Visar Syla, the Chief of Staff for North Mitrovica mayor Erden Atic, attempted to prevent Kallxo.com journalist Florinda Kelmendi from reporting the arrest of ethnic Serb politician Aleksandar Arsenijevic.

While reporting on the arrest of Kosovo Serb politician Aleksandar Arsenijevic on Wednesday, Florinda Kelmendi, Kallxo.com’s journalist in North Mitrovica, was blocked from doing her job by the chief of staff of the mayor Erden Atic.  

“While I was filming the arrest of Aleksandar Arsenijevic, the chief of staff of the North Mitrovica mayor, Visar Syla, put his hand in front of my phone’s camera and told me ‘don’t film,’” Kelmendi explained.

She informed Syla that she was just doing her job. “He also hindered the work of a colleague from Telegrafi.com,” Kelmendi added

BIRN will report the incident to the authorities. 

Veton Elshani, the deputy director of Kosovo Police for the north, told Kallxo.com that Arsenijevic, who is a member of the Serbian Democracy party, and three other citizens were taken to the police station for disrupting public order. Arsenijevic was arrested for whistling at mayor Atic while he was drinking coffee in a bar in North Mitrovica. 

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, expressed its concerns over the incident.

“Journalists enjoy the right to express their duties unhindered and any attempt to violate such a right is unacceptable, worsens the environment for journalists, and hinders correct information and objective coverage of the event,” AJK said.

Atic was participating in an event through the Ministry of Health marking October as the breast cancer awareness month.

It is not the first time Arsenijevic has been arrested for disrupting public order. He did the same thing on September 10 during a visit of the Kosovo PM Albin Kurti. 

A rise in the assaults against journalists while they are reporting has been recorded in Kosovo’s Serb majority north. 

On May 29, 2023, while NATO peacekeepers from KFOR and ethnic Serbs clashed in protests against the town’s newly elected ethnic Albanian mayor, Kosovo  journalists were left unprotected and some stayed for three hours inside a café in Zvecan. The Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, told BIRN at the time that it had registered 20 separate attacks against media crews within three days. Protesters threw rocks and eggs at journalists, pushed them, forced them to delete footage, took away their cameras, verbally assaulted them, and vandalized their vehicles.

Earlier in May 2023, a BIRN analysis of 62 incidents involving firearms, knives, stones, and physical assault since 2017 concluded that the police and prosecutors in Kosovo are struggling to solve violent crimes, particularly when they occur in the predominantly Serb north. Half of the cases occurred in the four northern Serb-majority municipalities.

Of these 31 cases, 13 were attacks against journalists from between 2018 and 2022. The court ordered one month’s detention in one case and the police filed a complaint in another. BIRN was not able to confirm if any other suspects have been identified or arrested in the other cases.

BIRN crew have been attacked several times over the years. For example, on December 9, 2022, a masked group of Serbs attacked a car carrying BIRN journalist Shkodrane Dakaj and producer Valdet Salihu in North Mitrovica. They were going to the north to report on the barricades blocking the roads to the borders with Serbia.

In October 2021, protesters carrying Molotov cocktails chased BIRN Journalists in Leposavic. Serbs protesting against police crackdowns on smuggling in several Kosovo cities, including Serb-majority North Mitrovica, were responsible for the attacks.