The Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, RECOM Reconciliation Network and Mediacentar Sarajevo are organising an expert discussion on the role and presence of media as evidence, and of journalists as witnesses before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

 

News reports by domestic and foreign correspondents reporting from all sides involved in the conflicts in former Yugoslavia are significant evidence materials in the proceedings before the ICTY. The research conducted by Mediacentar Sarajevo as part of the Journalism as the First Draft of History project included the collection of over two thousand pieces of media evidence from the ICTY Court Records archive, and more than thirty testimonies of international and local journalists who testified for the prosecution, as well as the defence. It is also important to note that a number of journalists, mostly from the United States, did not accept ICTY's call, citing the fundamental right of journalists to refuse to testify. 

 

In order to shed light on the insufficiently researched role of journalists and newspaper material before the ICTY, Mediacentar Sarajevo, The Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo and RECOM network, invite representatives of the media community in Kosovo, researchers, legal experts, historians and all interested, to participate in the discussion on media as evidence and journalists as witnesses in court. 

 

The goal of this event is to examine the role of journalism both in circumstances of war and in the context of current challenges faced by professional journalism. The discussion will also be based on the results of interviews with 14 journalists who testified before the Hague Tribunal, who shared their views on the work of the ICTY and the experience of testifying in 2021 with the team of the project “Journalism as the First Draft of History”. Details of the testimony were shared by Martin Bell, Ed Vulliamy, Veton Surroi, Sejo Omeragić, John Sweeney, Branimir Grulović, and others.

 

Veton Surroi (Kosovo), Bekim Blakaj (Kosovo), Zlatko Dizdarević (BiH), Nemanja Stjepanović (researcher MIP) will be speaking at the event, and the discussion will be moderated by Boro Kontić of Mediacentar Sarajevo.

 

Registration for the event is open here.