The safety of journalists in the Western Balkans is still a concern, said the president of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) Mogens Bliher Bjeregard on the second day of the conference "Media Freedom and Safety of Journalists in the Western Balkans", which was held in Podgorica.
Bjeregard said that the state of media freedom in the region is also bad, and that it is therefore very good that journalists' associations and trade unions in the Western Balkans joined together in defense of media freedom.
The representative of the Council of Europe (CoE), Lejla Dervišagić, said that prevention, protection, initiation of investigations and promotion of all these are the key recommendations of the CoE to member states for strengthening the safety of journalists.
Dervišagić said that SE, through its platform, has been recording cases of attacks on journalists in Europe for several years and is analyzing the possibilities for solving them.
"The goal is to force the member states to change the existing situation," said Dervišagić.
She also stated that 122 cases of attacks on journalists in Europe and, unfortunately, 4 murders, were recorded through the SE platform this year.
The president of the Media Union of Montenegro, Marijana Camović, said that the state of Montenegro is not taking the SE platform seriously and that it needs up to ten months to answer the Council's questions about attacks on journalists.
"The state even demanded that three cases of attacks on journalists in Montenegro be removed from the SE platform, even though they have not been legally resolved," said Camović.
She also assessed that it is a great shame that the Montenegrin police and the prosecutor's office allowed the statute of limitations to expire in the case of the attack on journalist Mladen Stojović.
Member of the Montenegrin Commission for Monitoring Investigations of Attacks on Journalists, Dalibor Tomović, said that at the beginning of next year, the statute of limitations will begin in three cases of attacks on the newsroom and property of the newspaper Vijesti.
Tomović said that the Commission has so far adopted five reports on attacks that they searched.
"The reports, with recommendations, were adopted by the government and now we are waiting to see if these recommendations will be implemented," said Tomović.
The primary state prosecutor in Podgorica, Ljiljana Klikovac, denied that in some cases the statute of limitations for attacks on journalists is about to start, referring to the prosecution's data.
she also said that the joint seminars of the police, prosecutor's office and journalists would help to improve the security of journalists and solve attacks more quickly.
The president of the Association of Macedonian Journalists, Naser Selmani, said that 18 attacks on journalists were recorded in that country last year, and six this year, and that the situation is somewhat better since the change of government.
"What is worrying is the policy of impunity because most of the cases from the earlier period have not been solved," says Selmani.
He said that the police in Macedonia hide the attackers of journalists in some cases.
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