Make up your mind

Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica at a convention about corruption in the Serbian judicial system said it was seen, internationally, as corrupt, ineffective and slow-moving. So what did he do? Said criteria to appoint judges would be made more stringent in order to fight corruption within the judicial system..
Criteria stepped-up for judges

Yet only the day before he argued the four former police and army generals wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal should be tried in Serbian courts, not sent to the Hague. Last line?

Kostunica claims that pro-democracy reforms, launched in Serbia after Milosevic’s ouster in 2000, have brought competence and integrity to Serbian courts.

Kostunica wants generals tried at home

Corruption, competence and integrity….they’re pretty much the same thing right? Idiot.

Just DO IT!

SFOR “reluctant to arrest Karadzic”.

Apparently they know where he is and could arrest him today. Unfortunately, “quoting a source close to international circles” does not really carry a whole lot of weight when that source is unnamed. And what the hell is ‘close to international circles’? It allows Serbian authorities to deny, again, that they can do anything about catching Karadzic.

um, obviously I haven’t found any work to do. This is ridiculous.

Sudan and Serbia

We’ll try this as an email post and see how it goes. (it didn’t work, I had to edit this, email posting is useless)

A piece by Poynter on Sudan and the editorial (journalistic) approach to it. The highlights from the story

• When Sudan gets only a few column inches, how can readers understand the nuance and scope of the crises? Do
  journalists?
• While 300,000 corpses might be a story, 300,000 people starving to death one by one seems to be a harder sell.

And from Serbia, Boris Tadic is the new President of Serbia and Montenegro in what has been covered by many news agencies as the Serbian people voicing their will to turn away from isolationist policies and hardliners, and embrace reform.

What I haven’t heard from mainstream news is how close the vote really was. Tadic took 53.7%, Nikolic 45% – a difference of only 275,055 votes. Nikolic put it down to farmers taking advantage of the sunshine to plough and pick cherries, while the young people came out to vote. It’s interesting that he seems to accept that young people don’t support him or his association with Milosevic. Thank God for that.

The only place Nikolic beat Tadic was in Kosovo – 72% of the vote to Tadic’s 27%. The next closest region was Central Serbia, where
Nikolic trailed Tadic by only 2.3% (50.4 to 48.1%). It was almost to the opposite extreme in Belgrade, however, with vote going to Tadic 60-40.

Now that I’ve bored you all to tears, rack off then.

I may have been a bit harsh on my employer. It’s not all advertising. And I’m not actually being given the paid advertorial, although that is an aspect of what’s done here and I have had to do some of it. Maybe I’m just getting disillusioned with journalism in general which, again, could be a result of being here, not anything to do with journalism per se.

Serbia.
This is great. Tadic (presidential candidate in second round against Radical candidate Tomislav Nikolic) and Kostunica (current Serb PM) have apparently been bitter political foes since they differed on sending war criminals to the International Court in the Hague or trying them in Serbia. I said earlier how Tadic was likely to win the second round if the votes of other democratic candidates came his way. All other parties had expressed the desire for their supporters to vote for Tadic in the second round, except Kostunica, who hadn’t endorsed either candidate until now.

In this article, Nikolic challenges Tadic to debate, Nikolic tried to woo Kostunica’s endorsement and votes by saying, “Kostunica is an honest man and I’m proposing that we honest people get together on one side and let the criminals be on the other.”

But no, Kostunica party supports Tadic. Seems Kostunica decided not to side with the criminals after all.

B92-Bosnian Serbs own up to Srebrenica
Thank you B92. They’ve put a story up, but unfortunately it’s just an AFP report. I was hoping for a Serbian opinon…

Balkans. Serbia Presidential Elections.
Some interesting statistics from the elections. Sorry I can’t link to them, they came in an email.

At 7pm voter turnout was 42.3 per cent across the state. In Kosovo and Metohija specifically(official Serbian name for province of Kosovo), it was 31.6 per cent. I was under the impression Kosovar Albanians had boycotted Serbian elections since at least 1990, if not earlier, so that must only be counting the Kosovar Serb population.

By close of voting the ‘estimated turnout’ was 47.6 per cent, that’s 5 per cent of the population casting their votes in the final hour. So Tomislav Nikolic (30.5 per cent) and Boris Tadic (27.1 per cent) head into the second round in two weeks. Since it’s so close (around 105,000 votes), they expect Tadic to win the second round as he ‘should’ pick up the votes of the first round losing candidates. I hope so. Some more number crunching by b92.

Yahoo! News – Serb Boy Killed in Apparent New Bid to Rock Kosovo

This was a week ago now, but I was reminded while posting these other Serb-related events. It’s a very similar situation to what happened earlier in March when a Serb teenager was shot. Everything went quickly downhill then, with almost 20 deaths and Serb houses and Orthodox churches torched before the situation calmed. Thankfully arrests of the suspected gunmen were made quickly this time, and we haven’t heard that Kosovo has “exploded in violence” again.

I just discovered while searching and posting the last two entries, this book I borrowed from the library, UNDER ORDERS: War Crimes in Kosovo, is actually a report by Human Rights Watch (obviously I hadn’t opened it yet…). If you follow the link, you can read the whole thing online. Not likely, I know, but the Executive Summary may be worth the time of some.

Does Serb weekly BLIC have the inside scoop on David Hicks?! An Australian accused for terrorism in USA: Via Kosovo to Al Kaeda. Apparently David Hicks took the name Muhammed al Australia, stole testosterone from the butchers he worked at, and ‘friends’ say that he ‘was a monster’! Seems unlikely to me too.

The stories at that link might change tomorrow, so I’ll post the whole thing in comments in case.

BBC NEWS – Bosnian Serbs admit to Srebrenica

For the benefit of those who refuse to believe atrocities were committed by Serb forces in Bosnia and elsewhere, hopefully this gets wider media recognition in Serbia proper. It’s an official investigation which, the story says, “is the furthest any Bosnian Serb authorities have gone in admitting their involvement in events around Srebrenica”.

Nothing reported on B92. BETA has something, but only available as a headline. Nothing on Blic, but check out the next post. Tanjug has a few lines about it.

Of all the other sites, something may be there, but my Serbian isn’t exactly up to translator status quite yet.

Tomislav Nikolic, deputy leader of the Serbian Radical Party, is running for the post of Serbian president. Elections to be held June 13. He gave a TV interview to B92′s Sanda Savic a little over a week ago. The full transcript is here:
B92 Interviews >> Tomislav Nikolic

Savic and Nikolic are politely at each other’s throats throughout. Not surprising given the history of the Radical party and B92′s championing of free press. Nikolic and the Radicals do enjoy a lot of support at the moment, so hopefully Savic’s aggressive interviewing hasn’t attracted more support for them just before the election. There will be more to worry about than just economic reform if the Radical party returns to dominance in Serbia.

Perhaps the most telling for media was Nikolic reaffirming his assertion that he doesn’t regret the death of publisher Slavko Curuvija in 1999, still agreeing with Vojislav Seselj’s statement:
Seselj: “Keep that in mind. You from B92 and the other traitor outlets. You want to kill off statesmen like rabbits and keep yourselves safe at the same time. Well, you’re mistaken. You’re very, very mistaken. No more kid gloves. Anyone who works for the Americans will have to suffer the consequences.”

Given that, I not only doubt the sincerity of Nikolic’s closing statement below, but find it slightly chilling.

Other highlights include:

• Opening statement
  Nikolic: Good evening. I’m happy to be here.
  Closing statement
  Nikolic: You haven’t devoted this show to presenting me as a presidential candidate, but I won’t hold that against you.
• Serbia’s economic future
  B92: And, in your opinion, who is our main partner in the West at the moment?
  Nikolic: The European Union, I think.
  B92: You’ve heard what Javier Solana (EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) – ed.) said: “If Tomislav Nikolic wins, the EU won’t support him and this will be a very bad signal to foreign investors.”
  Nikolic: He didn’t say that.
  B92: That is exactly what he said.
  Nikolic: He said this very gently and mildly, choosing his words very carefully. He said that he believes foreign investors will not be too happy if I win.
  B92: “It’s going to be a bad signal,” that’s what he said.
  Nikolic: What, am I going to steal from foreign investors?
  B92: They won’t invest in this country: you know that. That’s our second topic tonight, the economy. Let’s see how you can…
  Nikolic: Let’s clear this up, because you’re convinced Solana said something which he didn’t say…
• Lies and getting stuck in
  Nikolic: Do you have anything else?
  B92: I have loads of things, but I still haven’t had a single answer from you.
  Nikolic: You don’t have anything.
  B92: I haven’t had a single answer. I have a heap of material. An enormous number of facts.
  Nikolic: I knew this program would be like this.
  B92: An enormous number of facts. I can read them out to you.
  Nikolic: Don’t read someone else’s facts to me.
  B92: These are not someone else’s facts.
  Nikolic: Why didn’t you approach me with these before this program?
  B92: The Serbian Public Revenue Bureau. A report. Listen to this.
  Nikolic: I can’t respond to lies.
  B92: These aren’t lies. This is an audit report.
  Nikolic: Lies.
• Good Journalism?!
  Nikolic: Let me ask you one thing.
  B92: Please do.
  Nikolic: If you’re a good journalist, why didn’t you ask me to prepare my answers in advance?

I’ll just forgot what I was told in first-year journalism then, shall I? “Do not provide questions beforehand unless it is the absolute last resort for getting the interview.”

Now I’m not advocating what seems to be B92′s push that Nikolic shouldn’t be allowed to be in the elections because he will hurt Serbia’s economy. Democracy has to continue, and the people have to be allowed to elect who they want, no matter how wrong the rest of us may think it is.

I’m just hoping and praying Nikolic is not who they want, that the majority of Serbians see how his election will hurt the economy, and respond by getting motivated to vote – against him. Much more importantly however, I’m hoping the majority of Serbians don’t agree with the nationalistic crap he lays on, and that’s why they’ll turn out in numbers to vote against him. For the time being I’ll take any reason.

In my comeback post you’d think I would do something grand.

No.

In other news, I am the only Blogger with interests in:

• Liverpool
• Balkans
• Serbia
• Kosovo
• West Africa
• Nigeria
• Sudan
• Palestine and
• alien spotting.

So .instead of writing something short, with simply a link to Brad Pitt proposing we learn from history (who else could have thought of it?), I went…grand

I liked this article . Probably only of interest to the journalists. It’s about the lack of media reporting on humanitarian disasters, but particularly ‘genocide’.

The international media don’t send reporters to cover genocides, it seems. They cover genocide anniversaries.

I was making brief, passing mention to this in another post. That had more to do with media pushing for intervention in Bosnia (white genocide) while largely ignoring Rwanda (black genocide).

Do we have to change the gatekeepers (editors who decide what prints) if these events are to make it past the cutting floor? If that’s what has to be done, how can we change the gatekeepers? If we can’t change the gatekeepers, then what? How do we get the story out, let the world know what’s going on?

Serious questions. It really does bother me.

Well, it turns out I am spending more time designing the blog than actually writing in it. Not only that, but also more time than studying… I’ve already designed a new template that I’m in the process of fine-tuning, but you can link to it here to see what’s going on, or from the ‘other blogs’ links… I like it so far, and the front page headline will be a self-fulfilling prophesy if I don’t give up this nonsense of designing pages.. it IS addictive though. I have an assignment (2 actually) due Monday so I should probably give this up for the weekend and focus on those…

But anyway, I was going to write about last week’s ‘Editor’ section.

Last Thursday was the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan massacre. Anyone who has any interest in international relations or news would know this and know the issues relating to it. However, there were two particular points in the editorial that drew my attention – both are quotes (pg22WeekendAustralian10/4/04):

Samantha Power of the Los Angeles Times

“editorial writers at the major newspapers who pushed for intervention in Bosnia made no such appeals on behalf of the Rwandans”.

Joshua Hammer in The New York Republic

‘Self denial continues to this day among the perpetrators…”After a decade of self-delusion and historical amnesia, most Rwandan Hutu still insist that no genocide took place.” Instead, Hammer wrote, they believe “Hutu and Tutsi were killed in equal numbers in a civil war”.

1. When you start to talk about advocacy journalism, do you ‘pull’ for the argument you agree with, support, are sympathetic to? Of course, you wouldn’t ‘advocate’ it if you didn’t see the merit of doing so. But there are thousands of stories/issues out there that deserve to be told, even if the media doesn’t want to tell them, and especially if their reasoning is a lack of personal zeal for the issue.

I’ve just started this blog, so I can tell you who don’t know that I’d like to work as a foreign correspondent at some point. As Bruce says, “Dave wants to go to bodgy countries.” It’s not that I necessarily want to put my life on the line, dodge bullets or get kidnapped, burnt or mutilated, but there are stories to be told that people need to know about. I can only pray I work at that time for an organisation/agency that feels the same way about telling those stories. What made me think this a little more was seeing a documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey. Some of the images were, really, the type you just don’t want to look at, don’t want to think about. I can tell people now I don’t want to be a foreign correspondent in ‘bodgy places’ because I enjoy seeing the carnage, or for the excitement or thrill… I really don’t want to see those things, but someone has to if it’s going to be reported…

2. The second quote is a scary reality, of not so much people refusing to accept responsibility, but of actually believing nothing untoward has taken place. This is applicable also to the feeling of a vast majority of Serbs in their feelings towards Kosovo and what happened in ’98/99…

This by David Brown (2000:167) –

“Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo were fully trapped within these two hegemonic ideologies…To each side, the behaviour of the other side was inhuman. The ideological myths of each side seemed to be merely common sense. That is the tragedy of nationalistic conflict.”

And I agree it’s not just Serbs. Kosovar Albanians are equally at fault if they believe all KLA actions are acceptable, especially those undertaken against Kosovar Serb civilians after NATO bombing drove Serb forces out of the region. Both sides have committed atrocities… I was actually told by a Serb, “what you are presented as ‘Serbian crimes’ by the…media merely comes in consequence of centuries long hatred of both nations”…as if that makes it acceptable…?!

“When will people get over it?”, I ask in my comfort zone of never having gone through a war or large-scale loss as a result. The media, given their huge influence on what people think to be the truth of what is ‘happening’ or the issues surrounding an event, should play one of the most prominent roles in promoting good will between people and breaking down barriers of mistrust and prejudice. Unfortunately the Serb I quoted works for a media organisation in Belgrade…and there seems to still be large support for radical/nationalist parties in Serbia.

So I’m back to where I started…advocacy journalism. If you write/broadcast for the issues which are close to your heart, you leave yourself open to becoming too subjective – even to the point of departure from the truth, God forbid. May we all expose ourselves to enough facts to not be bogged down by one argument, to not be too parochial… That’s not just a statement for journalists either, but everyone. So journalists – print the facts aye? We all rely on them to make informed decisions.

Just a few stats from ‘Iraq Inquest’, a story (The Australian April 8 pg 20) based on extracts from Peter Wilson’s book ‘Long Drive Through A Short War. There’s another extract online as well if you’re interested. The stats are about journalists deaths in Iraq.

• in the space of six hours US forces hit every foreign media building in Baghdad – Al Jazeera Arabic TV, Abu Dhabi offices and the Palestine Hotel, where foreign media not embedded with US army units were housed
• Of the 14 journalists who died between March 20 and April 9, 2003, only four were ‘embeds’
• 16 of the 21 media workers killed by the end of 2003 were unilaterals and only five were embeds
• of the 14 Western journalists killed during the war (in 2003), just two were killed by Saddam’s forces, five from “neutral causes” and seven by the coalition.

This is enough for now…It’s very late, or rather very early… hmmmm, so much to talk about…some day some day. my apologies for the rambling, disjointed discourse and possible lack of a point….

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