Posted on 09/27/2001 8:38:14 AM PDT by Voronin
REGIONAL REPORT: Media Crimes
Will Balkan journalists suspected of encouraging war crimes escape prosecution?
By Amra Kebo in Sarajevo (TU No. 236, September 17-22, 2001)
The Hague tribunal is being urged to start prosecuting journalists who incited ethnic hatred and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
So far prosecutors have shown no enthusiasm for hauling journalists before the tribunal, insisting there's not enough evidence to do so.
The matter, though, is being taken seriously by sections of the general public and press associations in the Balkans, and was prominently aired at a round-table conference examining the role of media in the conflict, in Mostar, on September 6.
Organised by the Sarajevo Media Centre and The Hague Tribunal Outreach Programme, the meeting drew large numbers of journalists from Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Croatia along with eminent local intellectuals.
Most of the participants agreed it was necessary to establish a journalistic code of ethics to prevent media incitement in the future. No decisive steps were promised but there was a general wish to see The Hague act against journalists suspected of crimes. Many considered the media just as responsible for the Balkan conflict as the politicians and their military commanders.
One of the worst cases of media incitement was a Bosnian Serb TV programme about victims of the 1994 massacre at the Sarajevo Markale market, where a120mm shell fired from hilltops surrounding the city killed 66 people and wounded 140.
The programme's late editor, Risto Djogo, first said the victims were Serbs, then claimed the bodies shown on TV at the time were actually mannequins, placed there to discredit Serbs besieging Sarajevo. He subsequently brought mannequins into the studio to demonstrate his theory.
Cases of media-inspired hatred still arise today. This month the Serbian Oslobodjenje published an article which the OSCE and the Office of the High Representative said was "filled with paranoid anti-Semitic phrases unworthy of any media in Europe". Unlike the electronic media in Bosnia, which is supervised by the Communication Regulatory Agency, there are as yet no penalties for print media misconduct.
Legal experts argue there's no legal impediment to The Hague prosecuting journalists. They point out that editors of radio stations and newspapers stood trial at the Rwanda tribunal for violations of humanitarian law. The entire media structure in that country was held responsible for incitement to massacre.
Participants at the Mostar meeting agreed the media in former Yugoslavia were also an instrument for the dissemination of ethnic hatred. Mehmed Halilovic, an ombudsman for the media in the Bosnian Federation, later told IWPR, "Without them (the journalists) the politicians could not do what they did. Journalists carried out half the task, the soldiers did the rest. They led poorly educated people to commit crimes and encouraged them to behave like criminals."
The journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic believes The Hague should prosecute those suspected of carrying out such a policy, as a means of preventing inflammatory wartime propaganda in future.
Tribunal spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said, however, that the court's official position is that "direct indictments against journalists in former Yugoslavia have not been envisaged because there is a big difference between a direct call for killing and the dissemination of hatred."
But Mirko Klarin, editor of the SENSE news agency, is optimistic that journalists guilty of crimes will ultimately be brought to justice. "The fact that they still have not been summoned to The Hague, does not mean that they have been given an amnesty," he said. "I am sure tribunal prosecutors are investigating those cases, and we have to rely on their assessment that they do not have sufficient evidence at the moment."
More doubtful observers, however, believe the tribunal already has its hands full in prosecuting men like Slobodan Milosevic and will have to relegate any consideration of pursuing journalists to the back burner.
Amra Kebo is an IWPR assistant editor in Bosnia, and a member of IWPR's war crimes reporting network. She is also editor with the Sarajevo daily, Oslobodjenje.
Tony
2) A number of journalists and publishers were found guilty at Nuremberg for 'advocating a aggressive war'. The publisher of the Volkischer Beobachter (Schleicher ?) was sentanced to death.
The reason the ICTY does not want to touch this subject is because the ICJ is eventually likely to determine that Clinton's (failed) War was a War of Aggression. That would make many US journalists and their publishers liable for "advocating a war of aggression".
and finally, the outpouring of ultra-nationalistic racist war mongering led by our very own media since 9-11 makes the Belgrade media 1990-99 positively pacific by comparasion.
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I chanllenge our very own Humanitarian Warriors to cite one Milosevic speech which has a message similar in nationalistic tone to wanted dead or alive........crusade..........defense of civilisation.......find them in their lairs.......
Please Humanitarian Warriors.........you have spent a decade of lecturing the primative balkanites as to their backward ways, now show us the beef.
I don’t know about the NYC, but most of the News I am reading from London, states we must deal with the terrorist but does not mention attacking all of Afghanistan, or killing all those of the Muslim religion, so it sounds more realist than nationalist.
Unlike some on this site who agree with the old anti Partisan operations carried out by the Germans on the Eastern Front of wiping out whole villages for any anti German activity.
Tony
National TV is also selling a massive war with all the technical skill it usually reserves for selling soap. Sure, there is lip service to "good" Wogs and the possibility that "most" wogs are not killers.......but the overwhelming tone is one of zealous hate mongering.
You mentioned a while back how shocked you were by the war fever whipped up by Yugo media.........what do you think now ?
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& BTW, kudos to your decision to wear the uniform again in helping to find & stop those responsible for the 9-11 crimes. While we do not agree 100%,.......having thoughtful, reflection people like yourself in the military is a very good sign. Hope your beloved isn't too bent outta shape about your decision.
I don’t blame NYC, so many people lost in one attack, and not even a sniff of danger or of a threat, when the Germans bombed London it was bad but we new we were at War.
This came out of the blue.
Its funny but it is almost shades of Kosovo again.
Instead of the Serbs we have the Taliban, the mass movement of refugees, huge sprawling refugee camps, and instead of the KLA we have the Northern Alliance.
Who would of thought that all those Cold War battles we fought by proxy in the 70s and 80s would come home to roost.
If after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the West had initiated a form of Marshall plan for East Europe, Yugoslavia, Russia, and the Central Asian states, we may not be in this mess today.
Tony
In his book Balkan Odyssey, beginning on page 260, Lord Owen describes the investigation which determined the shell was fired from a Bosnian Muslim postion, how General Rose used this information as a bargaining chip to get Izetbegovic to the negotiating table, how and why the results of the investigation were suppressed, but leaks occurred, etc.
I could type it all out here, but it's quite long and off-topic.
Terrible acts were committed by ALL sides in the recent conflicts in former Yugoslavia.
that's true, but the mess WAS deliberate and intended outcome.
To learn more about lap-top criminals, find Peter Brock's article
He has a number of articles can you point me at the one you are talking about.
Tony
(Tanjug) ARMS IN MACEDONIA COLLECTED, NLA DISBANDED, SHOOTING IN TETOVO
SKOPJE - Ethnic Albanian terrorists opened sporadic fire overnight in northern Tetovo and on Mount Sara, in northwest Macedonia, army and police sources said on Friday morning. It has not been determined which formation continued with the armed provocations.
The leader of the ethnic Albanian paramilitary formation NLA, Ali Ahmeti, said on Thursday that this organization had been disbanded after handing its arms to the NATO mission.
(1)There is this UNGA Convention. It does not provide for punishment of journalists, but rather the rights of States to correct false reports which directly concern them. There may be some other Convention such as you describe, but I have no knowledge of it. I hope there is not such a Convention. The UN is a body of States, not individuals, and it is SUPPOSED to be a forum for resolving disputes between nations, not individuals within nations, and for regulating treaties between States etc. The UN has no business sticking its nose into regulating matters pertaining to individuals within any given State, IMHO.
(2) Nuremburg: Julius Streicher, Editor of the newspaper Der Sturmer, Director of the Central Committee for the Defence against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda was sentenced to hang. Hans Fritzsche, Ministerial Director and head of the radio division in the Propaganda Ministry was acquitted (a relatively minor official, indicted to appease the Russians).
As you know, I have long been a critic of ICTY. I have no wish to see it extend its jurisiction to include journalists.
I'm not sure how I got be included on your list of "humanitarian warriors." I can't think of any Milosevic speech such as you describe, but I can think of some Tudjman speeches.
Finally, I recently wrote this on another thread: I've been so disgusted by some posters here. One even added this tag line to his screen name: "kill them all -- nits make lice!" Ack! Ack! Ack! And such people are probably the same ones who called the peoples of former Yugoslavia "barbarians" and such.
"There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing."
--former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger (CNN, 9/11/01)
"The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift-- kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts."
--Steve Dunleavy (New York Post, 9/12/01)
"America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution."
--Rich Lowry, National Review editor, to Howard Kurtz (Washington Post, 9/13/01)
"TIME TO TAKE NAMES AND NUKE AFGHANISTAN."
--Caption to cartoon by Gary Brookins (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9/13/01)
"At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilites should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice on the part of the United States and the current administration."
--Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Thomas Woodrow, "Time to Use the Nuclear Option" (Washington Times, 9/14/01)
Bill O'Reilly: "If the Taliban government of Afghanistan does not cooperate, then we will damage that government with air power, probably. All right? We will blast them, because..."
Sam Husseini, Institute for Public Accuracy: "Who will you kill in the process?"
O'Reilly: "Doesn't make any difference."
--(The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, 9/13/01)
"This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
--Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter (National Review Online, 9/13/01)
All considered, maybe journalist should be legally responsible for the things they write.
And as for everything else you said, it's wrong too. I never claimed Serbs hated other religions. I only pointed out some facts about the wars in the 90's. Now go commit suicide or something.
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