The website Sputnik published a detailed analysis of the testimony of Reuf Bajrović at the American Congress, which had never happened.
On Wednesday, April 18, 2018, a discussion on “the Heritage of Dayton and the Future of Bosnia and Western Balkans” was held in Washington. The discussion was organized by one of the subcommittees of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.
Two days later, the website Sputnik (edition in the Serbian language) published an article with the following headline: “Extremist lobbyist fires up America with a dangerous plan against Dodik and Republika Srpska”. The article states that Reuf Bajrović, former president of a political party Građanski savez (eng. Civic Alliance) spoke to the congressional subcommittee.
The performance of a marginalised politician from B&H, Reuf Bajrović, at the American Congress is just an introduction to future American games aimed to hinder Milorad Dodik’s candidacy for the Presidency membership. Despite not having any influence in domestic policies, Bajrović is active on the international level as a lobbyist against Republika Srpska. A few days ago, Reuf Bajrović attended a discussion, “the Heritage of Dayton and the future of B&H” with the Foreign Affairs Committee, where he expressed his extremist attitudes towards Republika Srpska and the demands of political representatives of Croats for the amendment of the election law.
According to Bajrović, the main culprit for the situation in B&H are the president of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik and a Croat member of Presidency Dragan Čović, whom he described as “axis of evil” and the “voice of middle ages”.
However, Bajrović did not have any hearing session with the congressional subcommittee, which means that the whole story is entirely fabricated. The discussion about Bosnia and the Balkans was attended by Matthew Palmer from the State Department, Saša Toperić from Center for Transatlantic Relations, Philippe Leroux-Martin from the Peace Institute, Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi from the Albanian American Civic League and Kurt Bassuener from Democratisation Policy Council.
It was not difficult to find information who actually spoke in front of the Congressional subcommittee since the report of the event, along with video coverage, was published the same day on the House of Foreign Affairs Committee website. The video shows that Bajrović was present at the event as a part of the audience, and not as a speaker.
Although Bajrović did not testify in front of the congressional subcommittee, Sputnik paraphrased parts of his alleged speech:
According to Bajrović, the main culprit for the situation in B&H are the president of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik and a Croat Member of Presidency Dragan Čović, whom he described as an “axis of evil” and the “voice of middle ages”. He pledged to the extension of sanctions to Dodik, and not only to him but to some individuals from Dodik’s party SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) and all those supporting the President of Republika Srpska. He threatened Čović and officials of HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) with sanctions as well. Bajrović described Republika Srpska as a “genocidal creation”, and he bragged about this on Twitter as well.
Just like in the of a fabricated statement of Denzel Washington which was a subject of analysis of Raskrinkavanje in February of 2018, Sputnik again went a step further from the usual fabrication of fake news. Along with presenting the “testimony of Bajrović at the Congress” as the real thing, this website even looked for commentaries of its regular interviewees who explained and interpreted the event which had never happened.
Once again, this role had been given to Anđelko Kozomara, and Miloš Šolaja – a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Banja Luka, who expressed comments on a fabricated event:
Reuf Bajrović could not show up to Congressmen as an official, but rather as a private person or as a representative of his political party, explains Miloš Šolaja, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Banja Luka:
“This is probably the result of lobbying since it is well known that lobbyists have the biggest impact on congressmen and certain congressional institutions respectively. Therefore, it is a very low-level behaviour, especially due to the fact that he shaped the public opinion in the US, which is, unfortunately, already filled with terrible prejudices regarding Serbia and Serbs as a nation, particularly regarding Serbs in Republika Srpska”, Šolaja said.“I am surprised that the American Congress even allowed him to come and speak with no arguments while expressing the attitudes of only one side”, Kozomara said.
“What is he going to come up with next, which moves… It had been mentioned that he would hinder Dodik’s candidacy for a member of the Presidency, and it is known that great powers, especially America, could influence election results in a small country like this. For example, in big countries election results are published within 24 hours, while the results of the previous elections in B&H were published 28 days after the election. Statement by Reuf Bajrović in the Congress is just an introduction to even more radical moves which are expected to come from the US”, Kozomara said.
The day before Sputnik published the article, a similar article appeared on a website of far-right media Nova srpska politička misao (New Serbian Political Thought). However, the article had no claims that Bajrović was one of the speakers in the discussion. We do not know if the article on this website served as an inspiration for making-up of the whole story since Sputnik did not respond to our inquiry about their sources used for the article.
We rank the article as fake news, while the identical article published on the IN4S website is ranked as a redistribution of fake news.
(Raskrinkavanje.ba)
