Prisoners in Bosnia

When correspondent Sylvia Poggioli first traveled to northern Bosnia in August 1992, the phrase “ethnic cleansing” had not yet made it into the worldwide vocabulary. In a series of courageous and important reports from the scene, Ms. Poggioli and European editor Julie M. McCarthy provided eyewitness accounts of the tragedy that has befallen the former Yugoslavia. At the time Ms. Poggioli entered the war zone of northern Bosnia, there were no United Nations peacekeepers and the area was largely inaccessible to relief workers and journalists. At great personal risk, Ms. Poggioli provided evidence that the so-called “Siege of Sarajevo,” on which international media attention had been focused for months, may have been a smoke screen for the real purpose of the Bosnian-Serb campaign: the conquest of territory by expulsion of the Muslim population. For reporting marked by courage and international importance, a Peabody Award to Prisoners in Bosnia.