Wrote: Fatbardh Dema
Profile in X "Serbian Spirit", claimed on Sunday (January 11) that last Tuesday (January 6), in Gracanica, Kosovo Police arrested a group of Serbs.
Their arrest, according to this claim, was made because they were wearing T-shirts with the inscription "Christ was born."
What's wrong with this claim?
Last Tuesday, local Serbian-language media reported on a case where Kosovo Police allegedly stopped a group of Serbs in Gracanica who were celebrating Orthodox Christmas.
According to "RadioKim", "Kosovo police from the Gracanica police station today stopped a group of Serbs returning from the Badnjak crossing and asked them to remove their t-shirts with church motifs and the message 'Christ is Born'," said Goran Gudzic, interlocutor of this medium.
"We were wearing T-shirts with the message 'Christ is born, cross yourself with three fingers' and we had our Serbian flag with us. They didn't tell us anything about the reason for the detention; they asked us to take off our T-shirts and kept us like that for about half an hour. In the end, they gave us back our T-shirts and the flag," Gudzic declared to Radio Kim.
Meanwhile, the profile in X, "Serbian Spirit", claimed that a group of Serbs, on the same date, also in Gracanica, were arrested.
“On Tuesday – on the night of Orthodox Christmas – agents of the Albanian occupying regime arrested a group of Serbs in Gracanica who were returning from the traditional cutting of Badnjak, and ordered them to remove their T-shirts bearing the inscription “Christ is Born.”
Hibrid.info searched the search engine "Google" for cases of arrests of Serbs in Kosovo during the past week.
It was also searched on the official Kosovo Police Facebook page.
But, none of the searches found any cases of arrest of Serbs on that date.
The only case is this one reported by the media "RadioKim", which was also broadcast by other media in the Serbian language "Kossev".
Analyze:
The X profile, "Serbian Spirit", claimed that on Orthodox Christmas Eve, Kosovo Police arrested a group of Serbs.
This claim is baseless, since no credible media outlet, not even the Kosovo Police, has had any report on this alleged event.
The only case reported that day, January 6, in local Serbian-language media was the detention of a group of Serbs by the Kosovo Police, but they were not arrested, nor were any measures reported to have been taken against them.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info qualifies this claim as "Disinformation".
Reasoning:
"Disinformation" is defined as information content that contains a "mix" of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful attributes, and that is created and/or distributed with the deliberate intention of causing harm. The motive behind the producers/distributors of disinformation content lies in achieving a political, financial, psychological or social goal.