Why was the case discovered in Tuzla? “Where work is done, there will be more cases”…
The case from Tuzla Canton, where police officers and others are suspected of human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minor residents of a home for neglected children, shocked the public. Professor dr. Elmedin Muratbegović from the Faculty of Criminology, Criminology and Security Studies warns that this is only the tip of the iceberg that shows deep problems in the system.
Muratbegović: “They make a business out of children under the protection of the state”
Professor Muratbegović told N1 that this is not the first shocking case, recalling the babies found in Brčko, but that this one is particularly difficult.
“We have children who are under the protection of the state, who live in homes for children without parental care, where we have a prolonged criminal offense in which authorized officials plan to exploit such children,” Muratbegović said.
“It’s a soft thing to say alleging prostitution. Here’s the crux of the story… the financial gain they want to achieve… It’s ugly to say, but we have to use such expressions, they are doing business… This speaks of the kind of mud we are in, in principle.”
Why are police officers among the perpetrators? “Suspicious selection for 30 years”
Although he welcomes the work of the police and prosecutors who discovered the case, Professor Muratbegović points out that we must face the problem within the institutions themselves.
“The first people we target are the police and the prosecutor’s office, because the perpetrators are police officers. We must understand that in the last 30 years selection in the police was quite suspiciousthat there is a lot of politics, incompetence, negative reception methods, and a lot of people with bad integrity,” he emphasized.
He suggests an analysis of who is working in leadership positions in the police and that standards must be introduced, because “unprofessional attitude and settling the pension at the time of employment” is something we are having a hard time getting used to.
“The social protection system is underestimated and bad”
When asked how much the system is to blame, and how much the individuals, Muratbegović says that it is classic “delinquency and opportunity”, but that the social protection system is in a bad state.
“Our social protection system is, in the opinion of many… quite bad. That inspection supervision, let’s say when it is carried out, it does not include talking to clients (to children, elderly people in homes). It simply covers those fundamental material elements,” warns the professor.
Why was the case discovered in Tuzla? “Where work is done, there will be more cases”
Professor Muratbegović praises the work of institutions in the Tuzla Canton, emphasizing that there are departments there that achieve the best results in the country in the fight against human trafficking.
“Maybe we should look for an answer here as to why exactly this was discovered in Tuzla,” he says, citing the work of the non-governmental organization “Zemlja djece”, which has been pressing for changes to the law for years.
“Where it is done, there will be a greater number of such cases recorded, and where it is not done, it will remain in the area of dark numbers, undetected, and one gets the apparent impression that everything is fine.”
Muratbegović concluded that the investigations of such acts, especially with child victims, are extremely complex and that investigators have moral dilemmas when to stop the action in order to collect enough evidence and at the same time protect the child.
(TYPE/Source: N1/Photo: Denis Hisari)
