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BIRN BiH Attends Washington Conference

30 July 2010  

BIRN director Anisa Suceska-Vekic was a key panelist at the “Fifteen years later: Forward or backward in the Balkans?” conference held at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC on July 15.

Marking the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica and ahead of the upcoming Bosnian elections, the conference reevaluated American and European Union engagement with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region.
 
US and European politicians, NGO representatives and Srebrenica genocide survivors were among the participants. They discussed the massacre, facing the truth and the blocking of the reconciliation process.
 
Suceska-Vekic, director of the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that hate speech, nationalistic rhetoric and genocide denial are still present in Bosnia, while the media are biased and influenced by politics.
 
“It is difficult to prove genocide, even in court, and the Bosnian judiciary hesitates to open investigations. Many people think nothing will happen before the trial of Radovan Karadzic has been completed. The media has got a chance to follow the trials, present the facts, interview the victims, witnesses and experts, but none of them does it,” said Suceska-Vekic.
 
She gave numerous media interviews following the conference, appearing on the Voice of America and speaking to the Democracy Journal and the Washington Post newspaper.
 
Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Serbia, and Emir Suljagic, a Srebrenica survivor, were among other panelists.
 
The conference was also attended by Bruce George, leader of the UK Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Daglas Davidson, Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, US Department of State, and Anthony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the US Vice-President.