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A talk show host
on the Prva srpska televizija (First
Serbian TV Station), Ivan Ivanović,
mocked victims of rapes committed
during and in relation to the war in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in his
show broadcast on November 30th,
2014, thus seriously offending
thousands of rape victims in BiH.
Human rights organizations demand
that Prva srpska televizija and Ivan
Ivanović make a public apology to
victims of rapes committed during
the war in BiH, and that they show
the movie Grbavica, which discusses
the fate of women who were raped in
BiH, at the usual time dedicated to
this talk show, in order to indicate
respect for these victims.
The host of the “Evening with Ivan
Ivanović” talk show made the
following statement in the part of
the show dedicated to jokes (8:25
min): “The number of Bosnian women
who have given birth to children
before the age of 15 has increased
since 1995. And then people say that
‘the blue helmets’ did not do a
thing over there.”
Ivanović’s “joke” reinterprets one
of the most horrific episodes of the
war in BiH in a morbid and offensive
manner, showing the mass rapes of
young girls and women as a funny
episode in the deployment of
international peacekeeping troops in
BiH, at the same time seriously
neglecting a number of judicial
facts about the victims and the
extent of wartime rapes of women in
BiH. Human rights
organizations point to the fact that
Ivanović’s possible reference to
allegations about the rape of
Bosniak women in one of the Serb
concentration camps during the war
by members of the UN peacekeeping
troops, who have not yet been
prosecuted, represents a particular
insult for the rape victims, who
have not seen justice to date.
Autonomous Women’s Center
Center for Modern Skills
Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies
Center for Cultural Decontamination
Civic Initiatives
Civil Rights Defenders
FLIPSUR – Feminist List Against
Wartime Rape in Countries of Former
Yugoslavia
Humanitarian Law Center
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
in Serbia I.A.N.
International Aid Network
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -
YUCOM Regional
Minority Center
Victimology Society of Serbia
Women Against Violence
Women in Black
Youth Initiative for Human Rights |
