Once again, I am at the police station, I no longer know for which time in the past year. The inspector asks me “what I’ll have to drink” because we have been seeing each other quite often. It feels as if everyone here already knows my name in advance. And that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach is gone; I have already completely normalized the “abnormal.”I give a statement, the same one I gave at the prosecutor’s office in Vranje, identical to the one I gave at the prosecutor’s office in Vladičin Han. I tell them we will probably see each other again very soon at the station, because I am “once again reporting on sensitive topics.”Another summons arrives from the prosecutor’s office. They have found the man who made the threat by phone. Now I need to give a statement regarding his statement. I mentally prepare myself to face the person who said that a colleague’s “child should be killed,” only because he shared an article about the attack on me. I know I will meet him face to face in the narrow corridor of the prosecutor’s office, that we will share the same room of about twenty square meters. I find out that he was actually summoned half an hour before my colleague and I arrived, but he did not show up. I do not feel relief, but even greater tightness in my stomach. Maybe I should have withdrawn from the proceedings after all. He will learn my address, my personal data, who I live with. I submitted a request to the prosecutor’s office for my personal data to remain protected, but I have very little faith that this will happen. The status of a vulnerable witness is not granted just like that.
I will meet him face to face in the narrow corridor of the prosecutor’s office, that we will share the same room of about twenty square meters.
...
Maybe I should have withdrawn from the proceedings after all. He will learn my address, my personal data, who I live with.
Statistically speaking, this case will probably be dismissed, like many other cases of attacks on journalists. At the local level, this carries additional weight because it encourages abusers whom journalists regularly encounter on the street, in the supermarket, or at their child’s school.There are currently two proceedings concerning the same event: one for a telephone threat and one for direct threats in the field, which means that I have to recount the same circumstances over and over again in different proceedings. In the case of the telephone threat, the prosecutor commented that “the threat was not direct” because it was said that a child “should be killed,” not that he would kill the child. Those who threaten have long since learned how to threaten in a way that is “not prosecutable.” “Should be killed,” “should be raped” — for institutions, this is often not direct enough.Women journalists who receive threats are expected to be rational, composed, and “more tolerant of threats” because we do public work. Otherwise, if we react, we will be labelled as “weak” and incompetent. Because of this, women journalists report threats less often than their male colleagues, especially threats with a gendered dimension.After every new article, I feel a heaviness in my chest and trembling at every notification. Misogynistic comments keep piling up, and I read each of them carefully, some more than once. Most comments, as well as catcalls and threats in the field, have a sexual connotation. They comment on my sexuality, speculate about my age, and some who “observe me more closely” know and publish where I go out, what and how much I drink, and whom I was allegedly in a relationship or fling with. It is no longer only my work that is being judged, but also whether I, as a woman, am “appropriate” enough to speak publicly. I notice that for several months now I have been careful about where I go out in this town, how I behave, and whether someone is watching me.
It is no longer only my work that is being judged, but also whether I, as a woman, am “appropriate” enough to speak publicly.
How much sense does it make to wait for justice in a captured city where local powerholders dictate the rules? As in the case of OK Radio, where journalists, almost four years after a final judgment, are still working in a newsroom with a bricked-up window because the City does not dare to tear down the wall built by a local strongman. And when, despite all the video evidence of the attack on activists in the Golden café, the case was dismissed, even though the footage I submitted to the police clearly shows the perpetrators’ faces.Many attacks on journalists and activists at the local level have never received a judicial epilogue. At the prosecutor’s office, I was asked how I reported and whether it was true what they wrote in that Viber group, that I was someone’s paid agent. I feel the situation being relativized, and the focus is no longer on the threats, but on me and my work.Perhaps such questions make sense to lawyers and the prosecutor’s office, but to me they have the same logic as asking a woman who reports violence “what she was wearing that day.” I answer that I reported impartially, that I included all sides in the article, while the recording clerk types the report. I ask for the entire paragraph to be deleted because I refuse to allow the threat to be relativized by examining my work and objectivity, instead of examining the person who threatened me. Still, they leave in the part about whether “Albanians paid me for the article.”With every question, I feel my right to dignity being taken away. Instead of being the injured party, it is as if the roles have been reversed and I am the one in the dock. Every new threat, if reported, becomes a procedure: endless repeated statements, questioning of one’s own work. It becomes the feeling that you are constantly being watched and that the system will first point the finger at you.
Instead of being the injured party, it is as if the roles have been reversed and I am the one in the dock.
Perhaps the most dangerous part is when violence against journalists becomes so normalized in society that we are expected to endure it as an integral part of the job. The problem is not only the people who make threats, but also the system that forces us to prove the threat again and again, to translate it into something “serious enough,” “direct enough,” “suitable enough” for protection, to convince them that we are truly afraid.In that process, the violence does not end; it becomes institutional as well. Through endless proceedings, through confrontation with the perpetrator, the system chews you up, strips you bare, and spits you out, while the message of encouragement to those who threaten becomes even stronger.Justice is selective, and accountability is rare. Those who defend the public interest are expected not only to be brave, but impenetrable. As if they are not made of flesh and blood, as if death threats, sexual insinuations, surveillance, public smearing, and institutional dragging-out do not affect them. They are expected to endure all of it quietly, rationally, and professionally, and to continue working as if none of it is happening, all without real protection and support.If the public and institutions do not protect their local women journalists and journalists, they will be left without oversight of institutions, without accountability of those in power, and without the right to be informed about matters that directly affect their lives.
Justice is selective, and accountability is rare.
Author: Dejana Cvetković, journalist
