A leading Slovak newspaper says organized crime may have been involved in the shooting death of an investigative journalist that shocked Slovakia.

The bodies of 27-year-old Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were found Sunday evening in their house in the town of Velka Maca, east of the capital, Bratislava.

In an interview with the Sme daily on Tuesday, Slovakia-based Canadian journalist Tom Nicholson said he was in touch with Kuciak before his death and that he was working on a story about possible Italian mafia involvement in frauds linked to EU subsidies in eastern Slovakia. Nicholson said he was ready to testify.

Kuciak’s was the first murder of a journalist in Slovakia. The government is offering 1 million euros ($1.23 million) to anyone who helps the authorities find the people responsible.

 
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Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is fierce debate over the legacy of one of its most brutal dictators.

Josef Stalin, who ruled from the 1930s until his death in 1953, is held responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen. Yet, an opinion poll last year crowned him as the country’s most outstanding historical figure.

Russia’s recent decision to ban the satirical British film “The Death of Stalin” appears to have fueled divisions over the legacy of the dictator.

The Gulag State Museum in Moscow attempts to convey the scale of the atrocities carried out under Stalin’s rule, alongside the individual tragedies. Anyone deemed “an enemy of the people” — from petty criminals to political prisoners — could be condemned to years of forced labor in concentration camps known as gulags, which were established across the Soviet Union.

“Twenty million people came through the concentration camps. Over a million were shot, and 6 million were deported or re-settled by force,” said museum director Roman Romanov.

Watch Henry Ridgwell’s report:

Stalin is lionized by many Russians for leading the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany. His reign of terror led to the deaths of millions of his countrymen.”This was no natural disaster. This is a well-planned crime by the state against the people. And now, people do not want to accept such an idea, because people do not like thinking this way about their country, about their government,” Nikita Petrov, vice chairman of the human rights group Memorial, told VOA in a recent interview. 

“Every year, resentment against studying this subject [of Stalin’s atrocities] increases, because it hinders the glorification of the Soviet period of history.”

From the dozens of monuments to memorial plaques that are springing up in towns and cities across Russia, critics say Stalin nostalgia is permeating everyday life. In St. Petersburg, young Russian political blogger Victor Loginov organized the funding for a privately run bus emblazoned with a portrait of a smiling Stalin. It has not been universally welcomed — the bus has been vandalized several times, and the portrait painted over.

Loginov denies he’s glorifying Soviet history.

 “While Stalinism was undoubtedly and endlessly cruel, without this repression, and this shocking number of victims, there would have been no transformation of this country’s civilization — its transformation from an agricultural to an industrial nation, from economically backward to developed,” he said.

Romanov said younger generations are not taught the reality of Stalin’s rule.

“There are people still alive who came through the concentration camps, and I felt there is such gap between us. With all the programs we pursue in the museum, we try to make a sort of ‘small bridge’ between the generations.”

Deep divisions remain. During a recent debate on Stalin’s legacy aired on Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, two prominent journalists began brawling after one accused his opponent of “spitting on the graves” of Soviet World War II soldiers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has in the past called Stalin a “complex figure.” The president opened a monument last October to the victims of Stalin-era repression, warning that “this terrible past must not be erased from Russia’s national memory.”

Meanwhile, critics accuse him of cynicism and claim political freedom is once again under attack in modern Russia.
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The iconic and romantic symbol of Venice, Italy – the gondola – ferries tourists along the city’s scenic waterways. But for how long? The traditional workmanship that have made these gondola’s so unique is in danger of disappearing. But as VOA’s Deborah Block reports, a workshop in the “city of water” has made it its mission to create and preserve gondolas for future generations.
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Greece entered a last round of reform talks with creditors Monday, just five months before the country’s massive rescue program ends — and with the government and central bank publicly disagreeing on how to finance the nation after the bailout.

Government officials said the talks with representatives of Greece’s European partners and the International Monetary Fund in Athens would cover privatizations and energy.

But the negotiations were upstaged by a continued spat between Greece’s central bank governor, Yannis Stournaras, and the government over financing policies after the bailout runs out in August. The country will then have to raise money from international investors in bond markets — at a much higher rate than bailout creditors charge.

Stournaras repeated his argument that the government should consider setting up a precautionary credit line from the bailout rescuers that would secure the country — and its banks — cheap funding if needed, particularly as the country’s bonds are still rated well below investment grade. The finance ministry countered that this would create market jitters as to Greece’s ability to finance itself.

“Regardless of intentions, (Stournaras’) position … creates objective doubts regarding the prospects of the Greek economy, increases uncertainty and impedes Greece’s smooth exit from the bailout,” said Franciscos Koutentakis, the ministry’s general secretary for fiscal policy.

Greece signed the first of its three multi-billion euro bailouts in 2010, after it admitted its budget deficit was much higher than initially reported and investors stopped buying Greek bonds.

To secure the funds that kept it solvent, the country has slashed spending and public sector incomes, hiked taxes and extensively reformed its economy.

But the measures worsened a recession that wiped out more than a quarter of the economy and sent unemployment spiraling up by 16 percentage points between 2008 and 2016. The third bailout runs out in August.

Over the past eight months, the country has raised money from bond markets on three occasions through issues that were amply oversubscribed but offered high interest rates to attract investors.

Stournaras argued Monday that the possibility of an official credit line, to be used if needed, “should not be dramatized” as it would lower borrowing costs and “offer security as to state and bank access to financing after the end of the bailout.”

He also warned that the economy would remain under supervision from its European creditors until 75 percent of its debts have been repaid. Presenting the Bank of Greece’s annual report for 2017, Stournaras said economic growth is expected to accelerate to 2.4 percent this year, mostly on the wings of higher tourism receipts and exports.

Also Monday, some 2,000 municipal employees marched through central Athens to protest planned changes in school policy that unions say would threaten jobs in municipally-run kindergartens. Minor scuffles with police broke out outside parliament, but no arrests or injuries were reported.
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Poland could start educating children of refugees at the centers where they live rather than in public schools under a plan the government says will help all students but a newspaper said it would create educational ghettos.

Children who live in refugee centers attend local public schools but under the plan announced on the interior ministry’s website local governments could decide whether to maintain the status quo or send teachers to conduct classes in refugee centers.

The plan is consistent with policies outlined by the nationalist ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), which has refused to accept a quota of refugees relocated from other European Union countries despite pressure from Brussels.

The party ran its 2015 election campaign partly on its opposition to accepting refugees from Muslim countries and at the time PiS head Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who has no formal role in government, said refugees could spread disease and parasites.

There are 1,450 people in Polish refugee centers and 890 are children, according to the spokesman for the Office for Foreigners, Jakub Dudziak. Most people applying for international protection in Poland are from the Russian republic of Chechnya, he said. Islam is the republic’s main religion.

“Some foreign children do not learn despite attending school because they have educational gaps compared to their Polish peer and so struggle to catch up with school material,” said the proposal.

“These factors may have a negative and demotivating effect not only on foreign children, who are reluctant to go to school, but also on Polish children,” it said.

Critics say PiS has stoked popular hostility towards foreigners for electoral reasons ahead of local elections this year and a general election next year. The ruling party has 40 percent support, according to opinion polls.

The migrant issue is just one of several over which Poland is at odds with the European Union.

The government this month introduced a bill imposing jail terms of up to three years for anyone who says Poland was complicit in Nazi crimes. The government says the bill protects national honor but it has angered Israel and the United States.

Polish newspaper Dziennik Gazeta Prawna called the school plan an “Educational ghetto for refugees” and quoted a leading educator Krystyna Starczewska who said the idea was horrific.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights told Reuters in an email: “Separation of both groups can make integration difficult.”

The ministry said in a statement the proposal would be amended. Its aim: “is not to exclude the children of foreigners … but only to provide support during the preparatory phase of education before children enter school.”

The Dziennik Gazeta Prawna headline is “absurd and unfair”, it said.
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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Monday that Serbia must solve its dispute with Kosovo and implement a series of reforms before it can join the European Union.

Juncker said following talks with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic that the Balkan country is on the right path, but that the EU cannot accept any new members with unresolved territorial issues.

“Serbia has already covered an impressive part of the (EU) path,” Juncker said, before adding that a number of problems “still have to be solved.”

He singled out the need for judicial reforms and improvements in the rule of law before Serbia and others can join the EU.

Juncker is visiting Serbia as part of a tour of the Western Balkans nations aspiring to join the bloc at a time Russia is looking to bolster its influence in the region, particularly in Serbia.

The visit comes after the EU drafted a new expansion strategy that envisages Serbia and Montenegro could be the next to join the bloc in 2025.

Vucic said he’s urging compromise with predominantly-ethnic Albanian Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence following a 1998-99 war Belgrade does not recognize.

“We need a compromise or we will continue to live in the past,” Vucic said.

Juncker said the EU is seeking a “legally-binding” agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, but that the scope of the deal is up to the two nations. The EU is helping out in the talks on normalizing ties between the two.

Juncker has already visited Macedonia and Albania. He will travel to Montenegro before proceeding to Kosovo and Bosnia. His trip ends with an EU summit with regional leaders in Sofia, Bulgaria, on March 1.

 
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