A Smear Campaign Against Memory and Justice
A coordinated smear against a genocide survivor is not journalism, it is an assault on truth, democracy, and Kosovo’s sovereignty. Silence is complicity. Action is overdue.
In late May, a grotesque spectacle unfolded on Kosovo’s social media channels, one that has since reverberated far beyond the digital sphere and exposed, in full light, a systematic effort to undermine not only the moral fabric of the young republic, but its very claim to sovereignty and truth.
It began on 31 May, with a single post by Ilir Mirena, editor-in-chief of Periskopi, a news platform in Kosovo long alleged to operate as a conduit for the country’s most venal political forces — and, increasingly, for narratives sympathetic to Serbia’s enduring campaign of delegitimisation against the Kosovan state.
Mirena shared a screenshot of a cropped image of Kosovo’s acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti1, seated solemnly on a green sofa. Without context, he appended a sneering caption: “He looks as though he eats nothing but stale bread, yet last year alone his office spent 112,000 euros on lunches and dinners. 😁” A throwaway line of political mockery? Hardly.
The image had been taken during an extraordinarily solemn occasion: a private commemoration of the massacre of the Bogujevci family, one of the most infamous atrocities committed during Serbia’s genocidal campaign against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. It was hosted by Saranda Bogujevci, Deputy Speaker of Kosovo’s Parliament and herself a survivor of that massacre. At age 13, Saranda was shot 16 times by members of Serbia’s notorious “Scorpions” paramilitary unit. Fourteen members of her family were murdered that day, her mother, two brothers, her aunt, her grandmother, cousins, leaving only Saranda and a handful of cousins alive, gravely wounded.
The commemoration at which Kurti was photographed was not an act of politics, nor public relations. It was a space of grief, remembrance, and moral witness. To rip an image from such a context, to wield it for political cynicism, is not merely a violation of ethical journalism. It is a desecration.
Saranda Bogujevci responded with dignified, incisive clarity: “Wretched, Ilir Mirena,” she wrote2.
“This photo was taken on the day we commemorated the massacre of my family, a day when none of your bosses opened their doors to us, or to others. It is misery that we breathe the same air as wretches like you. You have no limits, no shame. You are simply miserable.” Saranda Bogujevci.
One might have expected a pause for reflection, perhaps even an apology from Mirena or his defenders. Instead, what followed was an all-too-familiar crescendo of orchestrated abuse, a coordinated campaign that has exposed how deep and dangerous the malign currents within Kosovo’s media and political landscape truly run.
Into the fray leapt Lirim Mehmetaj, a self-styled “opinionist” and columnist for Albanian Post, a media outlet owned by Baton Haxhiu, a figure widely documented as a Belgrade-aligned operative. Haxhiu’s role in attempting to rehabilitate Serbia’s narratives within Kosovo and beyond has been long discussed in Kosovan and international circles; Albanian Post remains an instrument of that agenda.
Mehmetaj’s intervention3 was nothing short of vile. In a post brimming with misogyny, personal vilification, and wild conspiracies, he derided Bogujevci as “a servant of Albin Kurti, exploiting her family’s tragedy for political gain” and accused her of collaborating in “the destruction of the state”. He insinuated, without evidence, that she had tacitly supported Kosovo’s compromise agreements in Brussels and the establishment of energy structures in the Serb-majority north, as though any of this bore relevance to her family’s massacre or her right to remembrance.
The true nadir of Mehmetaj’s attack came when he circulated an image from 2013, when Bogujevci had courageously participated in a ground-breaking exhibition in Belgrade. There, at the height of Serbia’s post-conflict denialism, Bogujevci had confronted then-Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, publicly presenting an exhibit that documented, in unflinching detail, the massacre of her family by Serbian forces. Rather than acknowledging this act of moral courage, Mehmetaj twisted the image to suggest that she had somehow been complicit in “rehabilitating” Serbia’s image. The slander was staggering and calculated.
Others swiftly joined the dogpile. Among them was Berat Buzhala4, a media figure whose record of cynical provocations needs no elaboration. Buzhala trivialised the entire affair, writing: “Calm down, sister. Ilir only used a photo of Kurti. He said nothing bad about you or your family.” He then proceeded to launch into a diatribe laced with historical revisionism and personal attacks against both Bogujevci and Kurti, invoking wartime tropes and belittling their moral standing.
It was left to those with integrity to push back. Kosovan journalist Vullnet Krasniqi provided a meticulous and necessary corrective5. “I was present at that exhibition in Belgrade,” Krasniqi wrote. “Saranda was the first and only one who dared look Dacic in the eye and speak of the crimes Serbia committed against her family and Kosovo. In that photo, she is showing him clothes of her murdered relatives. I will never forget the sweat and shame that overcame Dacic that night.” He recounted the threats from Serbian radicals outside the exhibition, the gravity of what Bogujevci and her fellow survivors had achieved and the abject cynicism of those now attacking her.
The Humanitarian Law Centre of Kosovo soon issued a formal statement of condemnation6, calling for an immediate halt to the smear campaign. It underscored that, in the absence of institutional commemorations of war crimes, it had fallen to survivors like Bogujevci to preserve public memory and moral truth through acts of witness, a burden they should never have had to bear alone.
What is at stake here is far more than the personal dignity of one survivor, important though that is. This was an attempted erasure of moral clarity itself, and of the fundamental truths on which the Republic of Kosovo is founded.
Let us name these actors clearly: Ilir Mirena, Lirim Mehmetaj, Berat Buzhala — and the platforms that give them cover, are not journalists. They are propagandists, aligned with a persistent strategy that seeks to corrode public trust in Kosovo’s institutions, to promote cynicism and fatalism, and to insinuate that Kosovo is an ungovernable, internally divided, failed state. These are not merely lapses in judgement or breaches of taste. They are systematic violations of journalistic ethics.
In this specific case, these individuals and outlets have violated the foundational principles of ethical journalism: the duty to verify context; to respect victims of atrocity; to avoid distortion of imagery; to refrain from personal and gender-based vilification; and to honour the sacred line between public discourse and the personal trauma of genocide survivors. They have weaponised disinformation not just against an individual, but against the historical record and the moral standing of the Kosovan state itself.
Their ultimate goal is transparent: to destroy public trust in journalism, so that no common ground of truth remains upon which citizens can stand to defend their republic. In such an environment, a nation’s very claim to legitimacy dissolves into relativism and confusion, an outcome that serves only the interests of those in Belgrade who still dream of reversing Kosovo’s hard-won independence.
This is a matter of national security. When media platforms and figures knowingly participate in operations that align with foreign hostile narratives that actively work to destabilise Kosovo’s democratic foundations, they cease to be part of a free press and become instruments of subversion. They must be treated as such.
Kosovo’s civil society, genuine journalists, and state institutions must now act with resolve. The sources of funding behind these platforms must be investigated. If ties to malign influence are substantiated, these outlets must be shut down. Journalistic associations must rigorously enforce ethical codes. And the public must be equipped to discern who speaks in good faith and who seeks to poison the well of truth.
The Republic of Kosovo was born from the blood and courage of people like Saranda Bogujevci. It is intolerable that its public discourse should be allowed to be degraded by those who once sought and still seek its erasure.
The line must be drawn. Here. Now.
And where, one must ask, is the voice of the Kosovo Journalists Association7, the very body charged with defending the dignity of the profession?
Deafeningly silent.
Their complicity through omission is no less shameful than the propaganda itself. For years, this Association has stood idly by as a small but pernicious clique of pseudo-journalists, aligned with political mafias and the ghosts of Kosovo’s criminal wartime profiteers, have used the tools of media to attack, defame, and silence every voice of reform, every survivor seeking justice, every challenge to the corrupt status quo that looted this country for two long decades. Worse still, they have at times fabricated grotesque distortions, portraying Kosovo as a supposed "danger zone" for press freedom8, a narrative that cynically serves only to mask their own failures and to undermine the Republic on the international stage. And now, as a survivor of genocide is publicly defiled in a campaign that violates the very core of journalistic ethics, they say nothing. They issue no condemnation, no defence of truth. In any mature European democracy in Britain, in France, in Germany, such silence in the face of such moral obscenity would be unconscionable. It is time the international community, and genuine journalists within Kosovo, demand accountability from an Association that has become little more than a shield for those corroding the very meaning of journalism.
Sabotaging the State, One Post at a Time
On a spring morning in Prishtina, as acting Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo Albin Kurti emerged from a government building, a formation of close protection officers surrounded him with precision. Their movements choreographed and professional, the security personnel kept their gazes trained, their steps sharp. But what ought to have been a routine demonstration of state security protocol became the subject of derision and ridicule in a series of social media posts by Berat Buzhala, one of Kosovo's most publicly visible media figures. Over the span of several days in late April 2025, Buzhala published four Facebook posts
Berat Buzhala — Facebook POST.
Berat Buzhala, Sanctioned Figures, and the Threat to Kosovo’s National Security
Berat Buzhala’s troubling connections to U.S.-sanctioned figures like Grubi and Veselinovic expose a dangerous nexus of media manipulation, corruption, and threats to Kosovo’s national security. — The GPC I Unit.
Buzhala’s War on Truth and Trust
Berat Buzhala’s media theatrics echo Russian disinformation tactics, weaponising despair to sabotage Kosovo’s democracy from within, while shielding corrupt elites fleeing justice. — The GPC.