September 7th, 2007 posted by Bender Rodríguez
On the importance of knowing your geography. We received hundreds of emails to our webmaster email account at Euroleague Basketball in regards to a seemingly innocuous error on our website surrounding the birth city of one of the coaches. In short, one of our editors had listed his hometown as Capljina, Croatia, when in fact Capljina is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, right on the border with Croatia. Most of the emails were very emotional and very aggressive, calling us fascists and suggesting, among other things slightly more graphic, that we go back to school to study geography. The following email, however, was very well written (if somewhat grammatically inaccurate), with the author taking the time to explain why the error was so offensive to the Bosnians.
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De: Refik Spahic [mailto:xxxxx@hotmail.com]
Enviado el: jueves, 06 de septiembre de 2007 20:16
Para: webmaster
Asunto: Offensive information on your web-site
Dear Webmaster,
I would like to ask you kind to change on Euroleague
official site where you said that Jasmin Repesa is from
Capljina Croatia.
I do not know if you are aware that Capljina is
actually located in Bosnia and not in Croatia and I do
not know if you are alos aware that this text is quite
offensive for all Bosnians.
I would like to point to you that in the Lasva Valley
Croatian army pefrormed ethnicl cleansing on Bosnian
Muslim (Bosniak) civilians. The campaign, planned by
Croatian army from May 1992 to March 1993 and erupting
the following April, was meant to implement objectives
set forth by Croat nationalists in November of 1991. The
Lašva Valley's Bosniaks were subjected to persecution on
political, racial and religious grounds, deliberately
discriminated against in the context of a widespread
attack on the region's civilian population and suffered
mass murder, rape, imprisonment in camps, as well as the
destruction of cultural sites and private property. This
was often followed by anti-Bosniak propaganda,
particularly in the municipalities of Vitez, Busovaèa,
Novi Travnik and Kiseljak.
According to the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation
Center (IDC), around 2,000 Bosniaks from the Lašva Valley
are missing or were killed during this period so once
again I would like you to change this text and apologize
to us Bosnians on your web-site.
Thank you in advance,
Refik
"I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry."
Learned Hand