The civil war in Syria is the best example of non-objective reporting, since the media, especially the Western ones, are turned exclusively against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which can be seen in the latest conflicts in Eastern Ghouta.
This is what the Lebanese journalist and war correspondent for the Croatian "Večernji list", Hasan Hajdar Diab, told Television Vijesti.
He came to Podgorica at the invitation of the Network for Researching Organized Crime and Corruption - Lupo and the Faculty of Political Sciences, in order to speak to journalism students about reporting from war-affected areas.
In 2016, Hajdar Diab wrote a series of texts "Smoke File" for Deutsche Welle with Montenegrin collaborators. In the texts that were transmitted by a large number of regional, but only rare domestic media, he investigated the smuggling of cigarettes from Montenegro to Libya and in this way the creation of a kind of connection with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
He explained why it is more difficult to reach Montenegrin Prime Minister Duško Marković than al-Assad, whom he managed to interview in Syria last year.
"You do an interview with Bashar al-Assad, and then the spokesman or PR of the prime minister does not answer your email! You call him and he won't answer you! I mean, it's a disaster. The Syrian problem is not Bashar al-Assad. The overthrow of the regime of Bashar al- Assad was exclusively the demolition of the backbone of the Shiite axis that goes from Tehran, through Baghdad, Damascus. Today, we return to Eastern Ghouta, it reminds me of Aleppo. Today, the media, especially the Western ones, are exclusively directed against the regime of Bashar al-Assad Why not a single one the media doesn't say that those same poor people in Eastern Ghouta are bombing Damascus every day? No one is talking about how many children have died, how many schools have been destroyed, etc.," said Diab.
In 2016, you were involved in the export of cigarettes from Montenegro to Libya, and according to the data you obtained, those cigarettes mostly ended up in ports controlled by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Do you think that story is complete, can you give us some details?
"Through the Ministry of the Interior of Libya, it was confirmed that the ships that went and arrived there via ports in Libya, went to the area where ISIL and Al Qaeda were, in fact Islamists. I would not say that the government directly interfered or communicated directly with those terrorist groups. Of course, there are intermediaries. Imagine if tomorrow Al Qaeda or ISIL say, here we are trading with the Montenegrin authorities or politicians. Who will believe that today? That's why I think they went through them. That's right, and until when will it last, ask God. And I strongly doubt that they gave up on dealing with it and no one ultimately denied it or tried to deny it," said Diab.
Recently, news echoed in the media that a deadly wave of refugees is going through Montenegro, and across the region. Do you have any more specific information about what awaits us?
"We will never see the scenes we saw in 2015. Unfortunately, there will be more smuggling, there will be more transfers. Where is the role of the state in all this, because it is difficult for hundreds of thousands of migrants to pass through a country without the state knowing about that? This is extremely big money. You can think when you get five thousand dollars per person. Policeman, it doesn't matter if he is a Croat, Montenegrin, Serb, Albanian, look, if you get 100-200 euros per head, then I will you can let as many as you want. For Montenegro, which has 600-650 thousand inhabitants, 10 or five thousand migrants, that's a lot," said Diab.
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