MEDIA

Article I of Annex 7 of the Dayton Agreement requires "the prevention and prompt suppression of any written or verbal incitement through media or otherwise, of ethnic or religious hostility or hatred." UNHCR has concluded, however: "Media in all areas continues to provoke ethnic antagonisms, and this is not suppressed by the authorities."95 This is certainly true in the Prijedor municipality. In August, OSCE Ambassador Robert Frowick issued a statement noting that "In a number of communities, government officials have attempted to thwart the development of democratic conditions by discouraging or prohibiting freedom of expression and of the press." Frowick then named the municipalities where "the problems appear to be the most egregious, and the recalcitrance of local officials most unyielding." Prijedor made the list of five towns named in the Republika Srpska, though it is certainly not the only town where abuses of freedom of expression are severe. The OSCE reported recently that the Editor-in-Chief of the Bjeljina weekly Xtra magazine resigned after being summoned to Pale for questioning by Minister Kijac regarding the owner of the magazine. The Editor's wife also had been questioned by local police in Bjeljina about the owner on two other occasions. According to the OSCE, this latest harassment follows earlier reported economic difficulties which may be related to the struggle between the magazine owner and SDS officials.

Radio Prijedor

Following the takeover of the town, Zoran Baros became editor-in-chief of Radio Prijedor, and he remains in that position today. (Baros was removed from his position for a period after allowing Bosniaks to use the radio to attempt to locate missing family members during the takeover. He was replaced by Mile Mutic, editor of the local newspaper Kozarski Vijesnik. Later, however, Baros was reinstalled.) During the war, the Bosnian Serbs used Radio Prijedor to make demands that Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats living in ethnically mixed areas mark their housing by hanging out a white flag, and to identify themselves by wearing white arm bands when they moved outside as a sign of submission.96

Since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, Radio Prijedor has continued to be used as a tool of propaganda and incitement, under the authority of the Republika Srpska authorities in Pale. On April 21, 1995, for example, the head of Serb Radio-Television chaired a meeting of all Republika Srpska media. The chief of Prijedorradio reported to OSCE that at the meeting there was discussion of an "unofficial recommendation" requiring that authorities in Pale approve all references to international organizations prior to broadcast.97

According to the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which has conducted an extensive review of the media throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina, "The backbone of the information system in Republika Srpska is Serbian Radio-Television (SRT, but also known colloquially--and confusingly--as SRNA). It was created during the war by the merger of the radio and TV stations in Banja Luka and Pale, using a frequency and transmitters seized for the purpose. Today, these form an integrated programme and production system. Radio stations in Bijeljina and Prijedor also operate within the SRT framework, as do local TV studios in Bijeljina, Prijedor, Bosanski Novi, Trebinje and Doboj." While SRT's systems were damaged by NATO bombing in 1995, they have largely been reestablished, the Institute reports.98

Kozarski Vjesnik (Kozara Herald, Newspaper)

Rezak Hukanovic, a survivor of Omarska camp, wrote about Mile and Rade Mutic and their colleagues in his book, The Tenth Circle of Hell. Mile Mutic, journalist and member of the "Crisis Committee" and brother of Rade Mutic, was the editor of the Kozarski Vjesnik in 1992, when the campaign of "ethnic cleansing" began. "The local paper in Prijedor, the Kozara Herald, became no less Serb than the rest of the media. Every Friday the newsstands sold fresh lies. The Herald Editor and now the boss of the paper, Mile Mutic, along with Zivko Ecim and Rade Mutic, his brothers in religious and ideological arms, produced lies in three shifts; even worse, these local scribblers hijacked the once-respected term `journalism'."99

Hukanovic says of Mile Mutic:

Mile Mutic...broadcast threats to the non-Serb population, calling on them to surrender their weapons, even if they had been acquired legally. No one but Serbs could bear arms: this became his battle cry....Mutic must be considered one of the founding fathers of the deformation of the history of this city and of its people, the people of the Kozara mountains. The only new history that he could envision for his people was the result of the slaughter of other peoples, their total annihilation.....100

The current editor-in-chief of Kozarski Vjesnik, Slobodan Kuruzovic, was an original member of the "Crisis Committee" (possibly the chair) and chief commander of Trnopolje concentration camp, according to the U.N. Commission of Experts.

A survivor of Omarska noted that Kuruzovic, despite his involvement in managing the camp, was not observed by him to mistreat the prisoners. "When [he] reached Trnopolje on August 13, he discovered that the camp director was Slobodan Kuruzovic, his former elementary school principal from Prijedor. During daylight hours when [Kuruzovic] was there, he took an interest in the prisoners and treated many with kindness, [he] said. The terrorbegan at night, after he left."101 As commander of Trnopolje, however, Kuruzovic was responsible for abuses committed at the camp, regardless of whether he was physically present at the time of their commission.

According to another survivor of Omarska and Trnopolje, however, "Interrogations were carried out every night. They put a gun barrel into my mouth and thus I lost seven teeth. Many did not return after the interrogation. Interrogators were educated Serbs. I know three of them. Two of them were Mladen Mitrovic...and Slobodan Kuruzovic, a local teacher."102

A fifteen-year-old survivor of a massacre in the village of Biscani, who was in Trnopolje, reported: "Upon our arrival in Trnopolje on August 1, 1992, we were searched. The area was surrounded by barbed wire. We spent the first night in the school and the following morning we were taken to be interrogated by Major Slobodan Kuruzovic."103

According to the Final Report of the U.N. Commission of Experts, Maj. Arsic, the highest-ranking member of the "Serbian Army," was said by some to have planned the attack [on Kozarac]; others named, Maj. Kuruzovic.104 According to an official U.S. State Department report on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, an ex-detainee of Trnopolje camp interviewed on October 5, 1992 by a U.S. foreign service officer identified the commander of Trnopolje camp as Maj. Slobodan Kuruzovic.105

Television Prijedor

Rade Mutic, a local journalist, runs the Prijedor television station. According to an IFOR source, Mutic is "very radical," and previously "wrote really hateful articles about Muslims."

Interestingly, Rade Mutic, in an interview with The New York Times in January 1996, when asked about the deportations, mass killings and destruction of Bosniak and Bosnian Croat villages in the area, said, "It was like a magic circle. You either got out of here or were drawn into it. Once inside it was impossible to remain detached. You were caught up in the whole mess."106