 | |
| Type | Daily |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | NIGD "DNN" |
| Founder(s) | Željko Kopanja |
| Editor-in-chief | Sandra Gojković-Arbutina |
| Founded | 27 December 1995 |
| Political alignment | Liberal |
| Language | Bosnian, Serbian |
| Headquarters | Banja Luka |
| City | Banja Luka |
| Country | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Website | nezavisne |
Nezavisne novine (English: "Independent Newspaper") is a Bosnian daily newspaper based in Banja Luka. [1]
In 1995, shortly after the Dayton Agreement which ended the Bosnian War, Željko Kopanja co-founded Nezavisne Novine, a weekly independent newspaper, in order to "foster improved relationships among Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia". [2] The magazine was funded in part by the United States Agency for International Development, per a part of the Dayton Agreement which had called for funding for non-nationalist media. [3] Beginning with a circulation of 4,000, the newspaper later became a daily, and its circulation climbed to 18,000 in the next five years. [4]
In August 1999, Nezavisne Novine broke new ground by reporting on the murder of 200 Muslim civilians by Serbian police officers in 1992. [5] With the report, the paper became the first Bosnian Serb paper to report on war crimes by Bosnian Serbs during the Yugoslav Wars. [2] At the same time, Kopanja stated that he "stands by the thesis that no nation is genocidal or criminal, but individuals from certain nations are. I think that the Serbian people do not deserve to carry this burden ... I do not allow anyone to commit war crimes in my name or in the name of my people, nor does anyone have the right to do that." [2]
Following the paper's reporting on atrocities committed by Bosnian Serbs, Kopanja was denounced by some groups as a traitor, and began to receive death threats. [2] On October 22, 1999, Kopanja was nearly killed by a car bomb that exploded as he turned the ignition key. [5] [6] A nearby hospital amputated both of his legs. [7] International supporters funded follow-up medical care for him in Austria, as well as high-quality prosthetic legs. [2]
The bombing provoked outrage in both Muslim and Serbian media. [3] Srpski Glas joined Nezavisne novine in printing a mostly blank front page three days after the bombing, carrying only the words "We Want to Know" to call for further investigation into the attack. Bosnian television interrupted programming to display the same message. [3]
The perpetrators were not found, though Kopanja later stated his belief that Serbian security forces were responsible for the attack in retaliation for his reporting on war crimes. [8] An investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation supported his contention. [9]
Kopanja continued to edit and write for Nezavisne novine despite the attack. [2]
Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, was a Serbian mobster, politician, sports administrator, paramilitary commander and head of the Serb paramilitary force called the Serb Volunteer Guard during the Yugoslav Wars.
Alija Izetbegović was a Bosnian politician, lawyer, Islamic philosopher and author, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Shortly after his term began, the country's Serb community revolted and created the separatist Republika Srpska, leading to the Bosnian War. Izetbegović led the Bosniak forces initially alongside Croat forces, until a separate war erupted between them. Relations between the two sides were resolved in the Washington Agreement, which he signed with Croatian president Franjo Tuđman. The war in Bosnia continued, with widespread ethnic cleansing and other war crimes committed by all sides, eventually culminating in the massacre of male Bosniaks in Srebrenica by Serb forces, which would later be determined to be genocide. He was also a signatory for the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in a stalemate following NATO bombings, and recognized Republika Srpska as an autonomous entity within Bosnia. Izetbegovic continued to serve in this role until 1996, when he became a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, serving until 2000.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics which previously comprised Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia. Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton accords were signed. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of Herzeg-Bosnia and Republika Srpska, proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.
Milorad Dodik is a Bosnian Serb politician serving as the 8th president of Republika Srpska since November 2022. Previously, he served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the collective federal head of state, from 2018 to 2022.
Željko Kopanja was a Bosnian newspaper editor and director of the newspaper Nezavisne Novine. The Christian Science Monitor described him as an equal critic of all parties without regard to ethnicity and "probably the most feared journalist in Bosnia and Herzegovina." On August 8, 2016 Željko Kopanja died from a cardiac arrest.
The Korićani Cliffs massacre was the mass murder of more than 200 Bosniak and Croat men on 21 August 1992, during the Bosnian War, at the Korićani Cliffs on Mount Vlašić in central Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Sijekovac killings, also called the Sijekovac massacre, refers to the killing of Serb civilians, in Sijekovac near Bosanski Brod, Bosnia and Herzegovina on 26 March 1992. The assailants were members of Croat and Bosniak army units. The exact number of casualties is unknown. The initial reported number was eleven, while the Republika Srpska authorities listed 47, however, exhumations in Sijekovac carried out for two weeks in 2004 unearthed 58 bodies of victims, of whom 18 were children.
Bosnian mujahideen, also called El Mudžahid, were foreign Muslim volunteers who fought on the Bosniak side during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. They first arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping their Bosnian Muslim co-religionists in fights against Serb and Croat forces. Initially they mainly came from Arab countries, later from other Muslim-majority countries. Estimates of their numbers vary from 500 to 6,000.
During the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001), propaganda was widely used in the media of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of Croatia and of Bosnia.
The Čemerno massacre refers to the massacre of ethnic Serbs of the village of Čemerno, Ilijaš, in the Ilijaš Municipality, near Sarajevo, on 10 June 1992, during the Bosnian War.
Željko Lelek, a Bosnian Serb war criminal who was the first individual indicted for the mass rape crimes that were a feature of the expulsion of the Bosniak population of the town of Višegrad, as part of the strategic campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out in the Drina Valley in the early days of the Bosnian War.
The Bijeljina massacre involved the killing of civilians by Serb paramilitary groups in Bijeljina on 1–2 April 1992 in the run-up to the Bosnian War. The majority of those killed were Bosniaks. Members of other ethnicities were also killed, such as Serbs deemed disloyal by the local authorities. The killing was committed by a local paramilitary group known as Mirko's Chetniks and by the Serb Volunteer Guard, a Serbia-based paramilitary group led by Željko Ražnatović. The SDG were under the command of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which was controlled by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević.
Željko, sometimes written Zeljko, is a South Slavic masculine given name.
Branimir Savović is the former president of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) for the municipality of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the outbreak of the Bosnian War 1992-1995. He was appointed to the Presidency of the Municipality by the Bosnian Serb authorities and became President of the "Crisis Staff Committee" established to assume responsibility for the civilian administration of the town. It was during his presidency of the Crisis Staff that the Višegrad massacres took place and the campaign of terror conducted by Milan Lukić and his White Eagles gang proceeded unchecked until Višegrad was purged of its entire Bosniak population. Višegrad has been described as second only to Srebrenica as a byword for ethnic cleansing and for humanity at its cruellest.
Antun Miletić is a Yugoslav and Serbian historian.
Husein Bilal Bosnić is a Bosnian Salafi. He is known for recruiting jihadists from Europe.
On 27 April 2015, a local gunman attacked a police station in Zvornik in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He killed one police officer and wounded two others before he was shot dead by other police officers. This was the first attack of its kind in Republika Srpska; attacks have occurred in the other entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the 1997 Mostar car bombing.
Events in the year 2016 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Silos was a concentration camp operated by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) during the Bosnian War. Centered around a windowless grain silo, it was used to detain Bosnian Serb, and to a lesser extent Bosnian Croat, civilians between 1992 and 1996. The camp was located in the village of Tarčin, near the town of Hadžići, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) west of Sarajevo. Inmates were subjected to beatings, given little food and kept in unsanitary conditions. Five-hundred Bosnian Serb and ninety Bosnian Croat civilians were detained at the camp; twenty-four prisoners lost their lives.