Kosovo Online denied accreditation to cover the constitutive session of the Kosovo Assembly

The Kosovo Assembly has denied several Serbian-language media outlets the opportunity to cover the constitutive session of the Assembly, despite the fact that they submitted all the required accreditation documentation in a timely and proper manner.

The media outlets that were denied access to the Assembly building include Kosovo Online and RTS.

The Kosovo Online editorial team submitted its first accreditation request back in January.

As no accreditations had been issued by then, the request was resubmitted in July. However, upon arriving at the Assembly, it was established that Kosovo Online was not on the list of accredited media outlets, preventing the journalists from covering the constitutive session.

Despite repeated attempts to find out why our media outlet was not included on the accreditation list, the only explanation we received was that the general secretary's signature is required for an accreditation to be issued.

However, no further explanation was provided as to why that signature had not been obtained or when the issue might be resolved.

The Kosovo Online editorial team has repeatedly contacted the relevant authorities from January until today, asking to be informed about the status of our request and to allow our media outlet to cover the work of the Kosovo Assembly under the same conditions as other news organizations. We never received a response.

We also contacted the Director for Media, Musli Krasniqi, who did not want to receive us, as well as the office of the acting Secretary General of the Kosovo Assembly, Feride Podvorica.

Yesterday, her office told us that they would inform the Secretary General about our case. We received the same response today. When asked whether our journalists would be allowed to enter the constitutive session, the answer, without any explanation, was: “Not today.”