Death threat sent to Serbian news agency Tanjug over Kosovo reporting

“We welcome Serbian authorities’ quick response to the death threat made against employees of Tanjug news agency and call on them to swiftly conclude their investigation and to hold the perpetrators to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Authorities must ensure the safety of all journalists reporting on Kosovo and not allow threats against the press to go unpunished.”

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo as a country and many of Kosovo’s Serbian minority also reject the designation.

The September 30 email said, “we follow the movements of every journalist of your pseudo-media agency in Kosovo. Rest assured that one of them will get a bullet to the back of their head the next time they set foot on the soil of the Republic of Kosovo.”

In its reporting, Tanjug has used the term “Kosovo Metohija” which was the country’s name when it was a Serbian province. The death threats described the term as “chauvinist” and called Tanjug a “propagandist” and “warmongering” in the service of Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić.

After the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbian government forces fought ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. The war was ended by NATO bombing in 1999.

Tanjug was Yugoslavia’s state-owned news agency for decades until the country broke up and it became Serbia’s official state news agency. Since 2021, it has been under private ownership.  

CPJ emailed questions to the Serbian Ministry of Interior which oversees the police, but received no reply.

In May, CPJ reported that Serbian journalists and press freedom advocates pointed to a concerning increase in threats and attacks against the press.