IFJ calls Bulgarian authorities to protect the free speech

"The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have called on Bulgarian authorities to investigate the murder of journalist Boris Nikolov Tsankov" - this is the headline in one of Serbias B92's articles tonight.

It goes on
"The IFJ says the murder of Boris will undermine investigative journalism in Bulgaria as organized criminal gangs try to intimidate media through show of force and violence."

and adds that the IFJ has been joined in its demands by the European Federation of Journalists.

It is obviously a problem that a writer is shot down in the center of Sofia, no matter what is his criminal record, but it is also very problematic when international organisations like the IJF reacts like this without investigating further who Bobi Tsankov was. He was not an investigative journalist. That doesn't mean, of course, that it is safe for investigative journalists to work in Bulgaria if they write about the maffia - if he can be killed so can anyone. The killing of Bobi Tsankov was a horrible murder. But it was not an attack on free media.

Who was Bobi Tsankov

I must admit an error. Bobi Tsankov, who was killed in downtown Sofia on Tuesday, was not a journalist in the proper sense. He had published a few articles in not very renowned publications, and did some radio shows, but more than anything he is famous for being a criminal himself. He has been accused of frauds for millions, and have close ties to organized crime himself. After all, it was exactly those ties boasted that he would reveal. So the murder was maybe more of an inter-mafia showdown, than an open attack on free speech.

My mistake is completely due to not checking my sources before I write. It is elementary, I have done it before, but there is no excuse.

Unfortunately I was not the only one todo this mistake. In Bulgarian TV today, Bulgarians wonder how the international press spread eactly this point of view, without checking out who Tsankov really was. I am sure they did  not take their information from Maladets! BBC describes him as a "prominent crime journalist" Balkan Insigth use the neutral "Radio Host", while NY Times call Tsankov a "prominent radio journalist and the author of a book on Bulgaria's gangsters".

After all, poor Bobi did publish some articles, so calling him a journalist could possibly be justified, even if it is wrong. But from where did BBC and NYT learn that he was prominent?

Unfortunately, in most people'seyes, and in reports about murdered journalists, Bobi Tsankov willbe a journalist, and Bulgaria a country where journalists are killed, which is something much worse than a country where gangsters kill each other.  Sloppy writing, like this is, helps in building prejudices about a country that too few foreigners even bother to understand. I hope you can forgive Maladets!, but the BBC and NYT should be better.

The other side of the story is that a mafia murder was carried out in broad daylight in the very center of Sofia, which is bad enough.  Was Tsankov really going to reveal something, that was so sensitive? Or did someone within the organized crime want to show Borisov who really rules this country? I don't know...

Anyway, journalism should be about telling the truth, and using the label "journalist" for Bobi Tsankov is a bit too imaginative.

Slavery persists. In Africa and in Europe.

An email from the ITUC mailinglist reminded me of a horrible truth. Slavery is a phenomenon that persist, in spite of being denounced by the United Nations and forbidden in most countries in the world. According to Wikipedia, the current number of humans living in slavery is staggering 27 000 000 people. That more than the population of Romania.

The ITUC tells about domestic workers in Togo, often children, who are abused under forms that is nothing else than slavery. As always, poverty plays an important role. There is a Togolese tradition that poor families leave their kids to live with richer families that they know. The rich family feeds the kid and takes care of its education, and in exchange the kid provides domestic services.

Such a system would be oppressive in the modern world, but it belongs to a completely different context and should be assesed separately. Today , however, the same system has been distorted. Poor families leave their kids to rich families that they do not know. Often the kids are put to work the entire day, so there is no education involved. The payment, which can be as low as 8 EUR per month, are not given to the child, but transferred to its family. Since the kids are not formally employed, no labour legislation apply, and the "slave owner" is free to beat and mistreat the child as he or she wishes.

As sad as it sounds, one may not be surprised that this kind of practice is going on in a very poor country. If slavery was restricted to countries like Togo, we might hope that economic development itself would erase slavery. Unfortunately this is not the case. We might only call to mind the domestic workers in the gulf countries, whose working situation is also similar to slavery.

But slavery even exists in the midst of Europe. Balkan Insight has recently published an article, describing how criminal networks lure poor people from countries like Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Transnistriainto forced labour in the Czech Republic. There they work long hours without payment, supervised by armed guards, picking aspargus that later was served on luxury restaurants in Amsterdam and Berlin.

Slavery can exist wherever there is organized crime, and this is one reason why the fight against organized crime is also a fight for human rights. So is the fight against poverty. Because we do not want slavery anywhere. Neither in Togo, nor in the EU.

Bobi Tsankov gunned down in central Sofia

The Bulgarian radio journalist Bobi Tsankov, who has been covering the Bulgarian mafia was shot down in central Sofia today, media is reporting.

The fact that journalist can be gunned down, in the center of the city in the middle of day, speaks very bad about the freedom of press in Bulgaria. What makes the matter even worse is that this is the third fourth similar case since I personally took an interest in Bulgarian affairs (I moved to Bulgaria in December 2007). Three of them were journalists, one was a writer.

In today's Bulgaria, journalists are not risking their lives when they write about politics, but they do that when they write about organized crime. Which make the matter even more complicated. Organized crime is a strong force beyond any democratic control. As society fails to come to grips with that, the press is not free, no matter what the constitution says.

The Borisov government have carried out some widely talked about actions against criminal gangs, but as long as journalists are not safe, they need to prove what they can do. I hope that the people who were involved in the murder of Bobi Tsankov will be caught and judged. As long as they are free, Bulgaria has very deep problems.

I just can't believe the news today

Yesterday night a bomb exploded at a concert with the Russian band Bravo in Chisinau. A young man dressed in black was seen firing a weapon, before the grenade detonated. 40 young moldovans were taken injured to hospital, but no one was killed.

Today, a man was threatening the parliament with a bomb tied to himself, but he was arrested by the police before anyone was hurt.

It is hard to believe. I remember rock concerts I've been to in Chisinau. The one with Russian bands were the best. I remember the park where the bomb exploded, it was an oasis where I used to sit before work, drinking my coffee.

The accident is obviosuly linked to the political chaos/stalemate in Moldova. It is scaring, but maybe not surprising that someone is prepared to kill to reach their vicious ends. It seems this time the aim was to raise tentions, to create fear and confusion. The act is a cold blooded speculation in civil war, but I am convinced it will fail.

There are plenty of crazy people in Moldova. But I know that the youth of this battered country will not let themselves be fooled to use violence against each other, or anyone else. One can speculate about who lies behind this deed, but I don't want to do that. I just don't want to believe the news today.

You can read the news in English, Romanian, Swedish

Journalist attacked in Bulgaria

Ognian Bojadjiev, a young journalist repsponsible for he site europe.bg was attacked yesterday night in central Sofia by unknown men.

It is less than a year since another journalist, Ognian Stefanov, was almost beaten to death with hammers, also in Sofia, by still unknown men. Some months before that, an author who wrote about the mafia was shot down 500 meters from where I work. This makes three brutal attacks against free speech in the short time span I have personally spent in Sofia. Absolutely scandalous. I have never read about similar cases, not in Sweden, not in Norway and not in Moldova. I guess the only equivalent is Russia, and cases like Politkovskaja and Natalya Estemirova.

I don't want to say that the press is more free in Moldova - it is not. The Bulgarian press can be vehemently anti-governmental, without any signs of fear. The threat in Bulgaria seems to come from another direction - organised crime.

It is probably much more difficult to curb organised crime than reforming an authoritarian state. But this case, as the many others, shows that the state must do this, in order to guarantee the free speech of its citizens.

Sources: Darik, novinite