Polish over Principle: Bahri Cani’s Response to a Public Assault

After Armend Zemaj punched a citizen, Bahri Cani condemned “violence” yet domesticated it as “complexity”— then liked an ad hominem against me. Neutrality, here, is complicity.

It was late on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday when Bahri Cani’s remarks¹ caught my attention. The country was still absorbing the shock of a public act of violence. Armend Zemaj, a Member of Parliament from Kosovo’s LDK, had turned mid-interview in the centre of Pristina and struck a citizen who had dared to utter two small words “you’re lying.” The clip travelled fast, replayed in the loops of Balkan irony that can turn a moment of disgrace into an entertainment.

Cani, a journalist long resident in Germany working with DW, responded online with a statement that seemed, at first glance, even-handed. Violence, he wrote, was “not a solution.” Yet embedded in the phrasing was a familiar sleight of hand, a gentle relativism that blurred aggression into “complexity,” as though the citizen’s words might somehow share the blame for the politician’s fist. It was this tone, civil, balanced, and morally inert that stirred me to write today.

I addressed him as a colleague, not an adversary. I wrote² to remind him that neutrality in the face of violence is not virtue but abdication, that in our profession the duty to name an act for what it is precedes the comfort of “context.” I described what would happen in Berlin or London, where a politician who strikes a citizen is met not with analysis of provocation but with resignation and shame. I argued that when journalists normalise assault as a misunderstanding, they train the public to expect impunity.

Cani’s reply arrived days later, measured and courteous. He apologised for the delay, declared once more his opposition to violence, and explained that his original post had been an attempt to illuminate “the complexity” of public life. He mentioned that both parties had been questioned by the authorities and that he “believed” the deputy would face consequences. He added, almost parenthetically, that he had deleted a sentence about the need for an apology, lest it appear he was lecturing the politician.

On its surface, this was civility; beneath it, evasion. The logic was procedural, not moral. The invocation of “complexity” transformed a simple breach of democratic order into a psychological drama of mutual irritations. His insistence that he had meant no defence of the MP seemed less an affirmation of principle than an effort to tidy the optics.

My response was brief but pointed. I noted that he had moved from condemning violence to rationalising it, that his call for mutual politeness collapsed the asymmetry between a citizen’s speech and a politician’s assault. I asked why a journalist who preaches calm would click “like” on a supporter’s comment calling me an ignorant partisan.

That supporter, a man named Liridon Bajrami, had entered the conversation with a mixture of flattery and insult, praising Cani as “wonderful” and “impartial” while dismissing me as a stooge for the ruling party. It was the oldest rhetorical trick in the Balkan playbook, praise the moderate to isolate the dissenter. When Cani endorsed the remark with a digital nod, the gesture said more than his paragraphs ever could. It revealed the instinct not to defend truth but to reward allegiance.

Facebook exchange with Bahri Cani: First screenshot: Bahri Cani’s public comment on my post, where he apologises for his earlier reaction, clarifies his stance against violence, and explains that his original message was intended to discuss political accountability rather than defend any wrongdoing. Replies from other users include both criticism and praise of Cani’s statement. Second screenshot: A view of the list of users who “liked” Cani’s comment, showing names including Liridon Bajrami, the same commenter who had accused me of partisanship. Third screenshot: The expanded profile preview of Bahri Cani’s verified Facebook page, identifying him as a journalist with links to his professional platforms.

In that single click lay the essence of our exchange, a performance of balance concealing a preference for comfort. Cani’s “like” was a small, almost absent-minded act, yet it exposed the gravitational pull that keeps so much of Kosovo’s media orbiting power. To criticise violence too plainly risks sounding “political.” To stand for principle alone is to invite derision as a partisan. And so neutrality performed, polished, endlessly invoked, becomes the safe house of those who wish to avoid choosing sides between right and wrong.

What struck me most was not Cani’s defensiveness but his fatigue. It was the weariness of a man who knows that public virtue in Kosovo is a performance with diminishing audience. The language of civility has become a shield against consequence, the moral pulse of the press has cooled to procedural heartbeat. To say “I am against violence” while explaining it away is to confess the erosion of conviction that passes for professionalism.

I did not seek to win an argument. What I wanted was to draw a line between understanding and justification, between empathy and surrender. The exchange, brief as it was, became a small test of what remains of integrity in a public sphere allergic to discomfort.

The fatigue that seeps through such exchanges is not personal exhaustion, it is the moral temperature of Kosovo’s media ecosystem. It shows how easily principle is sacrificed to posture, how quickly words like “balance” and “complexity” become synonyms for silence. And yet, to insist on clarity, on naming a blow as a blow, is not anger. It is, perhaps, the last form of respect a journalist can show to the truth.

And perhaps nothing illustrates that decay more starkly than Bahri Cani’s own performance. At first glance, his replies carried the tone of composure, the mannered ease of a journalist rehearsed in the aesthetics of balance. Yet beneath that varnish lay a hollow centre, a reflex to dilute moral clarity until it became palatable. His language of “complexity” and “understanding” did not illuminate, it anaesthetised. When he later endorsed an ad hominem against me with a casual “like,” the mask slipped entirely. It revealed the instinct not of the independent reporter, but of the functionary, someone more invested in the optics of civility than in the substance of truth. For a journalist bearing the emblem of Deutsche Welle, an institution once built on the discipline of moral precision, that gesture should sting. Is this what DW teaches now, that violence can be neutralised through phrasing, that intellectual elegance absolves moral cowardice, that public trust can survive on procedural decency alone? To proclaim opposition to brutality while legitimising its language is not neutrality; it is surrender wrapped in syntax. Beneath the politeness, what remains is complicity neat, fluent, and fatally civilised.

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1. Bahri Cani’s Facebook Post,

2. My Facebook Post, 25 Oct, 2025.