Agron Bajrami
Editor-in-Chief,
Koha Ditore daily, Pristina
They show that being a member of EU or an aspiring country is not in itself a guarantee that media freedoms will be safeguarded and respected.
On the other hand, these trends expose the intentional ignorance among other members of EU and western world, who, with their silence, seem to be happy to sacrifice media freedoms for whatever political calculations.
Finally, these negative trends in Hungary and Turkey give a very bad example to all other EU aspiring countries of South East Europe, by providing our local authorities throughout our region justification for limiting and infringing the free speech and freedom of the media.
It is therefore instrumental to see a unified and unequivocal response against these trends, so that we prevent the further downfall of media freedoms, which is always linked with the downfall of other human right freedoms, as well.
Instead of waiting for an unlikely positive change, Europe should use its leverage on these two countries and act with determination to reverse the trends in favor of what we these days call Western and Democratic values of free speech and media
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