"Neutrality" and the Absence of Reckoning: A Journalist's Account

Abstract

On the putrid afternoon of 5 August 1992, I stumbled into Omarska, as a reporter for the Guardian of London, along with a crew from the Independent Television Network (ITN). It was said we had discovered Omarska, but this was an inaccurate flattery. Diplomats, politicians, aid workers and intelligence officers had known about the place for months and kept it secret. All we did was announce and denounce it to the world. During his opening remarks at a recent conference at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Tom Buerghental, chairman of the museum's Committee on Conscience asked: How do we explain to our children and grandchildren that in the world in which we live, it is easier to mount a $40 billion rapid response to save the economy of this or that far-away country because its collapse might affect our stock holdings, while we diddle and daddle when it comes to mounting a rapid military response to save people from destruction by a murderous regime?(1) How indeed? How will I explain to my daughter when she is seven years old that a little girl her age died in my arms because, through the sight telescope of the beast who murdered her, she was just a filthy Muslim, unfit to live her brief life? I think the answer to this challenge rests in the entanglement of two notions that are embedded in the Holocaust's legacy The first is the notion of reckoning--staring history in the face, assigning blame and moral or criminal responsibility The second is neutrality, the idea that the diplomatic world, like the press, must be detached to do its job properly In the context of the carnage in Bosnia and the West's toleration of it, these concepts are vitally important. I believe that history without reconciliation is dangerous history Crimes against humanity not reckoned with can only lead to more of the same. I also believe that there are moments in history when neutrality is not neutral, but complicit in the crime. I will argue here that in the examples of Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and elsewhere, the neutrality adopted by diplomats and the media is both dangerous and morally reprehensible. By remaining neutral, we reward the bullies of history and discard the peace and justice promised us by the generation that defeated the Third Reich. We create a mere intermission before the next round of atrocities. There are times when we as reporters have to cross the line, recognize right as right, wrong as wrong and stand up to be counted. A REPORTER'S ACCOUNT In the winter of 1996 I was asked if I would testify in the case against Dusko Tadic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. The ICTY was formed by the United Nations to bring individuals charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice. I was initially wary that the tribunal was no more than a release valve to compensate for the West's crime of appeasement. Some colleagues who had also worked in Bosnia and whom I greatly admire refused to testify and advised that it was an unwise and perilous course of action. Our job was to report, they advised, and if possible, to prompt others to do something that would end the suffering. But justice--the acquittal of the innocent and imprisonment of the guilty--was the business of others. The tribunal was an unknown and potentially dangerous labyrinth. If I testified I would certainly lose any claim to neutrality, if I ever wanted to stake one. The rules are not unlike those of the Mafia; you can say whatever you like about them and they don't care, but you cross a line once you go into the courtroom. On the other hand, there was an argument with legal and moral components. For example, if I see someone being mugged, I should expect the police to call me as a witness at the mugger's trial. If the victim is a defenseless child or old lady, one is instinctively more willing to testify Multiply that reasoning by a factor of a thousand, and you have good reason to testify against genocide in Bosnia. …

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