Mostar does not forget true friends: Roy Guttman is recognized, he says he does not deserve to be among the other winners

The highly respected and award-winning American journalist Roy Gutmann visited the Center for Peace and Multiethnic Cooperation, where he was awarded the traditional Peace Prize, after which he had the opportunity to talk to journalists in addition to the hosts from Mostar. Earlier, he visited the Stari Most Bridge in the company of his hosts, where a parachute jump ceremony was performed in his honor after flowers were thrown into the river from the bridge arch.

This year Mostar marks the 20th anniversary of the restoration of the Old Bridge and the Peace Center, at the suggestion of the University of Sarajevo, decided to award Gutman the International Legacy Award “The Mostar Peace Connection”. The international award is intended to recognize outstanding contributions to the promotion of peace and cooperation among peoples around the world. For Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens, Gutman’s name will be permanently engraved as an icon and a sign of gratitude and respect, because he showed the world what courage and fighting for the truth meant during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The decision to award Gutman the award was explained by the Peace Center Board of Directors and Bosnian Prominent Person Alija Behram, Journalist and Publicist.

Witnesses of the genocide

– Many of us remember that before the brutal aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were bombed and destroyed in our mountains, relay stations, radio and television transmitters. This was not accidental. This is how they wanted to hide the image of the terrible events and crimes that followed. She wanted to hide the truth at all costs. In Mostar, we lived in such conditions, under a double siege, with no telephone communications, no way to monitor radio and television programs. However, we came up with different ways to provide information to citizens. It is in such an environment that the role of journalists and reporters from all over the world who present the picture of what is happening in our country to the international community becomes invaluable. Roy Guttman worked as an investigative journalist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and provided the world with undeniable evidence of the existence of concentration camps, where members of the Republika Srpska army brutally tortured Bosniaks. After his texts and testimonies, the camps had to be closed, and the perpetrators of war crimes finally faced justice. He collected his journalistic knowledge and experience and wrote the book “Witnesses of Genocide”. Today, Guttman’s book travels around the world, and an edition was published this year in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Behram said.

He cited a sentence from Gutmann’s book that he thought was particularly important.

– It is very important to understand this statement of his: “In this world, if you are not ready to risk your own life to save the life of another, then another life will be lost.” To his name, media colleagues added another: Roy Guttman – an eyewitness to genocide. In his book, he explains the nature of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a journalist’s reportage of the most terrible crime against a European country since the Holocaust. The Serbian authorities and Bosnian Serb leaders called it ethnic cleansing, and Western governments and institutions accepted this euphemism as if it were created by them themselves. The facts show that this was genocide, an attempt to exterminate a people simply for belonging to a certain religion, Behram warns.

Before presenting the award to Gutman, Behram reiterated that Mostar will not forget the friends who supported the city in its most difficult times.

– On this occasion, we use our symbolic message: Mostar will not forget its friends. It has been 20 years since the reconstruction of the Old Bridge and the restoration of the historical core. Throughout this period, our center has brought together friends from all over the world, whose work has greatly benefited Mostar and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We symbolically thank them for standing on the side of truth and justice during the most difficult period in our history and for contributing to the preservation and confirmation of the universally accepted vows and values ​​of civilization, he said.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

In an emotional speech to those present, Roy Gutman said he was honored and that the recognition was a reward for doing the work he loves seriously.

– Because of the previous winners, I didn’t think I deserved to be in his company, but I thought I was just doing my job as a journalist, and journalists have to do the right thing. All the ceremonies from jumping off, placing the wreath in Neretva, to the awarding of the prize showed your sincerity in rewarding your friends. When I visited the people in the cellar, your endurance and spirit were not questioned. “I respected you then and I still respect you today,” Gutman said.

Guttman is a Pulitzer Prize winner and an undoubted friend of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was employed by Reuters, reporting from Bonn, Vienna, Belgrade, London and Washington. He was European bureau chief and chief correspondent on Capitol Hill. In 1982, he joined Newsday and served as European bureau chief from 1989 to 1994. He covered the fall of regimes in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the opening of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the first democratic elections in the former Eastern Bloc, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Peace Center board member Sarko Peso eventually gave him the stone of the old bridge, which was taken out after the demolition of the Neretva River, and Guttman said it would be the second stone in his collection. After the fall of the Berlin Wall.