Dayton Peace Accords at 30: Ethnic tensions are 'rising', Bosnia remains a 'very fractured country'

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00:00there have been articles in the press as far back as 1995 but it was a 2002 documentary out of

00:17slovenia titled sarajevo safari that first drew the attention of the wider public now prosecutors

00:25in milan have opened a probe into italians who would gather in trieste and travel to sarajevo

00:33during the bosnian war of the 1990s paying members of the bosnian serb army to shoot at civilians

00:40one of those who's most avidly uh followed this story is italian journalist edzio gavadzeni

00:48the content which he describes is quite graphic the complaint came about because of my investigation

00:58of these facts of western foreigners so italians but also french british swiss americans who during

01:07the siege of sarajevo the civil war in bosnia and herzegovina paid to be able to go to the hills

01:13around sarajevo and shoot the civilian population with impunity this was to satisfy their own

01:21perversion most of the time these are testimonies of families losing for example a little girl while

01:33in a stroller a little girl only a few months old and the sniper shoots the little girl and not the

01:40parents who are there because the sniper's aim is to inflict maximum pain not killing but killing

01:47with maximum pain well joining us now from new york her books include the quick and the dead

01:55under siege in sarajevo janine di giovanni who covered the war in bosnia thank you for being with

02:02us here on france 24. a pleasure to be here when did you first hear about this this morbid activity

02:12taken between the i believe the uh years were 1991 to 1996. well the siege of sarajevo i lived through

02:21most of it as a reporter uh was 1992 to 1995. it was a terrible medieval siege in the middle of europe

02:31at the end of the 20th century and it was horrific there was no water there was no electricity it was

02:38freezing cold and even more terrifying was that sarajevo is in a basin um you might remember that

02:45the 1984 winter olympics were held in sarajevo so the hills around sarajevo were ringed with serb um tanks

02:54who shot down mortars but more terrifying snipers so what would happen we as journalists were also

03:02sniped at along with the civilians so when we left the hotel where everyone lived which was called the

03:08holiday inn we had to run in a zigzag pattern so that snipers who were constantly watching you

03:15if they took aim they might not hit you to cross the street we had to all gather in a group and

03:22everyone would wait if you were in the line of the sniper and run very quickly across the street this

03:29was women children the elderly the sick it was the snipers were a kind of um a terror terrible fear

03:39that everyone had more even than the the shelling the shelling was horrific and many civilians were

03:46killed there was a total of 10 000 people killed during the siege which was by the way the longest

03:52running siege in modern history now this story is so perverse so disturbing but yet it most likely

04:03is true thanks to the work of this tireless italian journalist and also the prosecutors who are now

04:10looking into it and it's not the first time that those of us who followed the bosnian war very carefully

04:18and the aftermath um the prosecution at the icty which was the court at the hague um there were other

04:25horrific stories which were true um for instance serb soldiers filming themselves murdering journalists

04:34uh sorry murdering civilians during the genocide at srebrenica in which 8 000 muslim men and boys were

04:43killed so this story while it is one of the most terrific things i've ever heard does not surprise

04:51me the war was bitter and it was brutal the war was bitter and brutal um you have sometimes in conflict

05:00zones thrill seekers we remember that japanese terrorist who was abducted in syria and we didn't

05:07many people didn't know there was such a thing as war tourism there's been a book uh put out by a

05:13called the world's most dangerous places which uh sort of almost reads like a travel guide uh but this

05:20is a different scale this is something different yes this is something like a hemingway short story gone

05:28mad um the most dangerous game of actually the human safari of going after civilians and i have to tell you

05:36that you know people were killed by snipers there was a story the most terrible one was romeo and juliet

05:43um when basically a mixed couple mixed serb and bosnian got married and they were crossing one of the

05:50bridges which was especially dangerous we used to avoid certain places in sarajevo you would see a sign

05:57that said pazzi sniper which meant sniper can see you from here so we would there were certain bridges we

06:04didn't cross there were certain roads that we tried to stay off of snipers alley was the main thoroughfare

06:12going through the city of sarajevo if you had a car um you basically had to go so quickly that it was

06:19dangerous there were a lot of car crashes but romeo and juliet were were killed um by a sniper and it was

06:27so dangerous to actually retrieve their bodies that their bodies lay there for days and they had just

06:35been coming from the ceremony where they had gotten married um against both their parents wishes one was

06:41serb one was muslim and it was just one of the saddest stories they are now buried in the main cemetery in

06:50sarajevo called lion cemetery which if you go through now you will see the headstones most of

06:57the people were very young the soldiers were about 18 19 years old so it was an incredibly tragic war

07:05and remember francois it was so close to paris like if planes could land which they couldn't because

07:12the airspace was closed it would be about three hours from paris um and within this city people were

07:19starving people had maybe one cup of water a day because the water supplies were closed off people

07:26were freezing during one terrible day in december i think 1992 um myself and a journalist from reuters

07:36discovered an old people's home that was on a front line um and basically everyone had frozen to death

07:44um because it was so bitterly cold so um this story is one more tragedy in the long tragic history of the war in bosnia

07:52yeah because you mentioned that three hour flight uh what i remember from the time is that a lot of people

07:58it was so uncomfortable to contemplate that there was this brutal war happening that most people just wanted to

08:04change the subject when you were sitting in a cafe in paris but to actually want to go and shoot people for sport

08:12for sport it it begs belief unthinkable it's unthinkable but unfortunately you do get mercenaries in

08:22many wars you know in gaza right now there there are idf soldiers who aren't really idf soldiers they're

08:28mercenaries who've come from america and other countries probably france as well in ukraine you have

08:34many mercenaries i mean you found that you know we found it in bosnia there were fighters that had come to

08:40fight often on the bosnian side but the serb side as well and i remember taking a trip with a british

08:47soldier at the very beginning of the siege of sarajevo and going up to meet the snipers and it was

08:53terrifying because we weren't supposed to be on that side we were you know embed embedded but we were in

09:00sarajevo living with the civilians so we drove up the hill we got to this sniper nest and they were

09:06drunk of course um toothless drunk and they basically said to us take a look at this we're

09:13going to show you how we do it there's a kid there we can kill them really easily but it's better if we

09:18shoot them in the knees because we then cripple them and both of us were just horrified and it was

09:26so disturbing and as we drove away the british soldier was very quiet and he said to me you know i could

09:33have killed him right then no one would have known and i would have been doing humanity a great favor

09:39it was that kind of a war where the civilians suffered so brutally and there was so little

09:47international attention to it and of course what the siege of sarajevo led to was the genocide at

09:55which could have been prevented so i think when we look back on this war which you know it was

10:0130 years ago this month the date and peace accords were signed which ended the war

10:07and it ended the killing but it left a very fractured country and a country in economic

10:14stagnation and also a country where the ethnic tensions are rising again um putin is meddling in

10:22the republic of serbska which is the serb dominated area um so i remember my friends my close friends in

10:29bosnia saying to me we'll see you in 30 years janine because this war will start again and that's one

10:36of the things that happens when you you don't have justice delivered and for crimes like this um you

10:44know it's imperative the milan prosecutors are now investigating um it's it's an extremely important

10:51investigation as shocking and as disgusting as it is one that's uh just getting underway janine di

10:57giovanni so many thanks for joining us from new york city thank you

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