In an interview with N1, AP war reporter Aida Čerkez revealed how, after months of verification, the survivor’s testimony reached global headlines on October 5, 1995, and why Bosnia and Herzegovina became the birthplace of global standards for DNA victim identification.
While in Srebrenica, the mortal remains of the victims of genocide are being laid to rest, this day also reminds us of the role of war reporters who, at times of total information blockade, risked their lives to convey the truth to the world. One of the most important truths from that period involves longtime Associated Press reporter Aida Čerkez. In an interview with N1, she revealed so far less familiar details about how the facts about the Srebrenica genocide saw the light of day.
In July 1995, while the international public was still speculating about the fate of thousands of men from Srebrenica, AP sent Čerkez to Tuzla with a task to find the surviving witnesses. Means of communication were limited, and fact-checking was much more difficult than today.
“At a time, there were in total four or five satellite phones, which required five hours of positioning towards the satellite so that it would receive a call. When everything took place in Srebrenica, no one at the start believed that those people were systematically killed. From today’s perspective, it sounds weird, but then it was believed that the matter in question was ethnic cleansing – to exile people and give them five minutes to leave with a plastic bag. No one knew about systematic executions. Everyone believed that those men were imprisoned somewhere in mines in Aranđelovac,” Čerkez recalled.
Eight Hours of an Interview and Doubt in the Material
After a painstaking search on the ground, Čerkez located the first crucial witness, a man who survived execution and who would later become a protected witness of the Hague Tribunal. The scope of terror he described to her was, however, so unrealistic that the journalist herself doubted it.
“I recorded an eight-hour interview with him outside Tuzla. When I returned, I called the agency and said: ‘I have material, but I don’t believe him. I think this man is so badly traumatized that he is telling me the stories from the Second World War. My editors in Vienna and New York were inspired to read the transcript I had faxed carefully. They kept sending me back from Sarajevo to Tuzla six or seven times, which, under shelling, meant a two- or three-day journey in one direction, just so I could answer hundreds of questions, asked not by my editors, but by the lawyers of the Associated Press,” Čerkez explained.
Number 278 and Answer Which “Cracked” the Story
The lawyers insisted on the smallest details, from military car plates on vans to precise descriptions of rooms in which prisoners were held. The key moment, which turned the investigation around and proved the authenticity of the testimony, related to the dimensions of the school gym where the victims were imprisoned before the execution.
“The witness claimed that there were exactly 278 of them in the school gym. The lawyers were suspicious and asked how he knew that if no one counted them. I went to him again, and he explained it mathematically: four people were standing on a single square meter – one sitting, one on his lap, and two standing embraced because there was no room. When you multiply the area of the gym, that’s the number you get. The last question the lawyers, on which they thought the entire story would fall apart, was how he even knew the exact dimensions of the gym in meters. I returned and asked him, and he gave me a crucial answer that cracked the entire story about a massacre. He said: ‘I am a mason.’ The mason is considered an expert in the court. That is how the story, after rigorous legal verifications, officially hit the front pages on October 5, 1995.”
Bosnia Set the Global Standard for DNA Identification
Speaking about the culture of remembrance, Čerkez emphasized that Srebrenica became a historical turning point in international law due to the scientific basis of the facts, which permanently closed the door to manipulation and number-based speculation that still surrounds the Second World War to this day.
In wars from the Stone Age to the present day, there has always been speculation regarding the number of victims. Even today, we in the region cannot agree on the number of victims at Jasenovac because it was not scientifically established. Bosnia and Herzegovina, thanks to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), is the first country in the world where the exact first name, last name, and circumstances of death are known for every single victim. The first ICMP machines for rotating test tubes that I personally observed looked like the rotisseries used to roast chickens at the market, until the international community realized that mass DNA analysis could put an end to such speculation. That global standard, which is used today from Iraq to Ukraine, was born here. There is no longer room for number manipulation to justify future crimes. A period has been put to that,” Čerkez said firmly.
Future Generations and the Role of Art
In the end, the war reporter reflected on a new stage in which the Memorial Center Potočari is profiled as an educational institution and emphasized the crucial role of art and cinematography in passing on lessons to future generations, also mentioning her engagement in a new movie project of the producer Jasmila Žbanić.
Today, ten victims will be laid to rest. One day, there will be no one left, but that does not mean that commemoration and education should stop. If you ask children in schools about the Battle of the Neretva, most don’t have a clue, unless they have seen the film. Let us not allow future generations to forget what happened in Srebrenica, because everything that is forgotten is bound to be repeated. Judicial verdicts and the Memorial Center’s work are important for learning that lesson, but art is also crucial. A book you write may be read by 50,000 people, but a film you make will be seen by five million. In the end, it is film that remains to preserve the truth,” Aida Čerkez concluded.
