Balkans: Journalist Mirko Klarin, “spiritual father” of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has passed away

• Nataša Anđelković
• BBC journalist

Journalist and lawyer Mirko Klarin, founder of the Sense news agency, which reported on all court processes, evidence, and events outside the courtroom from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, died at the age of 80.

The establishment of that agency, which accurately, objectively and with a wider context conveyed information from The Hague courtrooms to everyone who wanted to, is Klarin’s greatest legacy, according to Eugen Jakovčić, who worked with him.

“Mirkova’s Sense surpassed all of them, and I am primarily referring to the media and government institutions of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, which tried to present their narrative by reporting from The Hague.

“He reported in the right factual context, giving the circumstances and placing the events in their proper context,” Jakovčić told the BBC in Serbian.

This former spokesperson of the organization Documentsand today the Serbian National Council in Croatia points out that the court in The Hague “never had an awareness of how important it is for the facts that are spoken there to reach the region” and for the public in the Balkans to be informed.

“I would say that Mirko took on that role and performed it in the best possible way,” says Jakovčić.

The ICTY and especially one of the most important processes – the trial of Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic contributed to us facing what was done in our name, Klarin told the BBC in 2021.

“Practically, if there was no Tribunal, we wouldn’t even know today what happened to us and what happened to us.”

“No one would ever investigate any crimes, we would arrest other people’s people, not ours, and we would only talk about what others did to us and what we went through as victims,” ​​Clarin told the BBC.

When he said “we”, he meant all the participants in the conflict in the region – he explained in a telephone conversation.

The legacy of Mirko Klarin is very significant, not only for current, but also for future generations, says Nataša Kandić, founder of the Fund for Humanitarian Law.

“All those who care about the truth about what happened in the past cannot regret it.”

“He did everything that states were supposed to do, to form teams that would report professionally, no that was not there, whoever was sent to monitor the trials could not come close to what Mirko Klarin did and wrote,” says Kandic.

Kandić describes him as an “unrivaled” journalist and lawyer who managed to report equally objectively and with great legal talent on all trials before the ICTY, regardless of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

“He cannot be accused of any bias, and we could even notice bias in some of the judges.”

“Klarin was a bright, brilliant personality who helped us all better understand the trials before the Hague Tribunal,” Kandic says.

Mirko Klarin was born in 1943 in Trogir, Croatia.

Although his journalistic career lasted almost six decades, he was a lawyer by profession with a degree from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade.

Jakovčić remembers him as a discreet and devoted editor who carefully read and reviewed every journalist’s report from the trial.

“He knew how to joke that, unlike all these war criminals who came to The Hague and some of them had already left, having served their sentences, he, working in the small room where Sensa had premises, was as if he had been sentenced longer than all of them,” recounts Jakovčić .

Before working in the small room at the headquarters of the Hague Tribunal where Sense had premises, Klarin already had extensive journalistic experience.

Since 1966, he has worked as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, foreign policy and editor-in-chief of leading daily and weekly newspapers in the former Yugoslavia.

During the eighties, he dealt with conflicts and crises in the Middle East and terrorism in Europe.

He founded the specialized media service Sense.

Later, as editor-in-chief, he regularly followed not only the work of the ICTY, but also the International Court of Justice in The Hague in all proceedings related to the Balkans.

According to Jakovčić, Mirko Klarin is a forerunner of the founding and “spiritual father” of the Hague Tribunal.

“In the spring of 1991, he writes an article in the Battle ‘Nuremberg Now’ in which he calls on the international community to establish a preventive international body that will serve as a warning to all those who are preparing to commit war crimes and who already have this as a program in their war-mongering plans, the relocation of the population, all that we watched later.

“Knowing on the basis of Yugoslav history and experience, and knowing the political actors of the time in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, he seemed to have sensed and knew that a heavy bloody confrontation was coming in which many innocent people, civilians, would die,” Jakovčić points out.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was established by a decision of the Security Council in May 1993.

For the next three decades, he worked to find truth and justice based on facts and international law, and to punish the perpetrators.

He supported all associations of victims’ families and the civil sector.

Meanwhile, his agency Sense has grown into the Center for Transitional Justice, based in Pula, where Klarin lived until his death.

When the trials at the ICTY were over, this center made documentary films and internet presentations of complicated events in an understandable way from the huge archive of documents, reports and facts.

“Just as there was very little reporting during the trials themselves, so afterwards we were faced with the denial of facts and criminals who served some sentences, so they returned to the region as heroes of their own countries.”

“While the trials were going on, he had to fight to report on those facts, to get them to the public correctly, and after that he dealt with how to present those facts in order to stop the falsification of facts,” says Jakovčić.

Mirko Klarin will be remembered as a journalist with an inviolable sense of justice, announced the Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses and the Movement of Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves.

“Mirko will remain in our memories as a fighter for truth and justice,” it was said along with statements of condolence to the family, reports Oslobođenje.