The following media round-up on international, legal and foreign policy issues from around the Balkans for the period from 10 November 2023 to 16 November 2023.
Guernica 37 will provide weekly media updates with a focus on Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. Should you wish to contribute or submit a media summary, opinion piece or blog, please send to Ned Vucijak at nenadv@guernica37.com for consideration.
Bosnia - 16 November 2023
(Comment) Survivors and veterans from all parties to the conflict are gathering today at sites of the Bosnian War. Together, they want to send a message of justice and reconciliation in a country that is still torn apart; see here.
Kosovo - 16 November 2023
(Comment) A former Kosovo ambassador testified publicly last week before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Hague. The witness mainly retracted his previous statements against former Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi. But beyond the reasons for the witness’s contradictions, it shows how Kosovo trials are caught between two duties: protecting witnesses and holding a public trial; see here.
Kosovo - 16 November 2023
Former Kosovo Liberation Army officer Sadik Halitjaha told the trial of Hashim Thaci and other wartime guerrilla leaders in The Hague that contrary to prosecution claims, the KLA’s General Staff didn’t give orders, and the guerrilla force didn’t have a defined military structure; see here.
Croatia - 15 November 2023
Branimir Glavas, a wartime general sentenced to seven years in jail for war crimes, said he escaped from Croatia to neighbouring Bosnia “just in case” after his first-instance verdict was handed down; see here.
Albania - 15 November 2023
(Comment) Albanians still look for validation to a Europe whose attitudes to them remain heavily informed by racism, Islamophobia and stereotypes about ‘Oriental’ others; see here
Bosnia - 14 November 2023
Wartime Bosnian Serb Army brigade commander Miladin Trifunovic was acquitted of ordering detained Bosniak civilians to be used as forced labour on the frontlines in the Vogosca area during wartime in 1992; see here.
Bosnia - 14 November 2023
Some of the remains of people killed in the July 1995 genocide haven’t been unidentified and remain in storage. A new repository is being built at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre to finally give them a dignified resting place; see here.
Serbia - 13 November 2023
Documents obtained by BIRN show the Serbian government-funded lawyers who have defended officials accused of corruption in Kosovo courts; see here.
Bosnia - 10 November 2023
Five members of Bosniak-led military and police forces told the Bosnian court that they deny systematically abusing and torturing Serb prisoners at a detention facility in the town of Visoko in 1992; see here.