N1’s Editorial Board Director, Brent Sadler, a wartime correspondent in Mostar for CNN during the 1990s, was awarded for his contributions to peace and establishment of trust and reconciliation among peoples. In an interview for N1, he said the reconciliation was something that matters the most.
In the speech during the award ceremony in Mostar this Monday, Sadler singled out his story of a ten-year-old girl from Mostar, Selma Handzar, who was critically wounded but survived. To Sadler, it was an emotional moment during the speech.
“And I really told the story that captured the imagination, because Selma was talking about peace and reconciliation, and how she had been able to get on with their lives despite the fact she lost her right arm that was really badly injured,” Sadler noted.
He was afraid the ten-year-old girl would not make it and would become a casualty as a result of her terrible wound.
“But, incredibly, she did survive and she went on to have a family and to prosper, to have two children,” he added.
Being back Mostar 25 years later after leaving, Sadler said the picture was different and that the life was back there again.
“But as I said, I think essential to all this is truth, reconciliation and, as the Carmel Agius, the President of the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague said – and he was one of the guests at the Mostar award event – he said ‘there can be no real reconciliation without justice’,” he said.
To move forward, the divided communities have to rebuild, Sadler stressed. “It’s not going to happen quickly, it’s a process and that comes with time. But there has to be a will to do that. And in Selma’s story we have a family that not only overcame but they had the will to reconcile, and that’s the story, in my view, that should not be ignored by anybody,” he concluded.
