A Town Betrayed

A Town Betrayed (Norwegian: Byen som kunne ofres, Croatian: Grad koji se mogao žrtvovati, Izdani grad) is a 2010 Norwegian documentary about the prelude of the Srebrenica massacre (1995), written and directed by journalists Ola Flyum and David Hebditch and produced by Fenris Films, NRK, among others. It was shown on NRK's Brennpunkt on 26 April 2011 and SVT on 28 August 2011.

A Town Betrayed
Country of origin	Norway
Original language	Norwegian
No. of episodes	1
Production
Running time	58 minutes
Original release
Network	NRK
Release	26 April 2011 (2011-04-26)

The film was described by director Ola Flyum in an April 26, 2011 Dagsavisen interview as follows:

Many consider Srebrenica to be a new Holocaust in Europe, where 8000 were executed. In reality, it was a part of the exhaustive hostilities. We show how Mladic operates as a general seeking to take control of a region. The city is evacuated, roughly 15,000 men have fled, en route to Muslim lines through Serbian regions. None know how many were armed. For us, it appears to have been an extremely chaotic situation, not a planned ethnic cleansing.^[1]

The documentary has received criticism from journalist associations,^[2] the Norwegian Helsinki Committee,^[3] and the foreign minister of Bosnia-Hercegovina.^[4] The Norwegian Helsinki Committee filed a complaint with the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission (PFU). NRK and Fenris Film received criticism after the PFU handled the case at a meeting in Lillehammer on October 20, 2011, and found that the film violated point 3.2 of the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press regarding citing sources.^[5] The PFU concluded that

In the opinion of the committee, the film overlooks or downplays some basic facts regarding the retelling of the story in Bosnia. In particular, the committee finds it journalistically unacceptable that the program does not mention the sentencing of the war crime hearings at The Hague, the ICJ, and the ICTY. Court proceedings have, after a review of the comprehensive evidence, maintained that there existed a plan to cleanse the country for non-Serbs, a plan that, according to the judgments, culminated in the massacre at Srebrenica, perhaps one of the best documented genocides in history, with more than 8000 killed. Several controversial sources can be found win the program, without their claims being weighed against conclusions from the trial proceedings that these sources in practice argue against.^[6]

References

1. "Dokumentar om Balkan-krigen". Dagsavisen. April 29, 2011. Archived from the original on April 29, 2011.

   • "Mange tenker på Srebrenica som et nytt Holocaust i Europa, der 8.000 ble henrettet. I realiteten var dette en del av omfattende krigshandlinger. Vi viser hvordan Mladic handler som general som skal ta kontroll over et område. Byen er forlatt, omkring 15.000 menn er stukket av, på vei gjennom serbisk område til muslimske linjer. Ingen vet hvor mange av dem som er bevæpnet. For oss framstår dette som en ekstremt kaotisk situasjon, ikke som en planlagt etnisk rensing."
2. Kjell Arild Nilsen (May 4, 2011). "På villspor om Srebrenica". journalisten.no.
3. Aage Borchgrevink (May 5, 2011). "Folkeopplyser på villspor". Aftenposten.
4. "Et forsøk på å frikjenne Serbia". Aftenposten. May 13, 2011.
5. "NRK fikk omfattende kritikk av PFU". journalisten.no. October 20, 2011.
6. "Sak 107/11 Den norske Helsingforskomité mot NRK Brennpunkt". Norsk Presseforbund. October 20, 2011. Archived from the original on January 20, 2012.

   • "Etter utvalgets mening underslår, overser eller utelater filmen noen basale kjensgjerninger som hører med i enhver fortelling om krigen i Bosnia. Særlig finner utvalget det presseetisk uakseptabelt at programmet ikke nevner dommene ved krigsforbryterdomstolene i Haag, ICJ og ICTY. Rettsprosessene har etter gjennomgang av et omfattende bevismateriale slått fast at det eksisterte en plan om å rense landet for ikke-serbere, en plan som, som ifølge domstolene kulminerte med massakrene i Srebrenica, et av de kanskje best dokumentere folkemord i historien, med mer enn 8000 drepte. Flere kontroversielle kilder står fram i programmet uten at deres påstander veies opp mot konklusjoner fra rettsprosessene som disse kildene i praksis argumenterer imot."

External links

A Town Betrayed at IMDb

• "Hague: Srebrenica Film Undermines Judgments". Balkan Insight. 2 December 2011.
• "A Town Betrayed". Nordisk Panorama.
• "Norwegischer Dokumentarfilm deckt Wahrheit über Bosnienkrieg auf" (in German). Buergerstimme. Archived from the original on 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
• "Srebrenica nel documentario "Una città tradita"" (in Italian). Il Cambiamento. (including documentary in Italian)
• "Byen som kunne ofres". Brennpunkt. NRK. 26 April 2011. (documentary in Norwegian)