The chronology of a Twitter battle

Those of you who have been following this blogsite have read my previous post about the power of the web in inciting and supporting ethnic nationalism. Consider this the second part of that post.

A couple of weeks ago, as the EU-encouraged Serbia-Kosova talks went into the abyss, the Kosovar government took it upon itself to reciprocate Serbia’s trade boycott of Kosovar products by disallowing Serbian trucks destined for Macedonia and Kosova to get through the border. Similarly, it ordered a takeover of the border posts near Serbia, both of which had been under a state of anarchy, since Kosovar Serb police officers couldn’t control the flow of goods (possibly because they feared Serbian retaliation or because they sympathized with fellow Serbs). This triggered an increase in tensions, leading to a Serb hooligan chaos at both border posts, resulting in the burning of one. Following KFOR negotiations with the political leaders of Serbia and Kosova, it was agreed that NATO would make the area an emergency security zone, meaning it would be a sealed off border area, and anyone provoking a change the status quo could be shot. Serbs then placed roadblocks outside of borderposts, but near both sides of the border. They began removing some of those by August 10th. Macedonia immediately offered replacing the boycotted Serbian goods and services for ones made in Macedonia, and I think Gov’t of Kosova has taken them up on it. A most recent, EU-mediated agreement between Kosova and Serbia resolved the trade embargo, although the border dispute is still unresolved.

During this whole time, one looks for information on the latest updates, and since the Kosovar TV and web media kept playing the same story over and over again (sometimes sounds so repetitive I read their script in unison), I looked to Twitter for information. I followed two hashtags: #kosova and #kosovo (For anyone who doesn’t know why there are two spellings of the name for a single country, read this).

Most of the initial posts comprised of angry tweeple (Twitter users), largely Serbs, who supported the action of the organized bands that burnt the border posts, but also of people who wanted more up-to-date information on the emergency. Most of the conversation using the #kosovo hashtag was in Serbian. By the end of the day, someone suggested that English-speaking Twitter users may not understand what is being said, so it was better to write some tweets in English, so as to make others understand what the issues were.

Within 5 minutes, a new Twitter user emerged: KosmetNews and ObjectiveOnly (objective, as in being ironic) began to tweet links to articles by Serb and Russian authors in English about Albanian revenge killings against Serbs post-June 1999. For the next two days, these two users inundated the #kosovo hashtag with repeated link references to incidents that took place in 1999 and 2004. Presumably, this link-flooding was done to remind English-speaking users of Twitter that burning border posts and not recognizing Kosova as an independent state was justifiable under the circumstances of crimes against Kosovar Serbs. What I found fascinating was the fact that crimes committed by the Serbian military and paramilitary, as well as ethnic Serb volunteers of various supra-military groups pre-June 1999 against Albanian and other Kosovar citizens was not mentioned once. Similarly, faulty, unproven and outright false claims about the history of Kosova became the norm in this one-sided exchange: “astara231: @remzicej The “people of #Kosovo ” used to be predominantly Serb, Albanians began pushing them north many decades ago. WORK THINGS OUT.”

Once again, I was reminded that this was nothing but nationalist propaganda. The risks of such propaganda include a reinforcement of negative feelings or hatred against the other side, reinforcement of (flawed and biased) facts that one is right, and a reinforcement of a sense that one is a member of a large group of users who may share those former two emotions.

At one point, I asked expressly if a user would condemn the crimes that the Serbian military and volunteers committed against Kosovars in 1999. They responded: “zilez2003: @remzicej Who r you to claim what was done in my name? What u have done ever to stop bad things Albanians did on #kosovo Condemn? Brave” Upon a persistent request, the user replied (in a private tweet, without hashtags, so no other Serb users could see it): “@remzicej I condemn ALL crimes made by anybody. Including ones made by Serbs against Albanians, and Albanians against Serbs. Clear enough ?”

Three different Albanian users kept replying to tweets, and although they kept replying with facts early on, it turned into a bickering, an exchange of facts and bias, emotion and anger, hatred and cussing. This exchange turned into an intense throwing back and forth of words. A tweeter sent me a message, saying that the fact that I spoke Serbian attested to the fact that Kosova belonged to Serbia. When I replied that my parents taught me to speak the language of my neighbours, the tweeter replied, stating that he doubted I was telling the truth. Another one wrote saying that she had traveled to Brezovica, a skiing mountain in Kosova, and had not had to speak any Albanian, which she considered proof that Serbians were a majority in Kosova. When I replied that that was because all Albanians had been forced out of their jobs because they did not accept Milosevic’s rule, she wrote back saying “well, it was beautiful [to be there] anyway “. I saw it as a German citizen feeling ok with the fact that the streets had been emptied of Jews during the Olympic Games in Berlin; she saw it as a normal holiday. A disconnect happened somewhere, and I couldn’t quite figure out where. She then added me on Facebook as a friend, which she later described as a step she took to let me know that not all Serbs hate Albanians (if only any of these people knew that I’m not quite Albanian). I didn’t accept the request (because I don’t really know her), but I appreciated the effort. A few days later, she replied to a tweet I posted by saying that I was full of hatred because I had mocked the anti-independence protests in Belgrade, in which many local shops were looted. Serbian media mockingly called the protests “sneakers for Kosova”.

I concluded three different things from the nationalist Twitter battle:

1. As few as two people can take over the control of a hashtag, which means potentially millions of people relying on an update will receive propaganda updates from individuals who may have a specific goal in mind. By posting frequently, these tweeple give the impression of providing reliable information, posting older, biased, and nationalism-geared posts instead. As someone I had a Facebook exchange with wrote, the ten loudest people on Twitter don’t represent all of Serbia. It is easy to overestimate the extent to which public opinion is widespread through Twitter posts;
2. What is right is diluted in this social media platform. As a friend pointed out at an Amnesty International gathering recently, the unfortunate thing about the internet is that everyone finds what they are looking for – in other words, everyone is right, and everyone is wrong at the same time. This sort of encouragement only fuels further ethnic nationalism, convincing different sides not to find commonality and points of convergence, but of difference and divergence instead.
3. Emotions run high during a Twitter battle. In one exchange, I had 10 different messages back and forth. While it appeared that at one point, I had managed to convince one (!!!) user that I wasn’t out to get him or any other Serbs, but that I simply wanted to have a normal exchange with someone, he wrote back to say that he wasn’t sure he could trust me and that he couldn’t write anymore because it was too emotionally difficult for him.

My Facebook non-friend’s second last sentence was “We are all sick of hate”. I hope to live to see the day when that view is shared by everyone.

News

My last post was about a wonderful experience I had interviewing with 34 other candidates from across Canada for a fascinating public policy fellowship funded partly by Canadian Heritage, and partly by private sponsors. Even though I faced a roomful of inspiring, well-known (Roxanne Joyal, the co-founder of Me-to-We and Save the Children, for example) well-accomplished and prominent selection committee members who wanted only the most deserving candidates to be selected for the Fellowship, I felt like I was talking to a group of friends. It was a tough interview, but somehow, I was relaxed.

The experience was great, and the short of it all is that I was selected as an Action Canada fellow this year, an honour and privilege, one that I hope to use to advance concerns important to Canadians across this vast country and the world over.

The way in which the fellowship works is that we form groups of fellows working on separate issues. Mine, for example, is working on the energy concerns of Canadians. We are excited about the year ahead, after spending two meetings, one in Kananaskis, Alberta, and another one in Vancouver, BC talking about where we are headed with our project and what we want to get out of the work we will be preparing over the next 9 months.

In a few days, I will be heading to Amnesty International’s International Council Meeting, which is held every two years to discuss the organization’s global priorities and objectives. This year’s meeting will be held near Amsterdam, and promises to be exciting, inspiring, and hopefully, productive. The lineup of keynote and panel speakers is impressive, and I hope to write more on that as it happens.

In the last few days, I’ve had a bit of a Twitter battle with some tweeple about Kosova. It was an annoying, but addictive experience, writing back endless replies to tweeters who asked the same questions over and over again but refused to listen. I am preparing a post on that experience and will hopefully be posting it by the weekend sometime.

In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter if you have an account there. Tweet y’all later!

Nostalgizing anew

Here’s a song that’s been in my head today:

Back from Bosnia and Kosova

Having spent three weeks conducting research in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosova, I am now back in Oxford.

I did a bit of a different journey into the Balkans: I flew from Gatwick into Dubrovnik, spent a day there, then took a bus to Sarajevo. I stayed at the nicest hotel next to Bascarsija.

Following the end of my interviews, which were very successful, and I met a number of very interesting, intelligent people, I took a bus to Prishtina via Novi Pazar (Serbia). It was a little nerve-wracking to wait for the Serbian customs officer, who took my Canadian passport and walked off with it, supposedly to verify that I’m not on an Interpol wanted list.

He returned 15 minutes later, and all was well. That said, the trip took 12 hours from Sarajevo to Prishtina.

Prishtina was as giving and generous as ever – its weather warmer than Oxford or Sarajevo, its people ready to celebrate the second anniversary of Kosova’s declaration of independence. Suffice it to say that it was a great place to be in mid-February.

Reliving Yugoslavia in a mental institution

The article below reminds me of a recent Kosovar film titled Kukumi, about one of the most vulnerable groups in times of war.

Kukumi

Yugoslav Memories preserved in Kosovo mental home, by Fatos Bytyci

STIMLJE (Reuters) – Kujtim Xhelili fought for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia but will not join the celebrations when it finally arrives.

For the people Xhelili looks after, the old Yugoslavia has never died. He is the director of a mental institute whose long-term inmates date back to the old federation — Serbs, Albanians, Bosnians and Hungarians.

It is the only Kosovo institution where Serbian is the first language, ahead of Albanian. It celebrates Islamic, Catholic and Orthodox Christian holidays.

“We must be sensitive,” said Xhelili, one of Kosovo’s 90 percent Albanian majority. “So we decided independence will be a normal working day.”

Kosovo is preparing to declare independence this month or next and anticipation is building ahead of celebrations promised by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and his government.

The province is buzzing with speculation about the date of the declaration, but Xhelili’s patients seem unaware of what is going on even though they all watch local television.

In a world of their own behind the institute’s white fences, they are oblivious of the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and the deep animosities between Kosovo Serbs and Albanians that linger since the 1998-99 war and NATO’s expulsion of Serb forces.

Totally refurbished since it was sacked and looted during the fighting, when the inmates were left to wander around the district, the institute is clean and bright.

The names on the doors of the bedrooms are an ethnic blend from Yugoslavia’s past: Jellka, Zhivka, Hajrije, Niman, Miroslav, Franjo, Ballash and Kish.

Ignored by Kosovo Albanians who grew up in the 1990s during a boycott of all things Serb, the Serbian language is rarely heard today outside Kosovo’s isolated Serb enclaves, its scattered monasteries and the Serb-dominated north.

For Xhelili’s staff of more than 100, taking care of a similar number of patients, knowledge of Serbian is obligatory.

“The majority of Albanians in here don’t know their own language,” he said. “They came here 20 to 30 years ago and spoke only Serbian.”

An old Albanian man tugs at the sleeve of a visitor. “Give me a deutschemark,” he says.

The German currency favored in Yugoslavia when war drove its dinar to hyperinflation, no longer exists.

(Writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Robert Woodward)