Journalist and a former spokeswoman for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Florence Hartmann, sentenced by the ICTY to seven days in prison for contempt of court, was given a life achievement award by the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO), at an award-giving ceremony in Zagreb on Saturday at which Parliament Speaker Luka Bebic also received an award for his contribution to the protection and promotion of human rights.
The HHO decided to give the award to Hartmann on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar into the hands of Serb rebels, supported by the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), as Hartmann contributed to the promotion of the truth about what had happened in Vukovar. She helped find the location of the mass grave at the Ovcara farm outside Vukovar, where Serb paramilitaries and JNA troops executed POWs and the wounded they had taken from the Vukovar hospital after they entered the town in mid-November 1991.
At today's ceremony, Hartmann said that she had only done her job and that her contribution to revealing the truth about Vukovar was small. However, small steps also lead to justice, she added.
She called on all countries in the region to continue working on the identification of the missing persons, explaining that the location of graves of victims, still unaccounted-for, could help to establish how they were killed. She went on to say that 60 people, who went missing after being taken to Ovcara, were still unaccounted-for.
The award was given to this French reporter also for her role in spreading the truth about the developments in Yugoslavia during the Communist rule when she was a Le Monde correspondent from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 15 years.
According to the award citation, she thus helped change the international perception of what was going on during the war in the 1990s which was why the elites promoting a Greater Serbia idea and their leader Slobodan Milosevic bore a grudge against her.
The award citation praises her for retaining her impartiality while she served as the spokeswoman for the ICTY Chief Prosecutor.
In 2009 the Hague-based ICTY found Hartmann guilty of contempt and fined her 7,000 euros. Since she did not pay the fine, it has been converted into a prison term of seven days. The arrest warrant was issued on November 16 this year.
The tribunal found her found guilty of contempt of the tribunal because she had disclosed two confidential court decisions from the trial of former Serbian President Milosevic. Hartmann said that the judgement against her relied on nonexistent legal standards that granted confidentiality status to documents indicating Serbia's involvement in genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The international warrant which the ICTY issued for her arrest was a reason for fears that Hartmann's arrival to Zagreb could be marred by her arrest.
Addressing reporters, Hartmann said that she hoped that she would not be apprehended in Croatia.
She went on to say that it had been important for her to come to Zagreb and receive the award which made her happy.
"Today is the Human Rights Day, and I could not accept not to come because of the unlawful arrest warrant," she added.
She said she could not accede to making reporters silent in order to avert criticism of one institution.
The outgoing Parliament Speaker Luka Bebic was given the "Mika Tripalo" award for having shown that the Sabor is still a pivotal institution of the Croatian politics and the public life, according to the award citation.
Reporter Dusan Miljus, who writes about crime and corruption, was the recipient of this year's award which the HHO gives to prominet journalists, editorial boards or media for the human rights protection.
The "Ekumena" broadcast and its editor Augustin Basic of the Croatian Television were given the HHO award for the promotion of interreligious dialogue, ecumenism and religious tolerance.
