INTIMIDATION AND VIOLENT ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS

Summary of Findings
Physical attacks and other acts of intimidation directed against journalists are widespread and go largely unpunished in Albania. Reporters based in the provinces outside the capital Tirana are particularly vulnerable to attacks by police officers and local government officials. The eight cases discussed in detail in this section are the most serious of the dozens of complaints that Human Rights Watch has received from Albanian media professionals over the last three years. Three of the cases involve serious violations of press freedoms committed by the Albanian police during the June 2001 general election.

Victims of violence and intimidation are not only reporters affiliated with the opposition, but also journalists working for the unaffiliated media. The main perpetrators of such violence against the media are police officials and organized crime groups with possible ties to government officials. The attacks are usually made in apparent retaliation for press criticism of specific individual officials or government agencies. Except when the political stakes are high-such as during electoral campaigns-they do not appear to be part of any organized and systematic campaign to suppress media freedoms. However, the almost complete failure of the authorities-the police and public prosecution system, in particular-to investigate such assaults and hold their perpetrators accountable breeds a culture of impunity that undermines a free and vibrant press.

Internal investigations by the Albanian police into alleged violations of press freedom by police officials are either nonexistent or wholly inadequate. Not a single police officer appears to have been subjected to any such investigation-let alone disciplinary action-in relation to any of the cases described in this report, most of which were widely publicized by the Albanian press and journalist associations. The Albanian Ministry of Interior did not respond to a written request by Human Rights Watch to provide information on the reports in this section.⁵

The public prosecutorial system has been equally reluctant to initiate criminal investigations against police officials and others responsible for violations that warrant criminal liability. (See below, for example, the Terziu, Hasbegu, and election-related cases.) In many cases Albanian prosecutors justify their inaction by reference to criminal laws that require a formal complaint by the victim in order to initiate the investigation of certain types of batteries and assaults.⁶ But victims are often deterred from reporting these crimes because the filing of a complaint can trigger even more severe attacks against them. Ideally, Albanian laws should be amended to remove the complaint requirement for all cases of serious police abuse. In any event, no complaint by the victim is required with respect to more serious forms of police abuse (such as those in the Hasbegu, Boriçi, and "election cameraman" cases below). The absence of a formal complaint cannot excuse the failure of Albanian prosecutors to investigate those well-publicized incidents. The Albanian Parliament, which oversees the general performance of the public prosecutorial system, has to date conducted no inquiries into prosecutors' failure to pursue such cases.

A source of significant friction between police and the press in Albania is the widespread belief among the police that their activities are almost entirely immune from press coverage. (See, for example, the Hasbegu and election-related cases.) Such an attitude, reminiscent of a police state, reveals a lack of basic awareness about press freedoms and police accountability in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the Albanian media, and public opinion generally, are partly responsible for having fed such attitudes: eager to support an inexperienced police force in its efforts to restore order and fight organized crime, they have too often been uncritical of its methods. There are signs that both the media and the public are moving away from that carte blanche approach to police operations, possibly becoming aware of its boomerang effects. The Albanian government must complement that positive change in public perception by training the police force to respect press freedoms-including press coverage of the police itself-and human rights generally.

Cases of Intimidation and Violent Attacks

Attacks on Fatmir Terziu
The harassment and attacks suffered by Fatmir Terziu reveal how serious and persistent police harassment of the press can be in Albania-and yet go unpunished. Terziu was the Elbasan correspondent of the Democratic Party newspaper Rilindja Demokratike (RD, Democratic Rebirth) from 1994 until April 2001. He also served for several years as director of a local television station, TV Dardania. As a journalist working for an opposition newspaper, Terziu suffered unrelenting harassment by local officials after the SP's rise to power in 1997. During that year, when social unrest and anarchy affected large parts of the country, he survived two abductions, once by a local criminal gang and once by a middle-level army officer. Between 1999 and 2001 Terziu suffered repeated physical attacks and verbal assaults by local police chiefs and government officials, in retaliation for his critical reporting on local affairs.

In the beginning of July 1999 Terziu published in RD an article alleging that a police chief in Gramsh, a small town in the Elbasan region, was responsible for the disappearance and personal use of police vehicles donated by a United Nations Development Program (UNDP)-sponsored disarmament project. The police chief was quick to react, Terziu told Human Rights Watch:

He called my home while I was out of the country and started shouting threats and curses at my wife. He told her, "Tell your husband that pretty soon we'll be getting rid of him and all those that stand behind him," probably alluding to the Democratic Party. . . . A few days later he beat up A. S., a secretary of the local DP chapter, for having allegedly passed me information on the issue. He also went on a private TV channel, TV Elbasan, and had the temerity to say publicly that he knew me, knew where I lived, and would "teach me a lesson" some day.⁷

According to Terziu, shortly after the incident the police chief was promoted to national head of the UNDP-sponsored disarmament program, despite protests by the League of Albanian Journalists to then-Minister of Public Order Spartak Poçi.

Terziu's most serious problems came as a result of his references to a police chief in the Elbasan police directorate. They started one morning in November 2000, when a staff reporter responsible for presenting the daily press review on TV Dardania read out a headline from an opposition paper that criticized the police chief. Shortly after the press review, Terziu told Human Rights Watch,

two of [the police chief's] bodyguards showed up at Dardania and demanded to see immediately the press review editor and myself (they knew my name). Before I could even try to talk them down, [one of them] punched me in the face in front of the staff, and challenged me to "do that again, if you have the guts." So I went on the air and denounced the violence. . . . But at the end of the day, as I was walking along the "Rinia" park on my way home, the same two guys were waiting for me and beat me up so badly that I thought I would die.⁸

A medical report by the surgeon that examined Terziu after the assault found that he had a fracture of the right arm and numerous bruises on his face and body; the doctor prescribed several weeks of bed rest. ⁹

In February 2001 Terziu once again fell victim of the same police officer's ire, this time triggered by an article in the February 28 edition of RD that referred to an investigation by the General Prosecutor's office into the police chief's alleged involvement with drug trafficking. The article was initialed A.B.; Terziu insists that he had nothing to do with it, and that it was written by a Tirana-based reporter. But, according to Terziu:

The same day the RD article appeared, a police car cut in front of my scooter and stopped me between the maternity hospital and the prosecutor's office. Clearly, they had been looking for me. [The police chief] rushed out of the car, spit at me and yelled, "So, I'm the drug baron, huh? I'm going to wipe you out one of these days!" . . . Earlier that day he had been looking for me at the Dardania premises and had terrorized the staff. . . . In the afternoon he gave a press conference at the police station. The policeman at the gate had been ordered not to let me in; then one of [the chief's] bodyguards showed up, told me to follow him and started pushing, hitting, and swearing at me in the corridor. ... [In the conference] I asked [the chief] a question about an eighteen-year-old and a fifty-five-year-old who had died in custody in that same police station. He replied, in front of reporters from all major national papers, "If I had to kill someone, I would start with you."

Two other reporters who had attended the press conference, but requested to remain anonymous, confirmed separately to Human Rights Watch the police chief's threatening remark to Terziu.¹⁰ Terziu told Human Rights Watch that the harassment and physical attacks had a serious chilling effect on his reporting, especially on police activities. Following the February 28 incident, he went on working but as "some sort of semi-clandestine" reporter: "Honestly, I started to avoid [the police chief] and had to stop writing about his deeds," he admitted.

However, there was worse to come for Terziu. In the evening of April 13, 2001 he was hosting a real-time talk show on Dardania TV and receiving questions from the audience via telephone. One of the callers, who did not give his name, launched into a diatribe against the Socialist government and reminded Terziu that he [Terziu] had had "his own ribs broken" by the [police chief referred to above]. Terziu apologized for the provocative language used by the anonymous caller, interrupted the show, and left the TV station at about 10:00 p.m. On his way home, he was assaulted by two men who had their faces covered:

It happened as I left behind the "Rinia" park, on the street of the "Hamit Mullisi" elementary school. They ambushed me and started hitting me as strongly as they could in the face and body. They kept swearing at me, but didn't say why. I did not recognize them, but noticed that they wore camouflage jackets and boots that are often used by the police forces. Also, they were professionals, knew how to beat someone. I fell on the ground and they continued to hit me until I lost consciousness. The last thing I remember was one of them saying, "Let's go, he's finished." . . . I came to my senses about an hour later and had to crawl home.

Terziu left Albania secretly the next day, with his wife and three children, and has not returned since. Terziu told Human Rights Watch that he did not file charges or complaints against his attackers in any of the cases because he did not believe that they would be brought to justice. Terziu had good reasons to be skeptical. The Albanian police and prosecutorial authorities had repeatedly failed to investigate consistent and credible allegations that the Elbasan police, whose director at the time Edmond Koseni has openly boasted of his "iron fist" approach to securing public order, is responsible for committing serious human rights abuses, including torture and deaths in police custody as a result of torture. Over the four years of Koseni's tenure the Albanian authorities ignored repeated calls by Albanian and international human rights groups to properly investigate such allegations, and bring those responsible to justice.¹¹ Indeed, shortly after his appointment in October 1999, Prime Minister Ilir Meta reportedly praised Koseni in a meeting in Elbasan as "the symbol of [his] governance."

In December 2001 Koseni and his bodyguard Xhafer Elezi were dismissed from the police and indicted by the General Prosecutor for a case of alleged battery and torture. At the time of this writing a court had put Koseni under house arrest, pending trial. Elezi, who evaded the investigation for several months, was arrested in April 2002 by the Elbasan police. Elezi was reportedly convicted in his absence in 1999 by an Italian court for trafficking in human beings and involvement in organized prostitution.¹² He served as Koseni's bodyguard until the end of 2001, although he has been the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Italian authorities since 1998.

The Attack on Artan Hoxha
Artan Hoxha is a journalist working for Shekulli [The Century]. In late 1999, as a reporter with Gazeta Shqiptare, Hoxha was investigating two stories that turned out to be rather risky. One of them involved a sizeable theft of Albania's gold reserves, which made headlines for weeks in the Albanian press. The other concerned a less publicized but equally massive tax evasion scheme involving oil imports through the port of Durrës.¹³ In both cases he was following threads that he believed led to high-level politicians.¹⁴

Hoxha's investigative journalism did not go unnoticed. One night in November 1999 he became the victim of an armed attack, which was clearly related to his investigations into one of the two affairs (or both). Four people broke into his apartment shortly after midnight and held him at gunpoint for about half an hour, threatening him repeatedly with death. Two of the attackers wore black facemasks, while the other two were barefaced. They ordered Hoxha to hand them over "all [his] files and floppy disks." However, they only took with them two files of documents, one labeled "Oil Smuggling," and the other "Treasury Theft." Hoxha informed the police the next morning and provided them with descriptions of the attackers. The police investigation into the case led nowhere; according to the police, Hoxha had inadvertently damaged the attackers' fingerprints.¹⁵

The Attack and Detention of Flamur Hasbegu
On June 1, 2000 Taulanta Boja and Flamur Hasbegu, respectively a reporter and cameraman for the Albanian Television Network 1 (ATN1),¹⁶ were asked by their editor to interview the head of police in Berat (southern Albania). While Boja entered the police station to request a meeting with the police chief, Hasbegu stopped to take some archive footage of the building. As soon as he started filming, a man in civilian clothes, who Boja and Hasbegu later identified as Ilir Ngresi, chief of the criminal section of the Berat police, came out of the police station and asked Hasbegu whether he had authorization to film the station.¹⁷ Below is the description of the rest of the incident, which Hasbegu gave to Human Rights Watch:

I said I was an ATN1 cameraman, showed him my press card, and replied that we do not need authorization for something like that. But he suddenly grabbed my right arm, dragged me violently inside the courtyard of the police station and yelled, "Who gives a shit about ATN1!" I took my camera off my shoulder and held it down, but did not turn it off. Then as soon as we entered the building, he punched me in the nose and started swearing at me like crazy .... "So, who the fuck do you think you are that you can tape the police? You think it's normal, huh?" But he wouldn't let me talk. Then he asked to see my press ID for a second time and told me to hand him the tape. So I turned the camera off and gave him the tape.

Then he took me to the restrooms to "clean my face," because my nose was bleeding. I thought he would let me go. But when we approached the door of the restrooms he punched me again in the nose and pushed me inside and slapped me on the face, several times. . . . Then four or five policemen, some in uniform and some in plainclothes, came into the bathroom and started hitting and kicking me from all sides, fifteen or twenty times. I began to fear the worst. Ngresi-they all called him "Chief Iliri"-stood at the door opening and watched, and kept swearing at me. This went on for about twenty minutes. They even tried to get my camera, which I was still holding. One of them kicked my right arm, I had a fracture .... Then they locked me up in a cell. After about twenty minutes Ngresi came back, took me to a back door, threw an old police jacket on my head and said, "Next time I see you around here you'll get an even better treatment." I learned later that Taulanta had alerted the DP section in Berat, and they had protested with the police against my detention.¹⁸

With his camera on, Hasbegu recorded part of the incident until Ngresi asked for the tape he had been using. Boja, the ATN1 reporter who was teaming with Hasbegu on the day of the incident, managed to get the tape back that same day, following a long and animated argument with Ngresi. Human Rights Watch viewed the tape, which was consistent with Hasbegu's account of the incident and revealed Ngresi's extremely offensive and intimidating language and attitude.¹⁹ A medical report issued after the incident confirmed that Hasbegu had suffered a fracture of his right arm, and serious emotional distress. He was unable to work for about six weeks.²⁰

ATN1 sent a written protest to the then-minister of public order, Spartak Poçi, demanding that Ngresi and the other Berat police officers responsible for the incident be disciplined. It also aired the video footage and gave the incident extended coverage on its news editions.²¹ ATN1 also informed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Presence in Albania; the OSCE human rights and press officers interviewed Hasbegu the day after the incident. The OSCE staff noticed during the interview that Hasbegu had a swollen nose and his right arm was in a plaster cast.²²

This notwithstanding, both the ministry and the public prosecutor's office failed to contact Hasbegu or ATN1 and failed to take any action whatsoever against Ngresi or anyone else involved in the incident. Based on the information available to Human Rights Watch, Ngresi and the other police officers responsible for Hasbegu's ill treatment should have been charged, under section 250 of the Albanian Criminal Code, with the illegal deprivation of Hasbegu's liberty.²³ A section 250 indictment does not require a criminal complaint by the victim.

The Detention of Kujtim Boriçi
Kujtim Boriçi is a professional journalist who has served as Shekulli's correspondent for the Elbasan prefecture since 1995. On September 23, 2001 Boriçi published in Shekulli a critical article about the performance of the Elbasan construction police in connection with the demolition of unauthorized buildings constructed in the town of Librazhd (southeastern Albania).²⁴ The article referred to critical remarks by the mayor of Librazhd, who had complained that the Elbasan construction police (who are responsible for the Librazhd area) had ignored his pleas to act promptly against abusive constructions.²⁵

In the morning of September 26, Boriçi and several other Elbasan-based reporters traveled to nearby Librazhd to cover a "day of demolitions" announced by the police. Boriçi related to Human Rights Watch what happened when the group of journalists approached a building, close to the town bridge, that was being demolished:

We didn't get closer than fifteen to twenty meters because we know that the Elbasan police do not like to be watched. As soon as the chief of the [Elbasan] construction police, Nezir Kapllani, noticed us, he ran toward us and started shouting at the police squad: "I don't want those journalist bastards around, they are ruining the police. . . . I want them behind bars!" Then he told something to the head of the rapid reaction squad, Edmond Skëndo. Right after this, Skëndo and his group surrounded us and told me that I was under arrest. When I asked what for, he replied, "for having offended the construction police." . . . My colleagues insisted that they go with me into the police van, but the police threw them out of the van and ordered them to leave the demolition site. They said they had orders to take me alone.²⁶

Boriçi was taken to the Librazhd police station and was held there for about thirty minutes. He was released only after Shekulli's publisher in Tirana protested to the Ministry of Interior. Before leaving the police station, Boriçi demanded to know from the head of the Librazhd police, Kujtim Ozuni, the grounds for his arrest. Ozuni refused to give any reasons and warned him to "leave the police alone" if he wanted to avoid future troubles.

Haxhi Balliu, the Elbasan correspondent for the daily Dita, was together with Boriçi on the day of the incident until the latter's arrest. In a separate interview with Human Rights Watch he gave a consistent account of the incident. Balliu added that Librazhd Police Chief Ozuni had quietly followed Boriçi's arrest from a nearby location:

My brother happened to be passing by and challenged him as to why the police were arresting journalists. He replied by hitting my brother with a police truncheon, yelling that "that was the least they deserved."²⁷

Cases Related to the 2001 Elections
The following incidents, which occurred during the election period of June-July 2001, represent some of the most serious cases of police brutality against the Albanian media researched by Human Rights Watch. However, they do not provide an exhaustive picture of the harassment suffered by the media-especially the media affiliated with the opposition-during the election period. The editors of RD, ATN1, TV Shijak, and other outlets told Human Rights Watch that their journalists and crews were routinely harassed and censored during the election. Typically, the police prevented them from covering SP campaign activities, events on different polling days and at various locations, and police conduct throughout the election period. Although Human Rights Watch was not able to independently investigate all these allegations, the incidents described in this section suggest that they were part of widespread and possibly coordinated actions on the part of central and local authorities to control the flow of information about the conduct of elections and the electoral campaign.

The Attack on the "Election Cameraman"
Ilir Mati (real name withheld for his protection) is a freelance cameraman based in a provincial town of Albania, who covered the June 2001 general election campaign for a private television station. In one of the first days of the campaign, Ilir was asked to cover a SP rally in which several SP leaders participated. In the middle of the rally, a group of opposition supporters nearby started a protest against the government and the SP. Ilir described to Human Rights Watch what happened when he tried to follow the course of the opposition protest:

I noticed that some of the police forces that were securing the [SP] rally-there was quite a heavy police presence in the square-some of them moved quickly toward the opposition protest. I ran in the same direction and stood about twenty meters away from the police chain that had surrounded the opposition crowd. At that point the police launched an action to disperse the crowd forcefully. I was busy taking footage of the scene from across the street when a policeman approached me and asked which station I was working for. But then he noticed the station's logo on my camera and, without waiting for my answer, punched me twice in the head and back. He was one of the [elite] Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) that had traveled from Tirana for the occasion, you can recognize them from their all-black uniforms.²⁸ I managed to run away, hiding behind a nearby newspaper kiosk. . . . But after awhile I noticed the same RRF guy was keeping an eye on me, so I handed over the camera and the tape to a colleague who took them to a safe place. . . . It was about 12:30 p.m..

. . . Then I walked about twenty meters away from the kiosk and mingled with a group of bystanders on the sidewalk. After ten minutes I noticed a police van that was slowly moving toward us, with its sliding back door opened. Before I had any time to think, the van stopped suddenly at my feet, two RRFs jumped out, grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me into the van. The van left speeding, then stopped abruptly to get another five or six RRFs and drove away from the town center. . . . They began hitting me with truncheons and punching and kicking, all at the same time. One of the two policemen who dragged me into the van yelled at me, "Where is the tape, the tape you were using before?" . . . They kept hitting me from all sides until I fainted. . . . When I came back to my senses, at about 3:00 p.m., I was lying in a bed at my brother's home. I had no idea how I got there.²⁹

Someone from the town saw Ilir lying by a road in the outskirts of the town and alerted Arian Hoxha (not his real name), Ilir's friend and neighbor, who was interviewed separately by Human Rights Watch. Arian found Ilir semi-conscious, with blood on his face and clothes, and drove him to Ilir's brother's home:

I didn't take him to his own home because I knew the police had been looking for him. Before I received the call [from the person who saw Ilir first], at about 1:00 p.m., I was walking past a [shop] that Ilir owns in our neighborhood and saw seven to eight police entering the shop. They found Ilir's [business] partner there. . . . They were shouting at him and hit him several times, then dragged him out of the shop and pushed him into a police van. They kept beating him in the van as they drove away. ... Then I learned that the same police van had been looking for Ilir earlier at his home.³⁰

Ilir told Human Rights Watch that the police had indeed been to his home, where they had found and threatened his mother. Then they had visited his shop and asked his partner about the "tape with footage from the rally." In fact, the partner fell victim to an unfortunate coincidence that had made things much worse for him: when the police entered the shop, its TV was tuned to the station for which Ilir worked and was already showing Ilir's rally footage. At first the police thought that the partner was playing back the tape, but they became infuriated when they realized that the footage was being broadcast nationally.³¹ Another journalist saw Ilir's partner emerge from the police station at about 2:30 p.m. that day; he had a bruised face and told the journalist that the police had beaten him up continuously at the shop, on the way to the police station, and inside the station.³²

None of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch regarding this case were willing to give their names or any other details that could lead to their identification for fear of reprisal by the police.

The Attack on the Election Commissioner
Shortly after the June 24 elections, Ilir and the journalist who had witnessed his partner's injuries received information that the police had arrested and beaten up an opposition election commissioner in a nearby commune. Ilir and the journalist secretly interviewed the commissioner at his home, shortly after his release. The police had taken the commissioner to a police station for having allegedly threatened an SP commissioner, but had not charged him with any offense. They had kept him unlawfully for more than twenty-four hours and subjected him to repeated beatings. Ilir filmed the bruises and other signs of beating on the commissioner's body and sent the footage to several television stations, which broadcast it widely. Within hours the police went back to the commissioner's home, dragged him out of his bed, and took him to the police station, where he was subjected to another round of beatings. Ilir and the journalist, who revisited the commissioner, told Human Rights Watch that he had been beaten up so badly that "you could hardly see a spot of white flesh on his body. He was all red from the beatings."³³

The Detention of Enis Fani
Enis Fani is a freelance cameraman based in Durrës, Albania's second largest city. Fani works for several television stations and covered the June 2001 electoral campaign in the Durrës area for ATN1 and TV Shijak. On June 15, 2001, while he was following the activities of the opposition candidate Hajdar Kovaçi, Fani witnessed a confrontation between Kovaçi and the Durrës police. A police squad, headed by an officer known by Fani, stopped Kovaçi's vehicle, without apparent reason, requested to see the car documents, and told Kovaçi that they would have to take the car to the police station for further verification. Kovaçi protested that the police had arbitrarily "taken for verification" several vehicles used by his campaign staff and that he was being harassed by the Durrës police for political reasons. Fani started to videotape the exchange between the candidate and the head of the squad with his non-professional camera. Fani told Human Rights Watch that before long, one of the policemen pushed down his right hand, with which he was holding the camera, telling him that "it is not allowed to tape police activities."

I replied that I was a journalist and that I was not aware of any such law [that prohibits taping the police]. But he threatened to take my camera away, so I pretended I turned the camera off and went on filming by casually holding the camera down. After a few minutes, however, the same policeman noticed that the camera was on, so he grabbed my arm and dragged me into a police vehicle. . . . They took me to the police station; on the way to the station I overheard a senior officer ordering [the head of the squad], over the police radio, to "bring the camera guy to the station." . . . They let me go after about two hours, without interviewing me or saying anything. But they confiscated both the camera and the tape, although I insisted to know why on earth they needed to keep the camera.³⁴

Fani was released only after the director of ATN1 in Tirana, Sokol Olldashi, requested an explanation of his arrest from the deputy minister of public order.³⁵ In this case, the police failed to follow even the most basic procedures, such as registering his detention or checking his identity. Fani believes that the police held his camera in order to obstruct his coverage of the ongoing electoral campaign; he received the camera back only one month later. Fani echoed Kovaçi's complaints about the "coordinated" police harassment suffered by the candidate's staff; Fani himself decided to stop using his personal car during the campaign because of the frequent police checks. According to Fani, a friend whose car Fani had borrowed for some time was also detained and had his car held by the police "for verification of documents" without any wrongdoing on his part.

Denial of access to government institutions and information
Many print and electronic media editors interviewed by Human Rights Watch, especially from the opposition media, said that government officials often and arbitrarily deny their reporters physical access to government institutions or access to government information. Such information embargoes are typically imposed in apparent retaliation for critical reporting by a given media outlet or journalist. Neritan Alibali, editor-in-chief of Republika, the opposition Republican Party daily, described the scope of the problem:

It is almost impossible to write something critical of a minister or even a ministry generally without expecting some form of reprisal by government officials. They will either refuse to talk to any of our journalists, will order the ministry guards to keep them off or sometimes will have their bodyguards threaten them. At one point in 2000 fifteen of Republika's eighteen reporters had been "blacklisted" by one or more central agency; the remaining three were new arrivals. ... It makes balanced reporting extremely difficult because [government officials] refuse to comment on what we write about their work. Then they sue us for libel but they can't have it both ways.³⁶

Alibali told Human Rights Watch that Republika reporters had been denied access to the Ministries of Finance, Culture, Health, Transportation, Public Works, and Privatization, among others. One typical incident involved Matilda Tërpollari, a social affairs reporter for Republika, who was threatened by a bodyguard of then-Minister of Health Leonard Solis. What triggered the minister's reaction was an article by Tërpollari regarding unlicensed dental clinics that operated in violation of the law.³⁷ The article was balanced and moderate, and included statements by a ministry specialist. Nevertheless, Solis called Alibali more than once and pressured him not to publish the piece. When Republika decided to go ahead and publish the article, Tërpollari told Human Rights Watch in a separate interview, it did so at a cost:

I went to see the minister's spokesperson the next day. I was talking to her when a bodyguard entered the office, grabbed my arm and shouted, in a very threatening tone, "Get out of here! And I don't want to see you around this ministry any more." Then he took me forcefully out of the building.³⁸

Tërpollari said she did not return to the Ministry of Health for about a month; when she did, no one from the staff would talk to her, including the minister's spokesperson. More than twenty other reporters, working for both partisan and independent media, told Human Rights Watch that they routinely face similar hostility and intimidation by government officials at all levels. "You really don't feel safe walking in the street after you publish something critical," Tërpollari said.³⁹

In a similar case, Redin Hafizi (RD) was denied access to a joint press conference of the Albanian prosecutor general and his Italian counterpart. The Albanian prosecutor's spokesperson, Ardian Visha, singled Hafizi out of a group of reporters and ordered the police, in full view of his colleagues, to take Hafizi out of the conference room. Hafizi told Human Rights Watch that he believes he was targeted for publishing an offensive statement that Visha had made about a senior European Union official at an earlier press conference.⁴⁰

Such restrictions on access to information from the government may violate the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of information. (See below section on Albanian constitutional law.) Similar problems arise from the failure of the court system to make judicial decisions available to reporters and the public at large. Although in principle copies of court decisions must be publicly available,⁴¹ internal court regulations, an inherited culture of bureaucratic secrecy, and political motives make it impossible or extremely cumbersome for the press to obtain court decisions.⁴² Human Rights Watch staff witnessed firsthand such difficulties in the process of collecting documentation relevant to the defamation trials reviewed in this report. In one of the cases, the administrative staff of the Tirana District Court even declined to provide the journalist defendant with a copy of the judgment in his own case. The Tirana Court of Appeals failed to respond to a written request by Human Rights Watch for copies of several its judgments.⁴³

Chilling Effects of Violence and Intimidation
The violence and intimidation targeting the Albanian media has unsurprising chilling effects on coverage. The negative impact is compounded by the fact that those responsible for preventing and investigating such attacks-such as local police chiefs-are themselves often the worst perpetrators. The general climate of impunity for police abuses takes its toll on press freedoms, as well.

In the worst cases, journalist victims of official repression, suffering persistent attacks, have been forced to leave the country altogether. Others are so intimidated that they will not allow their ordeal to be made public for fear of the consequences-in other words, they are so intimidated that they dare not raise their voices in defense of their own rights.

Media freedoms are fundamental because they are essential to the preservation of the rights of all. If the Albanian press is prevented from reporting freely on human rights violations-be those deaths in police custody or harassment of opposition candidates in a general election-then the chilling effects go much deeper than press freedoms: they affect the freedoms of all Albanians.

In late 2001 the Albanian Ministry of Interior demonstrated a new willingness to address impunity and corruption within the police force. It set up and publicized a special telephone line for complaints against police abuses, and disciplined a number of police agents and officers on the basis of citizen complaints. The ministry should prioritize action against any future interference with media freedoms.

5 Human Rights Watch letter to the Public Relations Office, Ministry of Interior, November 21, 2001. (See Appendix B.)

6 See, for example, Albanian Criminal Code (ACC), sec. 90, in conjunction with Code of Criminal Procedure, sec. 59.

7 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Fatmir Terziu, New York, December 3, 2001.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Human Rights Watch telephone interviews, New York, December 5, 2001.

11 See, for example, Amnesty International, "Albania: A disturbing pattern of disregard for basic human rights," December 21, 2000; available on the World Wide Web at www.amnesty.org.

12 Zylyftar Bregu and Poli Hoxha, "Koseni's Bodyguard, Convicted by Italians for Prostitution," Gazeta Shqiptare, January 8, 2002.

13 According to Hoxha, the big oil importers were taking advantage of an Albanian government decision to exempt oil destined for Kosovo from customs fees. In collusion with customs officers in Durres and at the Kosovo border crossings, the importers declared that the oil would be sold in Kosovo, but then sold it within Albania or in third countries. Hoxha claims that about 200 68,000-liter tankers evaded customs fees in this way. Human Rights Watch interview with Artan Hoxha, Tirana, November 16, 2001.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 ATN1 is a Tirana-based television station with a political orientation that is very close to the opposition Democratic Party.

17 Hasbegu identified Ngresi after describing him to local residents of Berat and recognized him later on numerous occasions when Ngresi appeared on TV or in newspaper photographs.

18 Human Rights Watch interview with Flamur Hasbegu, Tirana, November 5, 2001.

19 Although the videotape showed little more than the dark corridors of the police station-because Hasbegu had been holding the camera down and lighting was insufficient-the sound recording was clear.

20 Human Rights Watch interview with Flamur Hasbegu, note 18 above.

21 Human Rights Watch interview with Sokol Olldashi, ATN1 director, Tirana, November 5, 2001.

22 Human Rights Watch interview with staff of the Press and Public Information Office of the OSCE Presence in Albania, Tirana, November 1, 2002.

23 Section 250 of the ACC made it a crime for a person who "performs a state function or public service" to "commit [arbitrary] actions or give arbitrary orders ... which encroach upon the liberty" of another person. At the time the crime was punishable by up to seven years of imprisonment. Upon Hasbegu's complaint, the attackers could have also been charged with aggravated battery (ACC, sec. 90). Hasbegu did not file a battery complaint, however, for fear of reprisal.

24 The Albanian construction police are a special Ministry of Public Works police corps created in the 1990s to deal with a wave of unauthorized constructions and other construction code violations.

25 Kujtim Boriçi, "Mayor Blames Construction Police," Shekulli (Tirana), September 23, 2001.

26 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Kujtim Boriçi, New York, December 21, 2001.

27 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Haxhi Balliu, New York, December 21, 2001.

28 Albanian regular police wear blue uniforms.

29 Human Rights Watch interview, November 9, 2001.

30 Human Rights Watch interview, November 9, 2001.

31 Human Rights Watch interview, November 9, 2001.

32 Human Rights Watch interview, November 9, 2001.

33 Human Rights Watch interviews, November 9, 2001.

34 Human Rights Watch interview with Enis Fani, Tirana, November 6, 2001.

35 Human Rights Watch interview with Sokol Olldashi, note 21 above.

36 Human Rights Watch interview with Neritan Alibali, Tirana, November 13, 2001. See also, Neritan Alibali, "Republika red-circled," Republika, August 18, 2000.

37 Matilda Tërpollari, "Dental Clinics, the Government's Missing Teeth," Republika, August 16, 2000.

38 Human Rights Watch interview with Matilda Tërpollari, Tirana, November 13, 2001.

39 Ibid.

40 Human Rights Watch interview with Redin Hafizi, New York, December 12, 2001.

41 See Law on the Right to [Receive] Information About Official Documents (no. 8503, dated 30.06.1999).

42 Human Rights Watch interviews, among others, with Neritan Alibali, Pandi Gjata, and Artan Hoxha, Tirana, November 2001.

43 Human Rights Watch letter to Muharrem Kushe, Chief Judge, Tirana Court of Appeals, November 28, 2001.