Interview with John Bosnitch. Part II — Big in Japan
Second part of an interview with Canadian-Serbian journalist John Bosnitch, whose life is a true saga.
After confronting Montreal police in court, John Bosnitch settled in Japan, where he led an exciting gaijin life and became at once a communications consultant, journalist, and political advisor.
But the Bosnitch family’s destiny is never ordinary, and the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil wars beginning in 1991 made him an ideal candidate for a war correspondent position.
In 2004, he undertook another legal battle to secure the release of world chess champion Bobby Fischer, who was facing extradition to the United States for having played in a tournament in Yugoslavia in 1992 while the country was under U.S. sanctions. Fischer was granted Icelandic citizenship in March 2005, after nine months in detention.
Leaving Japan in 2008, Bosnitch represented the North American Serbian community in Washington, but concluded that the Congress for Serbian Unity was a lobby infiltrated by the Central Intelligence Agency. After dissolving the organization, he settled in Belgrade with his family.
Pierre-Étienne Paradis: Despite your busy schedule, you seem to have greatly enjoyed Tokyo’s nightlife. What can you say about it?
John Bosnitch: “I worked 80 hours a week from Monday to Thursday, and partied from Thursday night to Sunday noon! I often went to an electro-trance club called Geoid in Shibuya. I even met Timothy Leary there.”
You worked for the public broadcaster NHK, the major daily Yomiuri Shimbun, and the financial newspaper Nikkei. How did you end up in Sarajevo?
John Bosnitch: “I asked my clients for a sabbatical and went to Bosnia at my own expense. Japanese newspapers only paid me if they were interested in a report.
On the ground, I realized that mainstream media were lying, and that their version bore no resemblance to what I was seeing. I began following Christiane Amanpour.
At press conferences, I would say: ‘I’m going to ask my questions to Christiane, because she seems better informed than NATO. She knows in advance who will be bombed tomorrow. How can she know things that you don’t?’ She would disappear whenever she saw me, and I eventually got banned from press conferences!”
How long did you stay there? Did you travel outside the city?
John Bosnitch: “I stayed there for six to nine months in total, going back and forth for a few weeks at a time, so I could also produce comparative reports on the Serbian side and the Muslim side.
I went to the Serbian Krajina, but also to the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, populated by Muslims. I also took photos in the hills above Sarajevo, where I saw snipers from both sides exchanging fire—a fact overlooked by Western media.”
In your recent interview with Hrvoje Morić from Geopolitics & Empire, it appears that a Serb and a Croat can exchange pleasantries in the same language and agree on several aspects of current geopolitics. Given your passion for the Serbian cause, was it difficult to maintain journalistic neutrality?
John Bosnitch: “Neutrality was not possible. In Muslim-controlled central Sarajevo, I feared being recognized as a journalist of Serbian origin who rejected the anti-Serb narrative. I could have been killed.
Also, when my colleagues saw me arrive as a Canadian—a man from an Anglo-American colony—they welcomed me like a brother.
But when I demanded proof [that the Serbs had committed specific crimes], they asked why I was asking such questions. I told them I was the only journalist among the 200 NATO propagandists attending press briefings at the Holiday Inn.”
You founded the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer. Tell us about this major episode in your career.
John Bosnitch: “What were the odds that a Serbian journalist, political advisor, and dedicated chess player would be in Japan, listening to a radio news bulletin at the exact moment of his arrest? It was a sign of destiny. I immediately resigned from my position as an advisor to the Prime Minister’s office.”
Fischer is said to have had a complex personality. What motivated him?
John Bosnitch: “Bobby was above all a chess champion, obsessed with strategy, with a photographic memory, capable of reading hundreds of pages in minutes. He was very keen to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his world championship title, which he won in 1972 in Reykjavik.
The record $5 million prize was as attractive to him as it was to Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, who saw it as publicity worth a hundred times more.”
On what grounds did the United States seek his extradition?
John Bosnitch: “The Americans knew that Bobby Fischer was involved with a Japanese woman and regularly stayed in Japan. Playing a tournament in Yugoslavia was a crime in the United States, but not in Japan.
To extradite him, they needed an act considered criminal in both countries. But instead of launching an unprecedented legal procedure, the State Department retroactively revoked his passport to a date prior to his arrival in Japan! Bobby suddenly became illegal and unable to leave the country without a passport. It was an unconstitutional maneuver.”
You sometimes compare Bobby Fischer to Julian Assange. What do they have in common?
John Bosnitch: “Fischer faced a long prison sentence, like Assange. But Julian Assange also exposed Anglo-American war crimes and showed how they were carried out under the influence of the Israeli lobby. Assange confirmed Bobby Fischer’s analysis [he was a Jewish anti-Zionist].”
Were you afraid of being arrested by Japanese authorities?
John Bosnitch: “No, but I would have won my case if that had happened! However, the Americans pressured all my clients to cut ties with me.
To preserve Japan’s honor, the president of the company Kikkoman, founded more than 400 years ago, offered to match the salary from all those lost clients. I thanked him, but I had already decided to continue the fight in Washington, in the ‘belly of the beast.’”
Why did you move to Belgrade and learn Serbian at age 48?
John Bosnitch: “It was a family decision. My wife and I had planned to educate our children in Serbia. But when the time came, my wife said: ‘If you force me to return to Serbia, I will divorce you immediately.’ I thought I could calm things down by stopping halfway—in Washington—but I was wrong!”
You came to Canada for personal reasons, but also to raise awareness about another issue: the Croatian camp of Jasenovac, where thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma were killed during the Second World War. Do you believe the international community treats Serbia unfairly by focusing only on the Srebrenica massacre?
John Bosnitch: “They say there were six extermination camps during the Second World War, including Auschwitz and Treblinka. But Jasenovac was in fact the seventh—the largest by far—and the last to be liberated on April 22, 1945. Tito, a communist agent of the British, was anti-Serb and made no effort in that regard.
The Serbian people were later divided into five Yugoslav states. In the main state where they remained the majority—Serbia—Tito created two autonomous regions that could theoretically secede: Vojvodina and Kosovo. It was a classic case of ‘divide and rule.’
As for Srebrenica in 1995, there were about 10,000 jihadists there who attacked surrounding villages and killed 3,900 Serbs. When Srebrenica fell, the families of those victims took revenge.
In short: when Serbs kill a large number of people, it’s called genocide. But when Bosnian or Kosovar Muslims carry out ethnic cleansing, as in 2004, Western media present it as a perfectly ‘reasonable’ retaliation.”