Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words, but the photo broadcast in Prijedor, a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the commemoration for the victims of the Croatian military action Storm during the war in the former Yugoslavia started a blizzard in which much more was said.
While the speakers on the stage were addressing the crowd, a photograph was shown behind their backs, which was supposed to illustrate the victims of the action of the Croatian forces in 1995 in the part of the country controlled by the rebel Serbs.
However, instead of refugee Serbs, the photo shows Bosniak women who were forcibly evicted with their children from Žepa, a town in eastern Bosnia under the protection of United Nations troops, in the same year, just a few weeks earlier, before the onslaught of the Bosnian Serb army.
There are three women and four children in the picture, and the youngest among them is three-month-old Nermina Mujkić Gušo, who is being held by her mother Sabina, then 37 years old from Žepa.
As soon as she saw the photo of her mother in the media, Nermina pointed out the mistake via her Facebook account, which she says in an interview with the BBC that "one hundred percent" was not accidental.
"Maybe I would believe that there was a mistake if this was the first time, but the same photo was published in 2020 with the caption that my Serbian mother was expelled during the Storm," says 28-year-old Gušo Mujkić today.
"The real photo was taken on July 25, 1995, when my family was moving from Žepa to Sarajevo," adds Nermina.
She believes that this move "affected everyone" - both her family and other victims of crimes in Žepa and Srebrenica, as well as those who went through forced emigration or were killed during the Storm.
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Operation Storm of the Croatian army and police, from August 4 to 8, 1995, ended the four-year armed conflict, and according to the findings of the International Court of Justice, reports of UN bodies and local non-governmental organizations, about 2.000 Serbs were killed in that action, and more than 200.000 of them left the area around Knin.
Responsibility for displaying the wrong photo in Prijedor took over the agency Pozitiv from Belgrade, engaged in the preparation of this event, apologizing to the families depicted in it.
From the Ministry of Labor and Veterans and Disability Affairs of the Republic of Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they said that the mistake was "inadvertent and unintentional" and accused "certain Sarajevo media" of trying to present it differently.
Whose victims are 'more important'
Damir Knežević, who today lives in the Belgrade neighborhood of Batajnica, is one of the refugees during Operation Storm.
Almost every year, he visits events and commemorations for the victims of those August days in 1995, so that "what happened will not be forgotten", but this time he did not have time to go to Prijedor, he told the BBC in Serbian.
"It was important to me that it be celebrated and that the gathering be attended, so I didn't think much about photography at the time, I covered everything about it through the media," says Knežević.
He believes that "it is ugly to adorn yourself with other people's victims, especially on that day".
He says that he does not understand why and how the failure occurred, although he tried to find an answer.
"If it is for the sake of some politics, I condemn it, because we have enough of our victims to appropriate others.
"If it was an unintentional omission, the person who made it should immediately go public and explain how it happened, so that it wouldn't be manipulated," urges Damir.
Eric Gordy, a professor at University College London, estimates that this is "just one of many examples of bad gestures by politicians and the media in the region".
"I do not expect major consequences in the political relations between Banja Luka and Sarajevo or Belgrade and Sarajevo, but the misrepresentation of the victims indicates a very visible phenomenon - politicians from each group have a desire to portray their people and victims as if they were the only or the most important," says the British expert. for the BBC in Serbian.
How did the error occur?
Pozitiv agency apologized to the Mujkić and Gušo families, whose members are in the photo, as well as to all participants of the commemorative gathering.
"The organizer of the event had nothing to do with this careless mistake, nor could he have foreseen this situation.
"That omission was not made with the intention of hurting, belittling or abusing anyone, and we hope that everyone will accept our sincere apology," they stated in the statement, which is reported by the banjaluka.net portal.
"We express our sincere hope that our mistake, for which those responsible will bear the consequences, will not be misused in order to continue minimizing the pain, sorrow and misfortune that was inflicted on the Serbs 28 years ago."
From the abuse of Uroš Predić to popular culture
Actions like this aren't new, but "an increasingly common theme," and the more widespread use of artificial intelligence has fueled the use of fake photos and videos, says Eric Gordy.
"Especially in the age of the Internet, people use photos from one place or one time and present them as if they were taken in another.
"There are many examples, but the one that immediately comes to my mind is the situation when Večernje novosti used the picture of Uroš Predić in 1994, presenting it as if it were an orphan of the war in Bosnia," says the expert.
In November of that year, Beogradski list published a picture of the Serbian painter An orphan on his mother's grave, stating that "the boy despairs over the grave of his father, mother and other relatives who were killed by Muslims in the offensive, and continues to shake everyone who knows what children's suffering is".
"In the meantime, the boy from the picture was adopted by a family from Zvornik, and now he is a student in the first year of a military high school," Večernje novosti wrote in the text.
Painful reminder: Fake photo of Serbian boy allegedly killed by Muslims in Srebrenica. Evening news 28.11.1994. pic.twitter.com/wfTITrmpye
— Vatroslav Jarni (@mudroljub) November 26, 2021
Recordings and photographs of alleged events and victims they have become an indispensable part of the war in Ukraine.
On some of them Russian President Vladimir Putin could be seen calling for a ceasefire, as well as Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, announcing the alleged surrender of the Ukrainian army.
In the first days of the war, photos of Belgrade during the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia in 1999 circulated on the Internet, which users then claimed was Kiev, wrote the Reuters agency.
Fake videos circulated on social networks even in 2021, showing alleged scenes of conflict between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip, which were later found not to be credible.
Gordi notes that these types of manipulation have become part of popular culture, and he cites it as an example American film Wag the dog of 1997..
"In the film, due to the political scandal in Washington, the media used the video of the girl running in order to come up with a reason for the war against Albania.
"It's a satirical film and everyone understood it that way, but it's a perfect example of this," says Gordy.
Consequences
According to Gordi, the failure to attend the meeting in Prijedor will probably not bring about major changes in the political relations of the constituent nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as among the countries of the Balkans.
But, he adds, such gestures can benefit "those who carry out propaganda".
"It seems likely to me that someone made a mistake, I don't think it's a conspiracy, but that doesn't change the consequences - the feelings of people with a traumatic experience from the war were hurt and we are all called to account," concludes the British expert.
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Gordi points out that "the feeling of being a refugee is the same, regardless of nationality, and that should be the first thing in our mind when spreading such images or accusations".
Nermina Mujkić Gušo says that she "doesn't hate or underestimate anyone", but that she "doesn't take it upon herself" in situations like this.
She did not want to talk about whether she will seek a solution to this situation in court.
"I'm keeping that for myself and my family, if it comes to that, of course I'll inform the media, but I'm not thinking about it right now," she says.
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