Tennis players, spiritualists and the hard right — Kosovo 2.0
“Croatia never needed God’s protection more than now,” declared pediatric doctor Nada Jurinčić from a stage on Trg Bana Jelačića.
Jurinčić began her speech with a nationalist slogan. “God and Croats!” (Bog i Hrvati!), she called out, before launching into her speech in which she referred to public health measures as “crimes committed as part of a battleplan with the codename Covid-19,” and said that the pandemic is fake. The perpetrators of this great fake are, according to Jurinčić, the World Health Organization and the Chinese Communist Party.
She concluded her speech with the words, “We are at war!” The speech has over 90,000 views on Youtube, and many more if other platforms are included.
Aleksej Kišjuhas, a Serbian sociologist, describes regional anti-vaxxers as “individuals characterized by a relatively conservative right-wing background.”
“They see in vaccines some kind of unnatural or dirty intervention by the world’s liberal powers and corporations, while considering their body a temple,” said Kišjuhas.
Anti-vaxxer influencers
One of the types of places where these ideas spread is on the Youtube channel Bujica, which has over 50,000 subscribers. The channel’s host, Velimir Bujanec, is a far-right public figure with a criminal record in Croatia for cocaine possession and paying for sex with cocaine. He was also photographed in the 1990s wearing a Nazi uniform .
Another popular figure among anti-vaxxers in the region is Semir Osmanagić, a Bosnian “spiritual researcher” who has argued that the Mayans were descendents of an alien race from outer space and that Hitler escaped to an underground base in Antarctica after World War II. Osmanagić made a video appearance at the Zagreb protest in which he drew parallels between Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews and Covid-19 measures. The claim that anti-vaxxers are the modern-day equivalent of Jews under Nazi Germany is a frequent trope in international anti-vax discourse.
Recently he has turned his social media channels into sources of misinformation about Covid and vaccines, including that the supposed pyramids in Visoko have healing effects against coronavirus. His claims were buoyed by the prominent visits of celebrities such as Serbian tennis star and vaccine skeptic Novak Djoković , who visited the site in Fall 2020 and drew more attention and tourists to Visoko and Bosnia, where Covid measures are weakly implemented.
Perhaps the most extreme anti-vaccine movement in the region has been in Slovenia where earlier this year violent protests took place. The protest’s central rallying cry was about the death of a 20-year-old girl of a brain haemorrhage allegedly caused by the Johnson&Johnson vaccine. About ten thousand people rallied in Ljubljana where they marched in the city center and blocked highway exits.
The government responded to the protests with major restrictions on the right to public gathering. Ahead of the EU-Western Balkans Summit , the government for the first time in history Article 9 of the Law on the Tasks and Powers of the Police, limiting the movement of the people in public places. When anti-vaccine protesters gathered despite the restrictions, police used tear gas and water cannons on the public.
Social media
Despite a late start, Kosovo recently caught up with neighboring countries in their Covid vaccination rate. The vaccination campaign in late March with Prime Minister Albin Kurti publicly receiving the first dose of a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines. Despite the country’s recent successes in vaccination, anti-vaccine protests and conspiracies are spreading in Kosovo as well. A vocal person in the Kosovar online anti-vaccine world is Arianit Sllamniku, a German language teacher.
“Me and my family started th e protests because we didn’t agree with the government decision to open gyms and coffee shops while keeping the educational facilities closed, “ said Sllamniku. He started protesting in September and has since led three protests, none of which have drawn much attendance.
“Through the post I made on Facebook about the protests in Prishtina, people started to show their support and joined us,” said Sllamniku.
Like-minded people together created a Facebook group called “Free Citizen,” “ Qytetari i Lirë” in Albanian, which has over 600 members. Facebook recently blocked Sllamniku for ten days for spreading posts about vaccines that violate the social media platform’s misinformation policies.
Kosovar journalist Valjeta Kosumi sees a huge problem in social media.
“Social media plays a big part when it comes to conspiracy theories on vaccines and people’s decision to not get vaccinated,” Kosumi said. According to her, two frequent conspiracy theories are about supposed microchips in the vaccines and the belief that vaccines negatively affect fertility. She’s seen these arguments frequently in the comments sections of daily news posted on social media.
Youtube recently announced they will remove videos and channels associated with anti-vaccine content, but Facebook’s struggles to manage non-English web content calls into doubt whether this decision will have effects in the region.
After being blocked a few times, Sllamniku has started to consider other social media platforms. “ Telegram is one of the other alternative platforms that has no restrictions that apply on Facebook or Twitter, “ he said.
Zoran Stevanović, one of the main organizers of the protests in Ljubljana, instead of turning to Telegram, has formed a new political party called Resnica, which means “The Truth.” Stevanović is a former police officer, businessman and member of the far-right nationalist party Slovenian National Party.
“We have been ruled for 30 years by the same project, a destructive politics of corruption and a policy of false divisions that separates people,” Stevanović said to K2.0.
Stevanović has called the pandemic “a criminal project” and has been on two occasions for incitement. Despite this, Stevanović managed to get a with the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, where he made a number of inflammatory demands . Pahor shortly ended the meeting.
Targeting the media
It isn’t just vaccine producers, China and the World Health Organization that are on anti-vaxxers’ list of proverbial enemies; many also have their aim set on the media. “The regime’s main media are blocking us, or reporting about us negatively,” Stevanović complained.
According to Aleksej Kišjuhas, there are many different reasons people join anti-vaccine movements, and that research shows there are many different reasons why people refuse vaccines or hesitate about them.
“Some people are uninformed or misinformed,” said Kišjuhas, “some are afraid of side effects or needles, some have no confidence in the health system or the government and then there are some that truly believe in conspiracy theories, microchips, or the ‘pharmaco-mafia’.”
He emphasizes that processes of identity and community building are essential to understanding how the anti-vaccine groups form and are sustained.
“People often make opinions influenced by respected individuals or people they trust within personal social networks,” said Kišjuhas. “If these individuals are anti-vaxxers, they will raise doubts about vaccines in many.”
This article has been produced with the financial support of the “Balkan Trust for Democracy,” a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade. Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.
Originally published at https://kosovotwopointzero.com on October 28, 2021.
