Journalist Fahri Musliu talks about his experience with the label of being the “biological father” of Aleksandar Vučić and the heap of defamation accompanying his family.

Fahri Musliu, a respected Pristina journalist, a longtime correspondent for Rilindje and other Pristina media in Belgrade, later with Voice of America, the Albanian section of BBC, Radio Television of Kosovo, and a collaborator of Al Jazeera Balkans. He is one of the co-founders of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia. For a full 13 years, a defamation campaign against him was carried out in Kosovo and Belgrade, as well as on some obscure Croatian portals. He was falsely accused of being the biological father of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, first in the Belgrade weekly Tabloid in 2010. This falsehood has been used for various purposes over the years, and at the beginning of the pre-election campaign, Musliu’s name was often mentioned by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, portraying himself as a victim of an alleged opposition pre-election campaign – even though no opposition member had mentioned such a thing.

Fahri Musliu shares how he experiences the label and the heap of defamation accompanying his family.

Your name and journalistic reputation are being exploited by the Serbian regime in the pre-election campaign, attributing to the opposition the claim that you are the biological father of Aleksandar Vučić. Is this not the first time you have faced this label?

Of course, it’s not the first time, as my name has been circulating in various media and among people throughout the Balkans for 13 years, like characters in Spanish or Turkish TV series, and it seems it won’t be the last time either. Now, the Serbian regime is using my name and journalistic reputation, attributing to the opposition the claim that they are so evil and attack the president in a monstrous way. President Vučić reacted to some defamatory claims from obscure portals, and in a few days, my name was mentioned several times in some TV appearances. Later, there was even a video with his father, for some reason. The video circulates on social media and portals, and Vučić proves that I am not his father, triggering a wave of reactions in Serbia and Kosovo, and across the entire Balkan region.

Aleksandar Vučić has the right to mistreat his family, but he has no right to mention my name and thereby mistreat and traumatize me and my family, to the point where I am physically threatened by various psychopaths in Serbia and Kosovo.

The most disgusting was a statement by the chief of staff of the President of Kosovo on platform X, which was reported by almost all media in Kosovo. One colleague and some other public figures strongly reacted to that, demanding his resignation. My daughter, who is a journalist, also reacted very strongly on Facebook. There was a monstrous statement by someone from Kosovo on a news channel in Tirana. This is the atmosphere caused by the repetition of defamation.

Speaking about someone’s national origin, who their father or mother is, and demanding that it be determined by DNA analysis, making it a national issue – is evidence of the mental state and frustration of people and society as a whole. This happens in Serbia, in Kosovo, and, surprisingly, in Albania, which is evidence that these people still live in some tribal relationships based on blood and soil definitions.

Have you talked to anyone about this defamation that has undoubtedly had a serious impact on your family?

I did not want to comment on the first statement by President Vučić in which he mentioned my name because I find it disgusting to comment on and deal with defamation, whoever it may come from. It is pathetic, shameful, sad, and primitive, and highly irresponsible when, especially politicians but also journalists, engage in gossip, fabrications, defamation, and the privacy of others, for some personal, dirty interest and helplessness, without thinking that they are causing enormous harm, offense, and mental pain to other people who are mentioned. This is evidence of their frustration and helplessness, especially of politicians. Let Serbs and Albanians, and other Balkan people, enjoy nonsense, as it is in their blood to engage in gossip, defamation, and other people’s lives to a collective trance. This proves that they have no private life, nor personal and professional identity.

I have never met Aleksandar Vučić; the only thing I did a few years ago was to request several times, through his media contacts service, to meet me so that we could talk about this defamation, but I only received one response that “the president cannot meet me because he is very busy”.

You were forced to deny the fabrication?

I repeat, I have known his mother Angelina since 1985 or 1986, as well as dozens of colleagues, journalists from the entire former Yugoslavia, when we first met at the Assembly of the SFR Yugoslavia or Serbia, where we reported as correspondents, she for RTV Novi Sad and me for the Pristina daily Rilindje. This gathering in the assemblies lasted until the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the formation of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She was a refined woman, educated and cultured, a true professional journalist, a sincere colleague and friend, a good wife, and a very dedicated mother. I am sorry that even she, in her old age, experienced such traumas from dishonorable people who are not interested in truth and facts.

Your biography has been falsified?

I have never worked for Television of Serbia (Radio Television Belgrade or Radio Television Novi Sad), nor for Tanjug, as some psychopaths claim, or write various media, and someone even mentions that I came to Belgrade in 1968. And the truth is as follows, which I repeat for who knows which time, although facts are not important to individuals and some media, not to mention social networks. After completing high school in June 1967, on November 1, I started working as a teacher at the “29 November” Elementary School in the village of Brodosavce, municipality of Dragaš. I worked there until the end of November 1969 when I went to the Yugoslav People’s Army. After completing military service on April 28, 1971, I continued working at the same school until mid-October 1972 when I came to Belgrade for studies. On November 1, 1972, I started working as a physical worker in Belgrade City Cleaning. I left my wife with a six-month-old baby and an old mother at home. How can I be the father of Aleksandar Vučić, who was born on March 5, 1970?

In Kosovo, as in Serbia, you have expressed your often unwelcome views. Has the campaign to defame you and question your views continued in light of new publicly spoken and transmitted lies?

I have always expressed my views, which are correct for me but undesirable for someone, especially for so-called turbo-patriots on both sides, for whom patriotism serves as a cover for their shortcomings and incompetence.

Because of my views, I am often the target of self-proclaimed patriots and critics of everything existing, who do it for some petty personal interests and engage in fierce campaigns, not choosing means. Because of this, I pay a high price. I and my children, whom I raised with the values of truth, honesty, morality, and integrity as the greatest human virtues, despite living in a swamp where immorality, lies, provincialism prevail, especially in the entire Balkan region, where people do not take care of themselves and their problems but focus on others in a very vulgar and corrupt way.

Do you see any possibility that reviving old lies can bring any good to anyone politically?

I see no possibility. On the contrary, they bring harm because they provoke hatred, revenge, violence, and even lynching, as is happening to me. For immoral and primitive societies, reviving old lies and defamation is entertainment, soul food, and the healing of frustrations. Balkans like to enjoy other people’s troubles, as the saying goes, “let the neighbor’s cow die”.

Do you have the support of professional colleagues from Kosovo and Serbia?

Unfortunately, I do not, with exceptions. There is no more collegiality, solidarity, respect. The media initiated my lynching, first in Serbia and then in Kosovo and other Balkan environments. In 2010, they carried some articles from the Tabloid magazine by Milovan Brkić, and in October 2014, part of the text from a very problematic Croatian portal (Dnevno.hr) was reproduced without fact-checking and by the “copy-paste” method, and the avalanche started. At that time, the media in Kosovo lynched me for five days, even the editors of the portal of Radio Television of Kosovo, where I had been a correspondent for eight years, until the end of 2014. At the request of the general director, they intervened on Wikipedia and falsified Aleksandar Vučić’s biography, writing that I am his biological father, and they published it on their portal. This was told to me by the person who carried out that director’s order but quickly left that company. This is evidence that journalism and journalists lack professionalism because they do not know standards or ethics.

When the larger campaign started in 2014, there were journalists in Kosovo and Albania who, with their articles, took my side in my “defense”, that is, in defense of the truth, but not the Association of Journalists of Kosovo. Several years later, there were reactions in Serbia as well; NUNS, Danas, NM magazine, and some other portals reacted. They reproduced our interview published on the Remarker portal in 2017, where I presented the facts. However, other media were not interested and continued in their own way.

When we spoke exactly six years ago, you mentioned that you had considered leaving Kosovo, seeking asylum. Probably now you don’t think similarly. Your family had problems then. How is it today?

Yes, I said that because of my children and grandchildren, aged 10 and 15, who became targets of attacks, insults, and traumatization because their “uncle is a Serb”. However, now I don’t think so because I have enormous support from my family, and my grandchildren have grown up and understand the truth and can cope with this foolishness.

How do you see the relations between Serbia and Kosovo today; the negotiations about the future seem to have stalled?

The best proof of these relations is the behavior of politicians, citizens, and media on both sides. Even after 24 years since the end of the war, the relations have not improved; on the contrary, the distance and hatred have deepened. Some time ago, we even had an incursion by a terrorist group into the territory of Kosovo, at the Banjska Monastery, for the “defense of Serbs”. Several people were killed then. When politicians capable of resolving misunderstandings accuse each other and claim not to trust each other or lie about the others wanting war… Expecting anything good from this is not advisable.

Unfortunately, these negotiations, called dialogue – I don’t know why, as Serbia signed the capitulation in Kumanovo in June 1999 – when Kosovo declared independence in February 2008, and more than 110 countries recognized it. These negotiations have been going on for too long without concrete results because each side accuses the other of not respecting what was agreed upon. The European Union and the entire Western community have proven powerless to speed up this process or have their own interests, and all of this is to the detriment of both Albanians and Serbs, primarily Serbs in Kosovo, who are hostages to Belgrade and Pristina politics and live between the anvil and the hammer.

I think the US and the EU finally realized that they have to accelerate the resolution of these relations for their own interests and for the benefit of the citizens of Kosovo and Serbia.

You have been attributed to working for the Serbian Security and Information Agency, having worked for State Security, perhaps even for Sigurimi, maybe even for Americans (besides Voice of America). We could end the conversation with an exclusive: who do you actually work for?

Yes, so-called experts say that again to attract attention and to heal their complexes. Some Albanians from Kosovo, and even from North Macedonia, who are the self-appointed caretakers of their nation, which is their main identity because they lack their own personal and professional identity, claim that I am a collaborator of UDB because I lived in Belgrade for a long time. And that I was a collaborator and a high officer of the Albanian Sigurimi who was sent to Belgrade, was claimed on a TV show by a well-known show-off and former collaborator of the State Security, Dejan Lučić, who, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, on behalf of the Service, monitored the “hostile” activities of the Kosovar diaspora in Europe. In that TV show, the recording of which circulates on YouTube, he even said that the service took samples from my glass from which I drank water in some bar, and based on DNA analysis, they concluded that I am the “father of Aleksandar Vučić”.

And I respond to their claims that I work for the services that pay more, and those are the CIA, Mossad, MI6.

And finally, after everything that has happened to me in recent days and after 13 years of lynching and traumatization of me and my family, I have decided not to remain silent anymore but to hire lawyers in Belgrade, Pristina, Tirana, and Skopje and sue all those individuals and media who were the initiators and carriers of that lynching. I have plenty of written and video material for that. I hope the courts will react quickly and render fair judgments in accordance with the law, and if not, then I will turn to the European Court of Human Rights.

You can read the original article here.