Bosnia's Bursac Wins European Press Prize

Dragan Bursac, a columnist at Al Jazeera Balkans, is the winner of the European Press Prizes 2018 in the category of "Opinion", for his column "The Third Shooting of the Boy Petar from Konjic", it was announced on Wednesday in Budapest.

The column recalled the tragic fate of Petar, a seven-year-old Bosnian Serb boy who was killed in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Bursac, who is based in Banja Luka, in Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, is known for his criticical writing on nationalism, which has resulted in him receiving a number of threats.

Last year, following the publication of an article entitled "Does Banja Luka Celebrate the Srebrenica genocide?," he said he received a serious death threat.

In that article, he condemned an announced rally in support of former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic - whose forces overran Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in 1995 - and was then on trial in The Hague for genocide and other crimes in Bosnia.

It was announced that the rally would be held on July 11, the day marking the annual anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, in which about 8,000 Bosniaks were killed by Mladic's forces. Because of that article and his publicly expressed views, Bursac faced multiple death threats.

"I write about people and not nationalities," Bursac told the award ceremony.

The European Press Prizes are awarded in five categories. Last year's winner in the "Opinion" category was the Irish columnist Fintan O'Toole.

Bursac is the second journalist from the former Yugoslavia to receive such an award. In 2014, Boris Dezulovic received an award for his column, published in Globus, entitled:  "Vukovar: a life-size monument to the dead city."

Read more: