and submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations in regard to the human rights situation in Iran and other countries that do not recognize Kosovo's independence […]

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton's Spokeswoman Maja Kocijančić has urged Marty to come forward with the evidence on Thaci’s involvement in these serious crimes. She said at a press conference:

“These claims are taken very seriously. If concrete evidence exists, we urge Dick Marty to submit it to the relevant authorities.

However, she avoided answering a number of direct questions on the EU's next steps regarding the issue.

Hashim Thaci rejected all accusations and demanded from the EU to investigate this case thoroughly.

The Balkans: Angelina Jolie's “Directorial Debut”

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:32:52 +0000

Gray Falcon and Srebrenica Genocide Blog discuss (from different perspectives) Angelina Jolie's “directorial debut” - “a love story set during the Bosnian war.”

The Balkans: Genocide Denial

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:45:51 +0000

Greater Surbiton writes about “the bizarre world of genocide denial.”

Central & Eastern Europe: Initial Reactions to WikiLeaks' Cablegate

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:49:51 +0000

While other regions feature a lot more prominently in the collection of U.S. embassy cables published by WikiLeaks thus far, a few countries of the CEE region do appear in the kickoff edition of Cablegate.

Below is a small selection of initial reactions from the region's bloggers.

Piran Café, a Slovenian blog, announced the Cablegate “winner” from the Balkans:

Croatia, apparently.

Of the 251,287 secret US Embassy cables which Wikileaks began making public yesterday, 2,053 relate to Croatia, according to the ‘Cables by Country‘ graphic on Wikileaks Cablegate website. […]

The Balkan “runners-up” are:

Bosnia & Hercegovina is next at 1,419, followed by Serbia & Montenegro, with 1,244. Slovenia comes in a distant fourth with 947, with Macedonia (783) and Montenegro (503) bringing up the rear. […]

Although no Slovenia-related documents have been published yet, the country - along with the Pacific island of Kiribati - is in the media spotlight of sorts already, due to the Guantanamo Bay prisoner release situation:

[…] Advance material supplied to The Guardian, Der Speigel, Le Monde, and The New York Times included in passing a mention of a strongarm deal the US offered to Slovenia. Most of the accounts went something like this:

The (New York Times) also cited documents showing the U.S. used hardline tactics to win approval from countries to accept freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. It said Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if its president wanted to meet with President Barack Obama and said the Pacific island of Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees.

Milan Balažic, spokesperson for Slovenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denied that any such deal making transpired, insisting that Slovenia cannot accept Guantanamo detainees on legal grounds and that PM Borut Pahor does still have a visit to the US scheduled for next year. The statement I read didn’t specifically say however, that Pahor would be meeting with Obama. […]

Viktor Markovic of Belgraded.com provided a brief overview of the files that mention Kosovo, noting on Twitter that he “got 1k hits on this post in the first couple of hrs […] seems everyone is searching for dirty secrets”:

[…] The first interesting bit relates to comments on Kosovo government and their dissatisfaction with the EULEX-Serbia cooperation, but also the EU diplomat’s dissatisfaction with Serbian MFA Vuk Jeremic:

[Elysee Diplomatic Advisor Jean-David] Levitte noted that the EULEX mission is having diplomatic problems with the Kosovar government and public after signing two technical protocols with Serbia. They are hoping to ensure continued calm as Kosovo heads into municipal elections. [Assistant Secretary Philip H.] Gordon stated that the Kosovars will have to accept the protocols but that it should be clearly explained that these are technical agreements that have no impact on Kosovo’s independent status. Levitte also criticized Serbian FM Jeremic, saying that he is doing nothing to encourage Serb return or participation in Kosovo’s government. Levitte noted that Jeremic “makes big promises” every time he comes to France, but doesn’t follow through. Levitte no longer meets with him and does not consider him to be the “modern face of Belgrade” that he purports to be. […]

Guistino, the Estonia-based author of Itching for Eestimaa, mockingly complains that the people behind WikiLeaks “haven't caught on yet that Estonia is the center of the universe”:

I keep checking WikiLeaks for the horde of secret diplomatic cables out of the US Embassy in Tallinn. “Local demagogue known for shady real estate dealings!” “Wealthy chocolatier may have connections to organized crime!”

No such luck. […]

This week, the group seeks to release 251,287 leaked US embassy cables, 610 of which are out of Estonia, though they aren't up yet. […]

On a more serious note, Guistino criticizes WikiLeaks' U.S.-centric approach:

[…] While I am, like everybody, keen to learn more about US policy, I would also appreciate if WikiLeaks provided more information on other countries. Because of its access to those cables, global interest, plus perhaps the prevalance of English, the bulk of the material seems to be about the US. As an American, I have to say, not fair! An international media organization should provide more content than that. In other words, where are the confidential Russian cables, Julian? We in Estonia await more.

Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer who is part of the legal team representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky, wrote this about the Russian segment of Cablegate:

It's no wonder why the FSB vaguely threatened to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. In just the first wave of confidential diplomatic cables released yesterday, we get the opportunity to [see] how officials of the U.S. government really felt about relations with their new partners in Russia, underscoring the profound cynicism of Obama's reset policy. And apparently, there is much more to come once Wikileaks taps its Russian archives.

Apart from a near total obsession with Russia only through the prism of Iran, the wires also reveal a specifically detailed awareness of Russia's democratic unraveling, which contrasts sharply with the president's positive statements on the relationship. Vladimir Putin is described as the “Alpha Dog” of a “vitrual mafia state,” while Dmitry Medvedev “plays Robin to Putin's Batman.” […]

Reactions of the Russophone Twitter users are quite diverse.

@sergey_gaber is optimistic (RUS):

WikiLeaks, by the way. Here, folks, it seems as if the blessed time has come when no one is afraid of anyone. It is wonderful.

@kushnir72 is apprehensive (RUS):

This whole WikiLeaks story will result in the Internet getting banned :)

@GlazTV doesn't seem to have enough trust (RUS) in the Cablegate files - because Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and spokesperson for WikiLeaks, hasn't been silenced yet:

One thing I don't understand is how come the fellow who created WikiLeaks and who's giving the US some really hard time, is still alive and at large??? It's giving me some strange thoughts…

Finally, @yasviridov posted this item, which has so far been re-tweeted by at least 20 people:

Damn! My real 5th-grade geometry grades have surfaced on WikiLeaks. If Mom finds out, she'll kill me!

Video: One Minute Jr video nominees for 2010 Awards

Juliana Rincón Parra — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:11:27 +0000

The nominees for each of the 3 categories in the One Minutes Jr project competition 2010 have been selected. In each of the categories of (Self)-portrait, Inside-Out and One Minute of Freedom there will be one winner who will be awarded a JVC Piscio HD Hand-Camera. The nominees are all participants of the international, arts-based initiative of oneminutesjr, which organizes 5 day workshops for underprivileged or marginalized youth between 12 and 20 years old:

The oneminutesjr. holds 5-day workshops where the youth are taught basic camera and directing skills, story-telling, teamwork and how to think creatively about issues and representation. Each participant develops his/her own story based on the workshop theme and produces a sixty-second video that is screened at the conclusion of the workshop.

A full listing of the nominees can be found on the UNICEF website. The videos can be viewed on the oneminutesjr site or some can also be found on their YouTube channel.

Following are some of the nominated videos, each one lasting no more than one minute in length. The winners will be selected by a jury and announced on November 10th.

Mama, about adoptions, was made by Wolf Artem from Ukraine, and is nominated for tha category of (Self)-portraits:

Also in the same category is Greetings from Kosovo by Suada Jahirovic on forced migrations:

In the Inside Out Category is Paper Wings by Nargiz Zeynalova from Azerbaijan, showing the issue of females and education: since I couldn't find an embeddable video for this entry, please click through to view it on the oneminutesjr site.

Also in this category is Taim Nogut , a story on suicide by Louisah Enos from Papua New Guinea:

And in the One Minute of Freedom category; Focus by Ryan Forde in Guyana tackles the subject of education:

Last but not least, focusing on water conservation is On the Last Drop by Tolib Homitov from Tajikistan:

Don't forget to watch the videos made by the remaining award nominees who share their views of the world from places such as Uganda, USA, Barbados, Vietnam and Fiji.