The Long Arm Of The Hague, Cont.

Ed Vulliamy, who filed the first eyewitness dispatches about Serb-run prison camps in Bosnia, writes in The Observer that journalists should testify at war crimes trials. “I believe there are times in history–as any good Swiss banker will tell you–[when] neutrality is not neutral but complicit in the crime,” Vulliamy argues. “We are entering a new world that seeks not only to report the legacy of tyrants and mass murderers, but to call them to account. Why should journalists of all people–whose information will be of such value–perch loftily above the due process of law?” I tend to side with Vulliamy, but shades of grey are involved, so no journalist should be compelled to testify, or feel compelled to do so.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post. View all posts by Peter Maass