Serbian member of <PERSON> biker club under investigation for assaulting a female journalist · Global Voices
Serbian journalist <PERSON>. Photo by Inđija Cafe, used with permission.
A man from Inđija, a town in the North of Serbia, is under investigation for assault and harassment against <PERSON>, a journalist with local news portal Inđija Café. The man, who was identified as <PERSON>, is a member of the local branch of the <PERSON> motorcycle club the Night Wolves, VOICE – a research and analytical center run by the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, reported on 31 August.
Following his attempts to intimidate Ms. <PERSON> by following her on the streets and at her workplace on 19 June 2019, the police charged Mr. <PERSON> with ‘endangering the security of a person who conducts activity of public interest in the sphere of information’ under article 138 par. 3 of the Criminal Code.
A screen grab of the Facebook post of an illegally parked car in Inđija with a caption “Good morning/good day. We are fine and how are you?” Fair use.
He is accused of assaulting and stalking the journalist after she published a photo of a car illegally “parked in a disdainful manner on the sidewalk in front of a pastry shop” on the Facebook of her portal. <PERSON> recognized the car as his and he started following and harassing the journalist. He first tried to throw water on the journalist, and then followed her on her home street where he drove his motorcycle into her and swerved at the last moment. The journalist reported the incident to the police, but <PERSON> continued to visit her workplace in the following days.
<PERSON> seems to have connections to the local authorities in Inđija, which seem to tolerate his aggressive actions. 463
He is a member of the Night Wolves bikers club which had received grants from the municipality to support their activities, which may have included trips to Russia.
When the journalist tried to obtain footage of the assault from the municipal security cameras, she encountered a wall of silence. “Immediately after the attack I asked the municipality to provide the video footage of the incident, but they did not even dignify me with an answer, let alone to give me the tapes,” Ms. <PERSON> stated for VOICE.
MP takes to Twitter to discredit journalist, her portal comes under hacker attack
Meanwhile, on 24 June, a Member of Parliament from the People's Peasant Party <PERSON> used his Twitter account to discredit Ms <PERSON>'s journalist status, claiming that she is just a “shopkeeper who for some unknown reason is presented as victim of persecution by some biker with immunity.”
In addition to her work at the local portal, the journalist had taken up a second job at a news kiosk to make ends meet.
In response to the MP, she posted archive footage of a TV show she hosted back on 11 September 2006 that featured <PERSON> as one of the guests. She commented: “<PERSON> says I'm not a journalist but a shopkeeper. Here's some footage from the shop.”
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Reporters without Borders (RSF) have both condemned the intimidation attempts. Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) and Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) issued demands to the police and prosecutors’ office to investigate the threats to her safety.
.@RSF_inter is calling the authorities of #srbija to protect journalist <PERSON> @epicentarus of @IndjijaCafe as neither local politicians nor people in power should be above the law .The harassment of journalists has to stop! @anabrnabic @avucic #napadinanovinare #mediji
— RSF in English (@RSF_en) June 22, 2019
Starting from 26 June, the website of the portal Inđija Cafe has been under constant hacker attacks aimed at cracking its WordPress passwords and slowing the site down. The portal's administrators took it offline out of precaution. Cyber forensic experts quoted by Cenzolovka.rs explained that the ‘brute force attack’ comes from many different addresses located in different countries around the world. At the moment of writing of this post the site www.indjijacafe.in.rs remains unavailable, while the media outlet's Facebook page has not been updated since 23 July.
Municipality finances the local branch of pro-Putin Night Wolves
The motorcycle club Night Wolves, also referred to as “Putin's Angels” in U.S. media, was founded in Russia in 1989 and currently has branches in 14 different countries. 463