Attempts by authoritarian governments to intimidate and harass Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists only serve to emphasize how well these reporters are doing their jobs, says RFE/RL's Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic.
Today, June 5, Khadija Ismayilova has been in prison for six months. But everything started much earlier than December 5, 2014, when she was arrested and incarcerated.
At RFE/RL's most recent weekly editorial meeting, as we discussed coverage of the Paris terrorist attacks, a colleague said: "We all feel guilty! I know many of us who are ashamed or afraid to leave their homes. We need to do a story about this as well." Needless to say my colleague is a Muslim. I understand her.
As I watch the news and images from Crimea, I can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu. It's as if am reliving the 1992 break-up of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the Bosnian war.
Twenty years ago, on the eve of the Bosnian war, Nenad Pejic was the program director of Sarajevo TV. War seemed inevitable, but he was prepared to make one last attempt to save the peace.
"Credible deterrence" in Bosnia can only be imposed by the international community. That community still "agrees to disagree" about the causes of the country's problems.
Belgrade found itself with a clear choice: Arrest and extradite Ratko Mladic or give up its ambitions to join the EU. In the end, they made the right choice. Mladic is finally on his way to The Hague tribunal to answer for his crimes. And Serbian President Boris Tadic now stands to reap several benefits.
In Bosnia, the media are preparing for new crises in the same way they prepared for war 20 years ago.
The problems Bosnia-Herzegovina faces are long-established, and the only way to solve them will be by addressing the core issues that have bedeviled the federation's existence from the very start.
Every time I publish a commentary on RFE/RL's English-language website or on the website of our Balkans Service, I watch in amazement as the reader comments begin to come in. But it isn't because I am so brilliant or even controversial. It is because my topics attract an audience that knows how to speak, but is incapable of listening.
The recent arrest on a Serbian warrant of Bosnian Army General Jovan Divjak in Vienna was just the latest in a series of provocations by dark, internal forces within Serbia who continue to fight the last war.
Would the Balkan countries be better of if their leaders stepped down amidst all these corruption and criminal allegations?
A number of situations could have turned ugly recently in the Balkans. Does the fact that they didn't translate into hope for progress?
On November 4, 19 years after the Serbian army marched to Vukovar, Croatia, Serbian President Boris Tadic came to Vukovar and laid a wreath at the Ovcara memorial, which honors 260 Croats slain there by Serbian forces. But is a wreath enough?
Around 11 p.m. on July 24, the editor of the Belgrade-based weekly "Vreme" (and a contributor to RFE/RL's Balkans Service) Teofil Pancic boarded city bus No. 83 for home. Two young men on the bus proceeded to beat him senseless with metal rods. It was an incident that, hopefully, will compel many in Serbia to take a good look at their country and themselves.
Sarajevo has always been proud of its multiethnic culture and argues that this diversity is the root of the country’s strong contribution to world culture. But since the 1992-95 war, Bosnian Muslims, feeling abandoned by the West, have grown closer to Islam, and Sarajevo has slowly but surely lost its multiethnic image.
A government plane was waiting to carry the released convict from prison to a hero’s welcome in Belgrade. Journalists clustered around her, eager for any statement. Not bad for a convicted war criminal returning home.
Clearly, Brussels needs to devote much more energy to the problems of the Balkans and it needs to be prepared to bring sticks to the table as well as carrots. The EU already has the instruments it needs -- it has a legal framework for making decisions and a police/military force to implement them. But over the years, EU action in Bosnia has consistently been too little and too late.
An intellectual in Sarajevo told me last week that Bosnia is like a sick patient who needs hospital treatment but who is told he must recover before he can be admitted. The world -- particularly the EU -- has been slow to respond to developments in Bosnia, usually reacting slowly rather than acting decisively.
In effect, Bosnia has once again been divided along ethnic lines. This time, by the European Union. At a time when most analysts are warning that the fragile country is on the verge of collapse, the EU -- by lifting visa requirements for visitors from Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro -- is acting to intensify the ethnic fault lines there and to make Bosnia weaker.
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