AJM with an appeal to the Ministry of the Interior about threats to the life of Jabir Derala

The Association of Journalists of Macedonia (АЈМ) submitted an appeal to the competent Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) department regarding a direct threat to the life of the founder of Civil Media, Jabir Derala.

The appeal follows the direct threat to colleague Derala in the form of a comment on his published column on the official Facebook page of “Nova TV Web”, where a profile named Aleksandar Antic wrote a comment: “Be visible, you nit, the bullet will hit you no matter where it is.”

AJM contacted the person in charge of attacks on journalists in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the case was reported, and the appeal was addressed to the Department for Computer Crime and Digital Forensics at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

We want to point out that threats to life are crimes included in the Criminal Code, for which a prison sentence is provided for the perpetrators. The Ministry of the Interior and the Public Prosecutor’s Office should immediately investigate and process them to punish those who violate the law but also to prevent possible such crimes in the future.

We remind you that for cases where there are explicit threats to the safety of journalists and media workers, the AJM and the Ministry of the Interior have a protocol for cooperation, which defines the practical steps for journalists to act when they are the subject of a threat through social networks and, in general, on the Internet, through proactive involvement of the Ministry of the Interior in the protection of media workers.