Tag: Bosnia and Herzegovina

Journalists and their investigative pieces, as well as their media outlets, are often subjected to hate narratives, participants in a panel said on, “How to Protect the Truth in the Time of Disinformation?” held in Sarajevo on World Press Freedom Day.

The panel discussion was organized by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, the Center for Investigative Reporting, CIN, BUKA magazine and the Swedish embassy to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Swedish ambassador to Bosnia Johanna Strömquist said that disinformation affected the media in many ways, adding that the current media threats include a shrinking of the democratic space, financing of the media and disinformation.
Attacks on both men and women journalists, as well as the media outlets for which they work, following publication of their articles, are common in Bosnia, and hate narratives of politicians have almost become mainstream, said BIRN BiH director Denis Dzidic.

“We see examples of the strongest investigations that do not result in what they should result in, but in polarization, which comes down to political ‘bullets’ – and that is a problem we cannot get out of,” Dzidic said.

CIN director Leila Bicakcic shared a similar view, adding that political leaders distribute the information that suits their political agendas, and, owing to a segmented public space, citizens continue to move away from each other on ethnic grounds.

“Political leaders should be sanctioned for their half-truths, because everything else will have no effect, given that we’ll just be addressing the consequences rather than the cause of the problem,” she said.

Aleksandar Trifunovic, editor-in-chief of BUKA, said the media outlet he represented had extensive experience of disinformation, recalling that some years ago the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, published a book listing BUKA as one of the enemies of the Bosnia’s mainly Serb entity, Republika Srpska.

“We won a court case against the publisher but the publication is still available to public,” Trifunovic noted, adding that Bosnia was fertile ground for disinformation and hate speech.

The exhibition, “30 Years of Exposure, no Consequences”, which opened before the panel discussion, displayed investigative pieces by journalists of BIRN BiH, CIN, Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina, TI BiH, Kapital, Fokus and Buka – none of which prompted reactions from prosecutors’ offices or other investigative institutions.

“TI BiH filed criminal reports based on investigative pieces, its own cases and audit findings, but there was either no reaction, or a farce,” said Srdjan Traljic of TI BiH.

 

Haris Rovcanin, a journalist with BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina, won second prize in the Fetisov Journalism Awards for a four-piece series of articles – two of which he co-authored together with Albina Sorguc, who was a member of BIRN team at the time of their publication.

The awarded pieces comprised two investigative pieces about individuals not prosecuted for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide in eastern Bosnia, “Bosnian Serb Police Chiefs Never Charged with Srebrenica Killings”, and “Serb Chetnik’s Links to War Criminals and Extremists Uncovered”, a feature, “28 Years on, Families still Searching for Missing Bosnian Soldiers”, and an analysis piece, “BIRN Fact Check: Is the Bosnian Serb Report on the Sarajevo Siege Accurate?”.

During the awards ceremony, which was held online, it was announced that the winners had been chosen in troubled times, when the struggle continues around the world to combat injustice and strive for peace and reconciliation.

The winners were announced by Aidan White, honorary advisor to the Fetisov journalism awards and president of the Ethical Journalism Network, in a video posted on social networks.

“These winning stories demonstrate why truth-telling journalism is important to all of us. We congratulate them. They have done good work and they’ve made difference to people’s lives,” White said.

Rovcanin said the award means a lot to him as an incentive for his future work.

“The award for international contribution to peace certainly means a lot to me, especially as a great incentive for my career and continuation of successful work,” Rovcanin said, adding that BIRN has been awarded for its high-quality and dedicated work.

Other winners in the same category include Syrian-Swedish duo Ali Al Ibrahim and Khalifa Al Khuder, for their story, “Syria’s Sinister Yet Lucrative Trade in Dead Bodies” and Olatunji Ololade from Nigeria, for “The Boys Who Swapped Football for Bullets”.

The Fetisov awards, founded by Russian businessman and philanthropist Gleb Fetisov, promote universal human values such as honour, justice, courage and nobility through the example of outstanding journalists from all over the world, for “their service and commitment contribute to changing the world for the better”.

The “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category recognises articles on anti-war topics that have made an important contribution to peace-making and to spreading the concept of human life as the highest value.

Nominated pieces focus on issues of international disarmament, the reduction or ending of national or international conflicts, support for national and international peace-keeping communities.

The three other categories are “Contribution to Civil Rights”, “Outstanding Investigative Reporting” and “Excellence in Environmental Journalism”.

This year, just under 400 entries from 80 countries around the globe were submitted and 13 winners were selected in the four categories.

This year’s jury consisted of Ann Cooper and Bruce Shapiro from the US, Barbara Trifonfi from Austria, Christophe Deloire from France, Christopher Warren and Julianne Schultz from Australia, Eva Markaceva from Russia, Kaarle Nordenstreng from Finland, Mariana Santos from Portugal/Brazil, Nikos Panagiotou from Greece and Ricardo Gutierrez from Belgium.

Former BIRN Bosnia journalist Sorguc was also shortlisted alongside Emina Dizdarevic for the Fetisov Award in 2019 in the “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category for a series of articles on war crimes and transitional justice.

 

 

BIRN presented a panel discussion on the topic, “No Room for Adjudicated Facts in School Curricula”, presenting part of its database of facts related to the 1992-5 siege of Sarajevo that has been established in or by verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY.

Besides besieged Sarajevo, other parts of the city that were under the control of the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, including Grbavica, Vraca and Nedzarici, as well as Sarajevo municipalities Ilidza, Hadzici, Vogosca and Ilijas, have also been covered, to include places where civilians were held and killed, demolitions and pillaging of property, and other crimes committed in the areas of Pale and Sokolac.

BIRN journalist Haris Rovcanin, who is working on creating the database, said Sarajevo and its surroundings were the first regions to be presented, symbolically, as that siege began 30 years ago, in April 1992. The term “siege”, he explained, is used in court verdicts and the fact that Sarajevo was under siege during the war represents one of the adjudicated facts.

“We have created a database containing some of the fundamental court conclusions referring to the sniping and deliberate shelling campaigns and unselective and direct attacks targeting the civilian population, as well as the fact that no parts of the city were safe from shelling from positions held by the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, as determined in verdicts, and that civilians were targeted while fetching water, walking in the city and using public transportation, especially trams,” Rovcanin said.

BIRN’s local director Denis Dzidic said the development of the multimedia database of court-established facts was of extreme importance for learning about the past and as a tool for countering revisionist narratives and denial of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We are witnesses to the politicization of history in Bosnia, which has been particularly pronounced in politicians’ public appearances in the pre-election period, but also in school curricula,” he said.

“Through the development of this database, we endeavour to counter-narratives that focus on divisions and denial, and develop a unique multimedia platform which can serve teachers, students and all those interested in adjudicated facts,” Dzidic said.

Sniping and shelling incidents, as they are called in verdicts, for which it was determined with certainty that fire was opened from positions held by the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, have been singled out and processed for the purpose of the database. So was the shelling with the use of modified air bombs in 1995, which, as Hague tribunal chambers established, were not suitable for hitting concrete targets.

According to Rovcanin, one of the goals of this database is to gather in one place all the crimes established by the Hague tribunal’s verdicts, but not naming concrete perpetrators. This is because in some cases trial chambers determined that crimes were committed at a certain location but lacked evidence to link and sentence the person on trial to those specific crimes.

Besides that, the goal of the database is to help future researchers, students and journalists find the basic information they need for their further work, but also to assist teachers and education ministries by supplying materials for school curricula and methodologies for teaching about the past war.

Historian Melisa Foric who worked on the educational tool in this database as an external contractor of BIRN, said the database of facts will offer an option for a quick search, check and use of facts and historical sources, which are an integral part of the verdicts pronounced by the ICTY.

“The model classes, which will be an integral part of the database, offer a possibility to analyse events in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 on the basis of parts of testimonies by victims described in ICTY verdicts, and encourage students to present their personal conclusions vis-à-vis the content of verdicts,” he said.

“In particular, attention is drawn to the significance of personal testimonials made in the form of short videos to which school-age children are much more receptive in the process of understanding and learning,” Foric added.

According to her, through a multi-perspective approach and original materials, the database should facilitate an easier determination of the chronology of the war, enabling a clearer perception of a causal link between certain events and the responsibility of individuals for those events, as established by ICTY verdicts.

A senior human rights advisor in the Office of Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Agnes Picod, said this was very important for remembrance within Bosnia but also outside its borders, adding that education was the backbone of reconciliation.

She said the principle of impartiality had been very important in the work of the ICTY.

According to her, decisions rendered by ICTY and the International Court of Justice are based on evidence and witness testimonies, while convictions pertain to individuals.

“Verdicts establish an individual, not collective, criminal responsibility. They are for convicting individuals. ICTY verdicts contribute to the truth establishing process and have an essential role … [though] 26 years after the end of the war certain individuals continue to deny, minimize and negate the adjudicated facts,” Picod said.

Picod also said that education should be one of the pillars and paths through which reconciliation is spread. In her opinion, school curricula and textbooks lack impartiality, especially as regards conflict.

“When they mention criminal offences, they do not mention them as crimes against humanity or genocide. Schools and educational systems should not be exposed to political agendas,” Picod said.

Although the ICTY archive is available already, the platform of adjudicated facts offers an abbreviated and clear overview of the conclusions of ICTY verdicts to the broader public and teachers, as well as to creators of educational content related to topics about the 1992-95 war, enriched with original content that can be used in teaching, Foric said in conclusion.

Anisa Suceska, of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, and history professor Zijad Sehic also addressed the panel discussion.

By the end of the project, besides Sarajevo, the database will also contain facts on ten other regions, namely Eastern Herzegovina, Zenica Region, Central Bosnia, Doboj-Posavina Region, and Eastern Bosnia, Srebrenica, Herzegovina Region, Krajina and Bijeljina-Zvornik Region.

The database is implemented with support of the UN Democracy Fund, UNDEF.

A series of four articles by Haria Rovcanin was awarded for their outstanding contribution to peace on February 10, when the Fetisov award organisers announced 13 winners in four categories. The awards ceremony takes place in Switzerland on April 22.

The winners were announced by Aidan White, Honorary Advisor to the Fetisov Journalism Award and President of the Ethical Journalism Network, in a video published on the Award’s social media.

White said the international jury had a record number of entries this year, and “has come up with a terrific selection of world-beating stories”.

“They provide us with a masterclass in stylish, fact-based, and courageous reporting,” White added, noting that the winners come from different backgrounds and different cultures, but all share a passion for truth-telling.

“Every story here is remarkable, and valuable in its own right. They are a shining example of committed and fearless journalism. Together these stories are a priceless body of evidence that journalism, despite all the pressures and threats that are facing news media, continues to make a difference in a global struggle for transparency, humanity and democracy,” White continued.

He said the organizers would announce the final line-up of first, second and third winners at the awards ceremony in April.

Four articles written by Rovcanin, two of which were co-written by Albina Sorguc, a member of BIRN BiH team at the time of publication, were selected as one of the three winners in the “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category.

The series includes two investigative pieces, about individuals  not prosecuted for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, “Bosnian Serb Military Police Chiefs Never Charged with Srebrenica Killings”, and “Serb Chetniks’ Links to War Criminals and Extremists Uncovered”, as well as a feature, “28 Years on, Families still Searching for Missing Bosnian Soldiers” and an analysis piece, “BIRN Fact Check: Is the Bosnian Serb Report on the Sarajevo Siege Accurate?”

The Fetisov international award promotes universal human values through the example of outstanding journalists from all over the world, as “their service and commitment contribute to changing the world for the better”.

Other winners in the same category include Syrian-Swedish duo Ali Al Ibrahim and Khalifa Al Khuder’s story “Syria’s Sinister Yet Lucrative Trade in Dead Bodies” and Olatunji Ololade from Nigeria for ‘The Boys Who Swapped Football for Bullets”.

The “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category recognises articles on anti-war topics that have made an important contribution to peace-making and to spreading the concept of human life as the highest value.

Nominated works focus on issues of international disarmament, reduction or ending of national or international conflicts, support for national and international peacekeeping communities.

The three other categories are “Contribution to Civil Rights”, “Outstanding Investigative Reporting” and “Excellence in Environmental Journalism”.  Three winners are announced in each of the categories.

This year, just under 400 entries from 80 countries around the globe were submitted and 13 winners were selected in the four categories. The Fetisov Journalism Award Expert Council selected 37 best stories from 34 countries for the shortlist, which included 17 collaborative works and 11 cross-border investigations.

As described on the award website, the annual contest aims to highlight the works of those journalists who bring up hot-button issues and have widespread impact, reward outstanding journalists with major money prizes for their dedicated work and help nominees and winners to achieve greater visibility by publishing their works on the website of the contest and in print media.

This year, the jury consisted of Ann Cooper and Bruce Shapiro from the US, Barbara Trifonfi from Austria, Christophe Deloire from France, Christopher Warren and Julianne Schultz from Australia, Eva Markaceva from Russia, Kaarle Nordenstreng from Finland, Mariana Santos from Portugal/Brazil, Nikos Panagiotou from Greece and Ricardo Gutierrez from Belgium.

Former BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina journalist Sorguc was also shortlisted alongside Emina Dizdarevic for the Fetisov Award in 2019 in the “Outstanding Contribution to Peace” category with a series of articles on war crimes and transitional justice.

Bosnia’s state Prosecution late last year announced it would start publishing indictments after BIRN handed 5,000 signatures to the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, demanding more transparency in the judiciary.

Acting chief prosecutor Milanko Kajganic rendered and signed a binding instruction ensuring the publication from the start of this year of redacted factual descriptions from indictments it had issued.

At the time, he said that indictments, or their factual descriptions, would be published on confirmation of the indictments.

The Binding Instruction provided a detailed description of how the necessary anonymization and preparation for publication, as well as record-keeping of issued indictments, should be performed.

In mid-2021 BIRN began a campaign to collect signatures drawing attention to the issue of the unavailability of indictments and corruption verdicts, calling for better transparency in the work of Bosnia’s judicial institutions.

Through its project, Transparency against Corruption in Judiciary, BIRN encouraged citizens to become more involved and demand changes to the judicial system, as well as to develop awareness of the need to standardize document publication practices.

The focus was put on indictments for corruption and bad practices in the Bosnian judiciary in terms of transparency.

The project was implemented with financial support from the US Agency for International Development, USAID, and was part of a broader project, Assistance to Citizens in the Fight against Corruption, implemented by the Center of Civic Initiatives as the leading partner.

 

 

 

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, and the UN Development Programme, UNDP, held the training for 15 journalists and journalism students.

During the first part, editors and journalists from BIRN BiH,  and ICRC representatives discussed with participants taking a humanitarian approach to reporting on missing persons, as well as on how to interview families of the missing and report on the subject in a professional and ethical manner.

Representatives of the ICRC, the Missing Persons Institute of BiH and International Commission on Missing Persons familiarized the participants with the work of those institutions, providing insight into information and ways of collaboration with a view to achieving a better quality of investigations into the missing.

Journalists were informed about BIRN standards in reporting on the missing persons, and on experiences and challenges in the field, with a special emphasis on the way the COVID pandemic has further delayed the finding of missing persons.

The participants also talked to some families of missing persons, learn how to report on war crimes from courtrooms and what topics they could cover during their work.

Representatives of the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as attorneys representing war crime defendants before state and local courts, spoke about the role of parties to the proceedings and the right to defence.Research on “How the Media in BiH Report on Missing Persons” was also presented.

As part of the training, the journalists also visited the state court to follow war crime trials and apply in practice what they had learnt during the workshop.

The first part of the workshop covering reporting on missing persons with a special focus on a humanitarian approach was organised with the help of the ICRC while UNDP helped organize the training on war-crimes reporting.

 

 

‘Watch Out, Sniper’, a multimedia exhibition documenting the wartime siege of the Bosnian capital through photographs, research into Hague Tribunal archive material, witness testimonies and 3D modelling, opens at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo on Thursday evening.

The exhibition is based on research carried out by Paul Lowe, an award-winning Sarajevo-based photographer who reported the Bosnian war and whose work has been published by Time, Newsweek, Life and The Sunday Times Magazine, among others.

The exhibition historically and geographically reconstructs the area in Sarajevo known during the 1992-95 siege as Sniper Alley – the informal name for Zmaja od Bosne Street and Mesa Selimovic Boulevard, the main boulevard in Sarajevo, which during the Bosnian war was lined with snipers’ posts, making it dangerous for civilians to traverse.

The mountains surrounding the city were also used for sniper positions by the Bosnian Serb Army.

“Paul Lowe photographed the Yugoslav wars from the beginning, he was here in Sarajevo during the siege and saw first-hand what was happening, not just in Sniper Alley, but in Bosnia and Herzegovina in general. He stayed on afterwards and saw the consequences of the war too,” said BIRN’s regional director, Marija Ristic.

The exhibition will not only feature Lowe’s work, but also images by other photographers such as Ron Haviv, Enric Marti, Rikard Larma and Gervasio Sanchez.

“Lowe has used his photography and pictures by others, but also documents, artistic installations and technology to create a compelling narrative of events. Through this combination of journalism, court findings, witness testimonies, 3D modelling and art we hope to bring new techniques of storytelling to the public, not just in Sarajevo, but elsewhere in the region too,” Ristic said.

The exhibition is opening on November 18 to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Nermin Divic, a boy killed by a sniper on the same day in 1994.

It is being organised as part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice granting scheme, which aims to encourage professionals in various fields to explore the archives of courts that dealt with war crime trials in the Balkans.

It is also supported by the Photography and the Archive Research Centre, University of the Arts London and Foundation VII.

‘Watch Out, Sniper’ will be on display at the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo until spring next year.

 

 

Participants at the debate argued that requests for removal of online content about perpetrators of criminal offences can amount to pressure on the media.

Due to insufficiently defined or selectively interpreted laws, the right to reply to or request the removal of an article can limit freedom of expression and serve as a tool of censorship, participants said.

Participants also argued that the publication of responses by people accused in media articles of wrongdoing should not provide a platform for their personal opinions.

Journalists and editors from media outlets in Bosnia and Herzegovina, journalism professors, legal experts and representatives of international organisations and embassies took part in the discussion.

The round-table discussion’s panellists included Nedim Ademovic, a lawyer and constitutional law expert, and Lejla Turcilo, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.

Turcilo pointed out that media are obliged to publish someone’s reply to an article if it corrects an error and contributes to impartiality. The decision is up to editorial teams, while the individuals submitting responses have the right to address a court if it has not been published.

Professional and responsible media outlets will not refuse to publish these responses if they correct an error, because this will provide the public with better quality information, she said.

However, polemics about a published article that insult or threaten a journalist or the media outlet shouldn’t be published as responses, Turcilo said.

She argued that this often represents an attempt to censor media content and threatens the freedom of journalists to report “about everyone and everything”.

Ademovic said that nobody has the right to ask media to publish their personal stance on a certain topic in the form of a response, but they have the right to correct an error, particularly if the journalist did not contact that person when preparing the article.

“One has the right to mitigate the damage through a denial correcting the key false allegations,” Ademovic said.

In some cases in Bosnia, people have the right to ask for specific verdicts to be deleted from their criminal records. The individual concerned then often ask media to articles mentioning their verdicts because they believe that such information, which can easily be found through a simple search on the internet, damages their reputation.

The panellists and discussion participants agreed that such requests do not have a legal basis and that media have no obligation to comply, particularly when it comes to checked and correct information.

“So these requests for the removal of articles about perpetrators of criminal offences following their removal from the criminal records actually represent a type of belated censorship or pressure on the media,” Turcilo said.

She said that those who have had falsehoods published about them should use defamation legislation.

Ademovic explained that there is no statutory right to request the removal of published articles. “The removal and elimination of the legal consequences of someone’s criminal status doesn’t imply the right to delete that something happened,” he said.

The panel’s participants agreed a court decision to remove someone from the criminal records doesn’t imply an obligation to remove media content about the criminal offence.

 

While monitoring pandemic-related incidents and activities in the digital environment, BIRN noticed the increased use of technology and digital solutions, both positive and negative, that were being offered to people in Central and South-East Europe by states and companies.

BIRN’s monitoring also showed that ordinary citizens have been the main victims of digital abuses and information warfare, while states, major companies and online platforms have neglected their responsibilities to protect people.

The COVID Crisis Tech Response Livefeed page aims to update readers on a wide range of technological innovations and solutions that have been developed as part of the response to the pandemic in the Central and South-East Europe region.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve been using all kinds of tech and digital solutions to keep our lives going. With this page, BIRN is mapping all the solutions that are being used in order to examine all the aspects of the various uses of technology that have been presented as the best and fastest solution to every problem during the pandemic,” said Sofija Todorovic, BIRN Project Manager.

The goal is to highlight trends and connections that would otherwise remain hidden in order to help civil society organisations and media respond more quickly and efficiently to future crises, but also to reveal misuses of tech solutions.

“We know that fast technology solutions can’t solve complex issues for society and it’s crucial to know what is happening with our data,” said Todorovic.

Digital and tech solutions being offered by private companies will be covered as well as state-designed tools.

Among the main issues that will be followed on the new page will be the introduction of apps for digital contact tracing, the implementation of online platforms and remote applications to map the spread of COVID-19, and the increasing use of online education.

The page will also examine how tech solutions have caused a rise in cases of unauthorised access to online platforms, sensitive data violations and banking scams, as well as the boom in disinformation and misrepresentation by scam websites.