Reports

A Difficult Profession

Media Freedom Under Attack in the Western Balkans

This 69-page report documents physical attacks and threats, including death threats, punitive lawsuits, and smear campaigns targeting journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia. The report is based on interviews with 86 journalists, most of whom report on sensitive issues such as war crimes and corruption, in the four Western Balkan countries. Human Rights Watch also documented several cases of cyberattacks against online media outlets critical of the governments. None of the countries are adequately investigating or prosecuting the attacks on journalists, Human Rights Watch found.

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  • “Ethnic Cleansing” Continues in Northern Bosnia

    In July 1994, the campaign to expel non-Serbs from Bosnian Serb-held areas of northern Bosnia accelerated. Most of those being displaced came from the northwestern and northeastern parts of the country.

  • Sarajevo

    Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Hercegovina, has become a stark symbol of both the strengths and the depravities of human nature.

  • War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina

    U.N. Cease-Fire Won't Help Banja Luka

    Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia-Hercegovina after Sarajevo, is the scene of much of the most severe and systematic “ethnic cleansing”: torture, murder, rape, beatings, harassment, de jure discrimination, intimidation, expulsion from homes, confiscation of property, bombing of businesses, dismissal from work, o

  • War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina: Bosanski Samac

    Six War Criminals Named by Victims of "Ethnic Cleansing"

    In detailing gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law in Bosanski Samac, this report identifies six war criminals — known as Stevo Todorovic, Slavko and Makso, Goran, Lugar, and Cika Tralija — and calls for immediate action by the international tribunal on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

  • War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina (Volume II)

    Helsinki Watch has been monitoring human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war in both Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina since the conflict began two years ago. The original volume in this series documented the appalling brutality inflicted on the civilian population and called on the U.N.

  • War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina (Volume I)

    Full-scale war, marked by appalling brutality inflicted on the civilian population and extreme violations of international humanitarian law, has been raging in Bosnia-Hercegovina since early April 1992. Mistreatment in detention, the taking of hostages and the pillaging of civilian property is widespread.