Bosnian Camp Detainees Demand Apology for Serbian TV ‘Untruths’

Former prisoners in Prijedor camps. Photo: Youtube

Former detainees of the Bosnian Serb-run wartime camps at Prijedor in north-west Bosnia have filed a joint complaint to the Serbian Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, REM, against Happy TV.

They say untruths about the Serb-run camp in Prijedor were presented on the show ‘Good Morning, Serbia’, and called on President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia and the show’s host and guest to jointly pay tribute to the victims of the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps.

Satko Mujagic, a former detainee and applicant, told BIRN that this is not the first untruth spread by the Serbian media about crimes committed in the 1992-5 war in Bosnia, but this time they wanted to do more than issue a reaction in the media.

“We couldn’t verbally resist then, because that have would meant death, but now we do not have to suffer such blows from the media,” he said.

He said REM Serbia was responsible for the work of the Serbia broadcast media and believes Happy TV host Milomir Maric violated Serbia’s Law on Electronic Media.

“I have concluded that this is the best way to prevent these lies, which are not a small thing… These are serious things, where people were killing people, and where people were starving people,” Mujagic said.

Together with Fikret Alic and the Association of Detainees, Kozarac, the application proposes that REM Serbia asks for a recording of the show on Happy TV, conducts proceedings against the television station for violation of obligations related to programme content, and issues a warning to it.

Mjagic said that on the ‘Good Morning, Serbia’ show, host Milomir Maric and guest Predrag Antonijevic, claimed the camps near Prijedor were “of an open type, from which people could get out”. Showing a well-known photo from the war of an emaciated detainee, Fikret Alic, they said he was only “skinny from tuberculosis”.

Happy TV did not respond to a BIRN inquiry about the complaint.

Mujagic said statements made during the show were like “putting salt on the wounds of the survivors”.

He recalled that, back at the time, because of his good knowledge of English, he was “pushed” in front of foreign journalists who came to film the detainees and forced to say that it was not a camp and that they had meals, which was not true.

“We were forced to tell lies for 15 days – that’s what we did – and when the guards weren’t watching us, I managed to say one-on-one in English what was really going on – but it was very risky,” he recalled.

Because journalists filmed the detainees, Mujagic said they later avoided a mass shooting.

He said he is optimistic that REM Serbia will act correctly because the application contains arguments taken from the final judgments of the Hague war crimes tribunal which describe the camps and their purposes in detail.