Families of Victims and the Missing Support BIRN’s Campaign

During a public debate held in Zivinice the families pointed out that war-crime trials were of public interest, supporting the campaign initiated by the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN on June 26.

One of the mothers still searching for her son said that, for her, television and radio were the only sources of information about the trials, adding that it was therefore important that all pieces of information be available to the media.The public debate was organised by the International Commission for the Missing Persons, ICMP, and BIRN in order to inform war-crimes victims about the practice of certain judicial bodies in Bosnia and Herzegovina on not publishing the identity of indictees, as well as persons sentenced for war crimes under second instance verdicts, in court documents.

Other courts and prosecutors’ offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina have begun implementing the same practice, thus depriving the public of information about war crimes and responsibility of individuals.

For this reason, BIRN initiated a campaign titled “STOP Censoring War-Crimes” with the aim of stopping further withholding of information from trials.Families of victims and the missing persons, who attended the debate, signed a petition against withholding information from war-crimes trials.Another public debate about the right of victims to know who the war crimes perpetrators are will be held in the Red Cross premises in Brcko at 10 a.m. tomorrow.