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Tag: bosnia-herzegovina

  • Ratko Mladic Fast Facts | CNN

    Ratko Mladic Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Ratko Mladic, former leader of the Bosnian Serb army, sentenced to life in prison for genocide and other war crimes.

    Birth date: March 12, 1942

    Birth place: Kalnovik, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina)

    Birth name: Ratko Mladic

    Father: Nedja Mladic

    Mother: Stana Mladic

    Marriage: Bosiljka Mladic

    Children: Darko and Ana

    1965 – Graduates from a military academy and joins the Communist Party.

    1992 – As a commander in the Bosnian Serb army, Mladic leads the siege of Sarajevo.

    July 1995 – Mladic spearheads an attack on the town of Srebrenica. Approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys are killed.

    1995 – Mladic is indicted by the UN-established International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes and atrocities.

    July 1996 – An international warrant is issued for his arrest.

    1996-2001 – He takes refuge in Belgrade with the protection of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

    2001 – Mladic goes into hiding after Milosevic is arrested.

    October 12, 2007 – Serbian officials offer one million euros for information leading to the capture of Mladic.

    May 26, 2011 – Mladic is arrested in Serbia.

    July 4, 2011 – Mladic refuses to enter a plea so the presiding judge enters not guilty pleas to all counts against him.

    May 16, 2012 – Mladic’s trial begins. He’s charged with two counts of genocide, nine crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    January 28, 2014 – He refuses to testify at the genocide trial of former Bosian Serb Leader Radovan Karadzic and denounces the ICTY court as “satanic.”

    October 23, 2014 – The ICTY announces that the court will hear details about a mass grave investigators believe has ties to Mladic.

    December 7, 2016 – During closing arguments, prosecutors recommend a life sentence for Mladic.

    December 15, 2016 – Mladic’s trial is adjourned. Three UN judges begin deliberating on his fate. The process could take up to a year.

    November 22, 2017 – Mladic is sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.

    March 22, 2018 – Appeals his conviction and sentence.

    August 25-26, 2020 – Mladic’s appeal hearing takes place.

    June 8, 2021 – A UN court upholds Mladic’s conviction and life sentence.

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  • World must learn from Bosnian war in dealing with sexual violence in Ukraine conflict, report says | CNN

    World must learn from Bosnian war in dealing with sexual violence in Ukraine conflict, report says | CNN

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    CNN
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    The world must learn from the mistakes made after the war in Bosnia to avoid putting Ukrainian victims of rape and conflict-related sexual violence through decades of trauma, a new expert report has warned.

    Ukrainian prosecutors and independent investigators from the United Nations and other international organizations have said there is mounting evidence that Russian troops are using rape and sexual violence as part of their campaign of terror in Ukraine – similar to the systematic use of rape by the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. Russia has denied the allegations.

    The report by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a US-based think tank, is set to be released and discussed in a debate in the UK Parliament on Thursday.

    It says that if the world wants to avoid the repeat of the trauma faced by the victims in Bosnia, it needs to focus on the victims first in Ukraine. Many in Bosnia have waited for decades before coming forward and the vast majority of sexual crimes committed there have gone unpunished.

    “Rape was one of the main aspects of the war in Bosnia and yet when we look at the Dayton Peace Accords, there were no women around the table, there were no survivors of conflict-related sexual violence,” said Emily Prey, one of the report’s lead authors, referring to the 1995 agreement that ended the Bosnian war.

    “They didn’t have a say in the peace (negotiations), and so instead of a real, sustainable, lasting peace, the Dayton Accords actually only froze the conflict,” she told CNN.

    Prey said that when considering survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, it is crucial to put aside biases and stigma and make sure everyone who is impacted is included.

    “We often think sexual violence is a crime that only happens to women, but it’s a crime that happens to everyone. Women and girls, men, boys, people with diverse gender identities,” Prey said.

    “Men who were victims of conflict-related sexual violence in the Bosnian war are only just coming forward to say that they survived this crime, and so they have gone decades without receiving the support that they need. And we’re seeing this in Ukraine as well.”

    Prey added that children born of wartime rape are often forgotten as well. Between 2,000 and 4,000 children were born just from the documented cases of wartime rapes in Bosnia, although the real number is likely much higher.

    “If we don’t really think about conflict-related sexual violence enough, then we especially don’t think about children born of wartime rape. In Bosnia, they were called the ‘Invisible Children’… and they have been fighting for years to get recognition because they’ve faced barriers and difficulties throughout their lives,” she added.

    The report also says it will be crucial for Ukraine’s allies to be ready to prosecute perpetrators on behalf of Ukraine. This can happen either under the UN’s Genocide Convention or in national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national or international courts to prosecute individuals for crimes against international law committed in other territories.

    Prey said a recent case of a Bosnian Serb soldier charged with murder and rape that was transferred from Bosnia to Montenegro, where the accused was living, was a good example of this mechanism working well.

    The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and launched an investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Several countries including Lithuania, Germany, Sweden, and Spain have all opened their own investigations into alleged Russian atrocities.

    However, Prey said these cases could be costly and lengthy, which means there needs to be an extra focus on providing immediate help to the victims, including psychological and social support, free health care and free legal aid.

    “They might not see any conclusion to a court case for 10 or 20 years,” she said. “And survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, they deserve more than that. They deserve justice for themselves, accountability, but they also need to live, they need to take care of their families, they need to pay their bills and they need the support for this.”

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  • Bosnia’s Dodik declared winner in disputed election after recount

    Bosnia’s Dodik declared winner in disputed election after recount

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    Milorad Dodik wins the race for president of the country’s Serb entity, following a recount after the opposition cried foul, election officials announce.

    Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik has been declared the winner of the presidency of Bosnia’s Serb entity, election officials announced, following a recount after the opposition cried foul.

    Thursday’s result comes weeks after Bosnians cast ballots in a dizzying range of contests in early October that included a race for the president of Republika Srpska (RS) – the country’s Serb entity.

    Bosnia has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the 1995 Dayton Accords that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s, but largely failed in providing a framework for the country’s political development.

    The recount “confirmed that the candidate Milorad Dodik representing the Serb people and who was in the lead… and remained so with the greatest number of votes won,” said Suad Arnautovic, chairman of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

    The final figures for the race were still being compiled, according to officials, who said the opposition still had a narrow window to contest their findings.

    A preliminary count following the election gave the victory for the RS presidency to Dodik – with the Kremlin-friendly leader winning 48 percent of the vote compared to 43 percent for opposition candidate Jelena Trivic.

    The Central Election Commission said the repeated count revealed numerous irregularities it had notified judicial authorities about, but that none were on a level that would have changed the outcome of the vote.

    Stoking tensions

    On the day after the election, opposition parties accused Dodik and his party of “organised plundering of the elections” and demanded a recount.

    Thursday’s announcement comes just days after Dodik rallied thousands of supporters in the RS’s capital of Banja Luka, where the longtime leader of the country’s Serbs remained defiant that he would be victorious in the race for the presidency.

    “I am here tonight to tell you that Milorad Dodik is going nowhere. Milorad Dodik will be in the presidential palace very soon,” Dodik told the crowd.

    Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik waves a Serbian flag during a protest against the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the city of Banja Luka on Tuesday [Radivoje Pavicic/AP Photo]

    The recount cements Dodik’s third term as the president of the RS, after he completed a stint in the tripartite presidency.

    For years, Dodik has been stoking tensions with his frequent calls for Bosnia’s Serbs to separate even further from the country’s central institutions, earning him fresh sanctions from the United States in January.

    Running on an anti-corruption ticket, Dodik’s rival Trivic – a 39-year-old professor of economics – sought to offer an alternative to RS voters, while also trumpeting the Serbs’ desire to maintain their autonomy in Bosnia.

    Three parties supporting Trivic held two big rallies in the city of Banja Luka, asking for the recount of ballots.

    Dodik, who has long pursued separatist policies, this week reiterated that his political goal was the secession of the Serb entity from Bosnia.

    On Thursday the US Embassy in Sarajevo responded on Twitter, saying that any action taken towards Bosnia’s dissolution would violate the 1995 Dayton peace agreement and “carry grave consequences”.

    “There is no justification for responding to standard election integrity and accountability measures with the dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric about secession that we heard Monday in Banja Luka,” the embassy said.

    “Neither Dayton, nor the Constitution of [Bosnia & Herzegovina], offers any entity the right to secede.”

    October’s elections saw the three established ethnic parties secure major wins.

    The lone exception was the defeat of Bakir Izetbegovic, a two-time member of the country’s tripartite presidency who also leads the main Bosniak party – the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

    Izetbegovic was clobbered by Denis Becirovic in a double-digit landslide win.

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  • Protesters call for cancellation of ‘revisionist’ Serb film

    Protesters call for cancellation of ‘revisionist’ Serb film

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    Protesters are calling for screenings of a new documentary by a Serbian-Canadian filmmaker to be cancelled across Europe, saying the “revisionist” film “whitewashes” war crimes committed during the Bosnian War.

    Film director Boris Malagurski announced last month on Twitter the schedule of screenings of his film Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom. Malagurski has worked as a correspondent and host for Russian state media channels RT and Sputnik Serbia.

    Republika Srpska became a Serb-run entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia.

    From 1992 to 1995, Serb forces led a campaign of ethnic cleansing with a goal of creating a Greater Serbia.

    The most notorious case of their war crimes was in Srebrenica, where in 1995, Serb forces under the command of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys over the course of a few days. International courts ruled the massacre constituted genocide.

    The Canada-based Institute for the Research of Genocide launched an online petition to stop the promotion of the film, saying it “revises the painful history of Bosnia”. It has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures.

    “The film promotes the denial of the genocide in Srebrenica,” the institute said in a statement on Saturday. “… It promotes the idea of ​​Greater Serbia, which is constantly tearing Bosnia and Herzegovina apart.”

    “And it tries, by all means, to show that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a failed state, promoting the independence of the Rebublika Srpska entity and its unification with Serbia,” it said.

    Campaign leader Georgio Konstandi told Al Jazeera that six days of screenings have so far been cancelled in 19 cities in Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium.

    “[Malagurski’s] film trailer clearly frames the founding of a genocidal regime as a ‘struggle for freedom’ and a fight against ‘slavery’” Konstandi said. “We would not accept such gross whitewashing of any other genocidal regime.”

    “Why should the Bosnian people, who were tortured, massacred and raped by the Republika Srpska authorities, be expected to put up with it?” he asked.

    Malagurski told Al Jazeera that the documentary filmed scenes in Srebrenica and noted “the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] in the Hague concluded, in its verdict, that ‘what happened in Srebrenica constituted genocide,’ in no way negating that fact”.

    “It talks about the Serbs’ turbulent history under various empires of the past, but in no way avoids talking about the crimes Serb forces committed during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s,” he said.

    “However, none of the mentioned organisations asked to watch the film before engaging in an aggressive campaign to ban the film, in the ‘cancel culture’ manner of the times we live in,” Malagurski added.

    Last week the Sarajevo Mayor Benjamina Karic addressed the mayor of Salzburg, Austria, in a letter, alerting him of the film serving as “propaganda”. The screening was later cancelled.

    The campaign has spurred lobbied people outside the Western Balkans to also comment. On Saturday, Alaskan standup comedian Chelsea Hart posted a TikTok video of the issue, writing “Fascism is making a comeback in Europe.”

    Rulings by the ICTY, including the conclusion that the massacre in Srebrenica constituted a genocide, are regularly denied by Serb politicians in both Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Serbia, including Banja Luka’s Mayor Drasko Stanivukovic, who welcomed the film’s premiere in Republika Srpska this month.

    The city of Banja Luka reportedly financed $15,000 for the production of the documentary.

    Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has for the past 15 years been leading a campaign for the Republika Srpska entity to secede and join Serbia.

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  • Bosnian Serb opposition parties call for recount of ballots

    Bosnian Serb opposition parties call for recount of ballots

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    Opposition parties in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity have accused long-term Serb leader Milorad Dodik of fraud.

    Opposition parties in Bosnia’s Serb entity have formally called for a recount of ballots cast over the weekend during general elections, after accusing longtime Serb leader Milorad Dodik of fraud.

    The vote held in Republika Srpska (RS) should be annulled due to the discovery of “hundreds of irregularities,” said Branislav Borenovic, the leader of the conservative PDP party, outside the Central Election Commission’s headquarters in Sarajevo on Wednesday.

    With the vast majority of votes counted, Dodik appeared on the verge of clinching another term as the president of RS.

    Dodik received 48 percent of the vote, while his challenger Jelena Trivic secured 43 percent, with more than 95 percent of polling stations accounted for. A total of 617,000 citizens participated.

    After the polls closed on Sunday, Trivic claimed victory in the race, saying she enjoyed a sizeable lead that Dodik would be unable to overcome.

    But just hours later, Dodik said the preliminary results had him leading the contest, sparking accusations of fraud from the opposition.

    “I will not recognise the theft of the people’s will,” Trivic told reporters, with her party saying more than 65,000 votes had been “contaminated” by irregularities.

    In many polling stations, for example, opposition monitors were driven out by thugs before the counting was completed.

    Result lists emerged in many polling stations, according to which a conspicuously large number of votes were cast for unknown candidates and not a single vote for Trivic.

    “We will not give up until the truth emerges and justice prevails,” Borenovic said.

    The opposition SDS party has also called for a recount.

    Dodik has batted away the accusations, while saying a recount was “unrealistic”.

    “Our victory is beyond reproach,” Dodik said on Wednesday.

    Opposition representatives have called for protests to be held on Thursday in the city of Banja Luka.

    Dodik has dominated politics in the Serb part of the country for two decades. For years, he has been stoking tensions with his frequent calls for Bosnia’s Serbs to separate even further from the country’s central institutions, earning him new sanctions from the United States in January.

    Trivic, a 39-year-old professor of economics, sought to offer an alternative to Dodik by running on an anti-corruption ticket.

    The election for the presidency of the RS was one of a dizzying number of contests held over the weekend that saw a range of candidates run for posts in the Serb entity and Bosnia’s Bosniak-Croat federation.

    The Balkan state has been governed by a complicated administrative system created by the 1995 Dayton Agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s, but largely failed in providing a framework for the country’s political development.

    In the war’s wake, ethnic political parties have long exploited the country’s divisions in a bid to maintain power.

    The weekend’s contests saw the three established ethnic parties secure major wins.

    The lone exception was the defeat of Bakir Izetbegovic, a two-time member of the country’s tripartite president who also leads the main Bosniak party – the SDA.

    Izetbegovic was defeated by another professor, Denis Becirovic, in a double-digit landslide win.

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  • Bosnians go to polls to choose between nationalists and reformists | CNN

    Bosnians go to polls to choose between nationalists and reformists | CNN

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    Bosnians go to the polls on Sunday to choose the country’s new collective presidency and lawmakers at national, regional and local levels, deciding between long-entrenched nationalist parties and reformists focused on the economy.

    Nearly 3.4 million people are eligible to vote amid the worst political crisis in the Balkan country since the end of its war in the 1990s, prompted by separatist policies of the Serb leadership and threats of blockades by Bosnian Croats.

    The polls open at 7 a.m. local (12:00 a.m. ET) and close at 7 p.m. (12:00 p.m. ET). The first official results are expected at midnight local but political parties are expected to come out with their own results around 10 p.m.

    Bosnia is comprised of two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the Federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats, linked by a weak central government. The Federation is further split into 10 cantons. There is also the neutral Brcko district in the north.

    Election campaigning by ruling ethnic parties was dominated by hate speech and nationalist rhetoric, focusing rather on themes of protection of national interests and criticism of opponents than on real-life issues such as jobs and soaring inflation.

    A lack of reliable polls has made it difficult to predict the outcome, but many analysts believe nationalist parties will remain dominant and that the biggest change may come in the Bosniak camp, which is the largest and most diverse.

    Bakir Izetbegovic, leader of the largest Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) Party of Democratic Action (SDA), who is running for the Bosniak presidency member, is seen in a tight race with Denis Becirovic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), whose bid is supported by 11 civic-oriented opposition parties.

    Observers believe that Serb and Croat nationalist parties will remain in power but some polls have suggested that separatist pro-Russian leader Milorad Dodik, who is running for the Serb Republic’s president, is facing strong competition from opposition economist Jelena Trivic.

    The Croat parties have warned they may block the formation of government after the vote if moderate Zeljko Komsic wins the job of the Croat presidency member. They say his victory could only be based on votes by majority Bosniaks and that they will not regard him as the legitimate Croat representative.

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