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Testing Readiness to Face the Past

09 June 2009  Sarajevo University's Human Rights Center publishes a Report on the State of Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2008, focusing in particular on war-crimes trials and related media reporting.

By: Aida Alic

The Report on the State of Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2008 - Law, Practices and International Human Rights Standards, also containing results of an opinion poll, provides an overview of respect for human rights in legal regulations, practices, and in the minds of Bosnian citizens, as well as other major human-rights issues in the last year. The Report has more than 500 pages.

The Report finds that the key human-rights issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina is "the significant gap between theory and practice," which, the Report argues, highlights the need for "continued education on human rights and raising awareness of the general public".

The Report pays special attention to reporting on war-crimes trials, as well as the work of judicial institutions and the search for missing persons.

"It is necessary to create a unified database on war-crimes cases and to define the criteria for determining case sensitivity. It is also necessary to assess the capacities of local courts. Once this has been done, it is recommended to adopt a war-crimes processing strategy," the Report says.

It notes that by conducting war-crimes trials, Bosnia and Herzegovina "has passed an important exam showing its readiness to face past events".

The Report finds that there is "no transparent or quality cooperation"
between the media and the courts, while the media keep reporting in line with their own editorial policies, which are "mainly nationalistic or represent partial interests of one ethnic group only".

From January to December 2008 the research team of the Human Rights Center monitored print media in Bosnia and Herzegovina and selected 12,962 newspaper articles. Out of the total number of monitored texts, 882 pertain to war-crimes reporting. The Report finds that this reporting was not "sufficiently correct".

Most articles pertaining to war-crimes trials are "clearly politically nuanced" and are often "based on past reflections, while manipulating with numbers of war victims, general mistrust in judicial institutions and the centralization of court institutions in Sarajevo".

The Report cites BIRN - Justice Report as a positive example of war-crimes reporting, saying that, "through its objective reports, it generated a network of support for the media, the general public in the country and the Diaspora".

In 2008, media particularly focused on the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, who is charged before the Hague Tribunal with crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"This event generated a good platform for expressing nationalist, fascist and homophobic rhetoric in the media, which even included using unacceptable terminology," the Report says.

The report notes that the BIRN Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation monitored and analysed media coverage of the Karadzic arrest, reviewing more than 1,000 articles published in various print media in the region between July 24 and July 31, 2008.

The full analysis, entitled History Overshadowed by Trivia, can be downloaded from www.bim.ba

The Report says that the search for about 13,000 missing persons represents one of the main challenges facing Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has been an issue for nearly two decades. The current situation requires that competent state institutions "urgently resolve these problems".

"Without knowing what happened to their family members, the families of the missing live in agony and uncertainty even though many years have passed since the conflict ended. For this reason they are unable to overcome past events and go on with their lives," the Report reads.

Additional information about the Report can be found at the Human Rights Center web page: www.hrc.unsa.ba.