IJAS: Taking the oath of the mayor of North Mitrovica in the shadow of preventing the work of journalists

At the ceremonial session of the North Mitrovica Municipal Assembly, at which the newly elected mayor Erden Atic took the oath, the newsrooms covering the event were faced with the selective giving of statements, the absence of a translation into the Serbian language, and not being allowed into the building of the Municipal Assembly, the Association of Journalists of Serbia announced.

The journalist of Radio Kosovska Mitrovica, Ivana Vanovac, told the IJAS website that the personnel who had communicated with the media crews had not been from the media relations service, but that they had been members of the security, and that communication in the Serbian language had been impossible.

"The behavior of the officials during today's taking of oath of Mayor Atic and his deputies was incorrect and discriminatory. At the request of security, media workers who identified themselves with the IJAS press card were detained with the question - 'what kind of credentials do you have?' After a short discussion, they were released as well," Vanovac explains for IJAS.

She points out that the newly elected mayor Atic, after taking the oath, addressed the journalists selectively, precisely because the protocol was handled by security personnel, not PR officers.

"No one organized the journalists to take the statement at the same time, so only a few teams managed to do it, which happened inside the municipal building, while the rest waited for a few more hours for the statement. When he finally addressed the other teams, the mayor did so in Albanian, and at the request of the Serbian newsrooms to have the statements translated, he said that they didn’t not have a Serbian translator," Vanovac said.

In the end, the newly elected mayor spoke, in a completely correct Serbian language, giving a statement to Serbian journalists, however, he did not want to answer their questions, although he duly did so when the questions were asked by colleagues from the Albanian newsrooms.

According to Ana Markovic, a journalist from the portal Gracanica Online and a correspondent for Television Prva, at the press conference of the mayor of North Mitrovica after taking the oath, several media were singled out, which mostly report in the Albanian language.

Many media reporting in Serbian and Albanian had remained, as Markovic told the IJAS website, in front of the Municipality building and had not been allowed to get a statement.

"We don't know how the media were selected, by what selection. We complained and asked that he addresed everyone, that it be in front and that we all could ask questions. Later, we heard from our Albanian colleagues that the mayor would address the media at the Ibar bridge, which was after an hour or two. We didn't leave, we boycotted," Markovic said.

As could be expected, a large number of journalistic teams, both Serbian and Albanian, were interested in today's event.