used without permission, for "fair use" only

PROFILE: Miroslav Filipovic

His sources no longer walk through the town

Reporter, Banja Luka, Srpska, B-H, April 27, 2001

"My sources walk through the town," claimed Miroslav Filipovic, the reporter whose imprisonment under suspicion of spying earned him the aura of a victim of the last phase of the Milosevic era, in May 2000. When this reporter for the International Institute of War and Peace Reporting published his article on Serbian war crimes in Kosovo and subsequently "earned" an indictment by military authorities, the entire news world was on its feet defending its colleague.

And there were none among us who did not at least partially identify with his role and experience a part of his fears. Filipovic, for his part, courageously claimed that his articles, crammed with details regarding individual war crimes, could always be confirmed by witnesses.

And then October 5 occurred and Filipovic was pardoned; after that, scandal broke out. In the free atmosphere of post-October Serbia, amid expectations that the subject which he had only broached would finally be seriously addressed, Filipovic practically denied the majority of his claims.

In his response to an article by Anthony Borden, the editor of IWPR's online magazine, in which he asks where the numerous witnesses of the war crimes about which his Yugoslav reporter wrote are, Filipovic autistically asserted that the military report on army morale which he cited in his articles did not exist.

In the belief that it is enough to explain his behavior with one reader's letter to the daily Danas, instead of answering the questions of the confused public, Filipovic has undermined all the efforts which his entire profession sincerely invested in his defense.

His colleagues did their part when it was necessary. Now it's his turn.


Translated by S. Lazovic (April 25, 2001)
SRPSKA