The recent arrest of the people from the Sarajevo neighborhood of Gorica, who were represented as arms dealers in TV report of the Italian journalist Luigi Pelazza, turned in a completely new and unexpected story.
Because, shortly after the arrest that was carried out by SIPA and Border Police, it was established that people who have appeared in the TV are not “ISIL’s suppliers of weapons”, as he presented them, but “small members of Sarajevo underground and registered drug addicts” and that the weapon that was shown in the video is actually “prop” for this TV report.
The Italian public, explained professor Senadin Musabegovic from Sarajevo, is believing in the stereotypes in which BiH, like all the other country with majorly Muslim population, is represented as negative connotations space. Musabegovic sees Pelazza’s story as a product of that presentation of Islam in the Italian media.
The biggest problem with people like Pelazza is that they create wrong and false image, and BiH is one of the countries that are victims of media manipulation.
“Unfortunately, the media distort the image and falsely represent what is happening around us. Reputation of BiH has been compromised. I think that the arms trade is national problem and there’s a lot going on there. There are political tensions in BiH and there are groups that are engaged in trade of weapons. But I do not think that it significantly undermined the prestige of BiH on the international level,” concluded Musabegovic.
Political analyst from Sarajevo, Ivana Maric, says that the action that was conducted by SIPA, following clues and indications that were shown in the report by Luigi Pelazza, was justified and fully in place. Their reaction, she said, shows that the police agencies in BiH are able to act quickly and effectively, and the way they treated people who were stated to be arms traders shows their seriousness and professionalism.
“You see, my personal opinion is that, after 25 years of work in BiH and in the region, there’s a simplistic vision of BiH and the rest of the Balkans, from the perspective of the West, where many things are happening at that same West and they are considered as normal business activities and normal business relations. It is the same thing with trade, including trade of weapons, which is seen as something bad in the Balkans. Partly it is the responsibility of us, first of all I think the authorities in BiH, but also the citizens who, it seems, are getting more and more divided among themselves. So, the drug trafficking and weapons, or the threat of possible terrorism, is nothing much more higher, or smaller, than in the rest of Europe. However, a real problem in BiH is dysfunctional and divided government and political influence on the government, which does not allow the institutions to do their job properly. Because of this we have situations which could be seen as bigger than they actually are,” concluded journalist and political analyst, Srecko Latal.
The case of the Italian journalist Luigi Pelazza is not the first of its kind according the interlocutors of Al Jazeera, who explained that in the past 25 years, many similar teams from Western Europe came to BiH seeking for exclusive and controversial stories, according to author, Jasmin Agic.
(Source: Jasmin Agic/Aljazeera Balkans)
