European Federation of Journalists

Kosovo: General Director of RTK verbally attacked Trade Union


The Trade Union of RTK has been actively discussing the rights of workers during the meetings with Caucus Groups in Kosovo Assembly and Speaker of the Assembly due to the RTK law being in the process of amending. The process that has been criticised by the EU office in Kosovo for not being transparent enough.

However, General Director of RTK Mentor Shala wasn’t pleased with the Trade Union’s activity, in his recent Facebook post (08.02.2017) he called the Union “political ‘bacteria’ within RTK”. Furthermore Mentor Shala insulted workers and members of the Trade Union by saying that “if it wasn’t for RTK they wouldn’t be good even as a meat for dogs”, the Albanian expression that means that a person is worth nothing.

The impact of the threat became apparent, when several members of Trade Union were verbally intimidated by so-called close associates of the General Director. This is not the first controversial comment made by Mentor Shala: previously he sparked criticism from 60 journalists and editors at RTK, when he called them political activists.

Journalist’s Association of Kosovo, the affiliate of the European Federation of Journalists, was deeply concerned by the comment and called Shala’s post “an insult and threat towards the employees of this public media”.

Credit photo: screenshot RTK