Hard Times: Getting the Facts

My first blog ever... what should I write? How exhausted I am? Or how much I hate 30 plus degrees in Podgorica?

As with most good stories, I’ll start at the beginning. I really thought that the research stage of this project was going to be the easy part. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Hundreds of mails, phone calls, different articles, laws, countless visited websites... all for just a few interviews. When I arrived in Austria for the opening seminar, the airline lost my luggage. I began wondering if that bad luck had followed me from Vienna.

But it hasn’t been all bad news. I manage to glean some cheer, at least, for Montenegrins. I found out that Montenegrins are not the laziest people in the world. Italians beat them!

First, I spent days looking for an Italian law firm where people understand English. When I finally succeed, I send them an email with a request to tell me something more about rape sentencing and rape cases in Italy - if they know anything about that topic. It took them five days to inform me that they do have knowledge about the subject area. After that revelation, I had to remind them that they promised to share that knowledge with me.

Again, they needed a few days to tell me that their colleague is collecting the information. I still do knot know if he has.

The French ministry of justice was a real adventure. The PR assistant doesn’t speak English.  I had to send her an email in English and wait a few days until somebody translated it for her. Then I called her again just to be told, in a very bad English, to call her another day because the guy who speaks English is not there, again!

Eventually, I received an email from them, with some basic info, but too late...

It was a very different situation with the institutions in the United Kingdom. They were very cooperative when I needed information. So, in just in a few days, I managed to learn almost everything about the rape sentencing and rape cases in the UK that I needed to begin my research.

However, when I asked for interviews, they started to behave differently. Now, I am spending hours trying to convince them to talk to me when I come there.

The bright spot in this story is the conference, Zero Tolerance on Domestic Violence: Towards a EU-Wide Comprehensive Policy, which will be held in Brussels on Tuesday, June 14.  So many people I can interview in one place, on one day! This sounds great.

I am planning to travel there on June 13, and stay until June the 15. That way I can schedule some additional interviews, besides the conference.

After that, I intend to continue my trip to London and stay there for a few days. I hope people will show more interest in my story until than, otherwise it’s back to hard times for this reporter.

Jelena Kulidzan is a Podgorica-based journalist who is participating in the 2011 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

She will be writing regular updates on her investigation into how rape cases are prosecuted in Montenegro, the Balkans and European Union member states.