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BALKANS: Media Could Be in the Dock Over War Crimes
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jul 17, 2009 (IPS) - Journalists are in the dock now for their role in provoking the wars of the 1990s
across former Yugoslavia that left more than 100,000 dead.
"We're analysing the influence of certain Serbian media on war crimes
committed in the 1991-95 wars," Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for the Special
War Crimes Prosecutor in Belgrade told IPS. "The analysis deals with the
atmosphere and ambience within the media at the time."
Examination of the criminal responsibility of media began after some people
were sentenced last year for the execution of close to 200 Croatian prisoners
of war in Vukovar town in 1991.
"One of them clearly said he watched TV and then went to 'give those (Croats)
what they deserved'," Vekaric said.
Serbian TV and print media had widely reported the disinformation that 40
Serb children had been slaughtered by Croats in one day. The execution of
Croatian prisoners of war came only days after that news as the town fell into
Serbian hands.
Vekaric says many people standing trial for war crimes, and dozens of
witnesses, have been citing media reports as the source for their anger and
their desire for revenge.
"Our aim is not to persecute journalists now, but to establish if there are
elements for their criminal responsibility," Vekaric said.
Last week the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS)
presented evidence to the war crimes prosecutor's office against four
prominent Serbian media groups and their editors-in-chief of their
"instigating inter-ethnic hatred, hate speech and warmongering that led to
atrocities and war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia."
The four are the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in Belgrade, Radio Television
of Vojvodina (RTV) in Serbia's second biggest city Novi Sad, the oldest Serbian
daily Politika, and the largest circulated daily Vecernje Novosti.
Criminal allegations by NUNS carry no personal names, but have an attached
archive of TV footage and copies of newspapers.
"We are talking about journalist-warmongers now not because we want to
sentence, send to prison or otherwise harm colleagues," head of NUNS
Nadezda Gace told IPS. "This is an effort to revive the dignity of journalist
profession and clear the murky image of the recent past among people in
Serbia. Without that, there's no clear vision of present and future."
Many journalists and editors from the 1990s are still in these media outlets,
which appear to have turned coats since 2000 when the regime of Slobodan
Milosevic fell from power. Some were removed from their positions, but
began to return to high posts in recent years.
Milosevic's regime led Serbia into wars on the pretext of "defending national
interests of Serbs outside Serbia", that is, in Croatia and Bosnia, where many
ethnic Serbs lived.
NUNS has its opponents within media. The head of the Association of
Journalists of Serbia (UNS) Ljiljana Smajlovic says "it is not for the war crimes
prosecutor's office to establish the criteria of journalism." Smajlovic says
media has been its own watchdog, and that "eight journalists were expelled
from UNS membership as it was found that they participated in turning the
media into a propaganda machinery in the 1990s."
The actions of the war crimes prosecution and the NUNS statement have
"peculiar timing", she says. "It's unclear why they are acting now. It is also
very hard to establish how they (the prosecution) are to prove that media
items were the provoking factor for action."
The differing opinions of the two associations of journalists reflect the deep
division within Serbian society about the wars of the 1990s.
NUNS was set up in 1994 by independent professionals, most of them of
anti-war orientation and strongly opposing Milosevic's rule. UNS was the
official association of journalists after World War II, mostly of pro-regime
journalists from official or pro-government media such as the four named in
the NUNS list.
Beyond Serbia, the International War Crimes Tribunal in Arusha (Tanzania)
has sentenced three journalists for their role in the Rwanda massacres. After
World War II the Nuremberg trials sentenced the founder of a Nazi Germany
paper to death.
Serious abuses by the media were spoken of as a "weapon" in indictments
against several top officials who faced war crimes accusations before the
United Nations founded International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Experts in international law, such as Vesna Rakic Vodinelic, say that the
sentencing in Arusha provides "mechanisms and grounds" for prosecution of
Serbian journalists who played the tune of propaganda that led to war crimes,
and so became a part of criminal acts.
(END)
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