11 NGOs from Serbia Demand Public Apology from Ivanović and Screening of "Grbavica"

We demand a public apology from Prva Srpska Televizija and host Ivan Ivanović to the victims of rape during the war in BiH, and that they screen the film "Grbavica" as a sign of apology to them, eleven NGOs from Serbia demanded today in a press release, reports the BiH news agency Patria.  

The statement from these organizations states that Ivanović, in a show broadcast on Friday, mocked the victims of rape committed during and in connection with the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thereby grossly offending thousands of victims of this crime in BiH. 

Ivanović, as stated, said in the part of the show designated for jokes that "since 1995, the number of Bosnian women giving birth before the age of 15 has increased. And then they say that the 'blue helmets' did nothing there.". 

"Ivanović's 'joke' morbidly and offensively reinterprets one of the most horrific episodes of the war in BiH, portraying mass rapes of girls and women as a humorous episode of the engagement of international peacekeeping forces in BiH, while grossly neglecting a series of judicially established facts about the victims and the scale of wartime rapes of women in BiH," the statement emphasizes. 

It is also pointed out that the host's allusion to allegations of rape of Bosniak women in "one of the Serbian camps during the war," by members of UN peacekeeping forces who have not yet been prosecuted, represents a particular insult to the victims of rape to whom justice has been denied to this day, reports NAP. 

The statement was signed by: Autonomous Women's Center, Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Center for Cultural Decontamination, Civil Rights Defenders, FLIPSUR - Feminist List Against Rape in War in the Countries of Former Yugoslavia, Humanitarian Law Fund, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Women Against Violence Network, Regional Center for Minorities, and Women in Black.