Numerous unsolved murders of journalists in ex-Yugoslavia

Numerous unsolved murders of journalists in ex-Yugoslavia

Six journalists were killed or went missing in Kosovo and Metohija alone, before, during and after the armed conflicts from 1989 to 2000, but the persons responsible were neither identified nor brought to justice in any of those cases.

Participants of the panel discussion “Journalist Murders 1991-2001 - War Crime or Professional Hazard", organized by UNS on Thursday also drew attention to other unsolved murders that received less media coverage.

Such was the case of the Serbian news desk reporter of Radio Kosovo Marjan Melonasi, who went missing in downtown Priština on September 9, 2000 after the armed conflicts, and the Večernje Novosti reporter Milan Žegarac, who was killed on October 7, 1991 in Vukovar, during the war in Croatia.

The unsolved crimes against journalists also include the murders of a Russian news crew in Croatia in the fall of 1991, and four members of the RTS crew on the Petrinja-Glina road in October of the same year, who were presumably attacked by Croatian military or paramilitary forces.

Dragana Bjelica of UNS noted that after that crime, Croatian weekly Slobodni Tjednik stated in an article that “spies should be shot down without a warning”.

"Unfortunately, a military, police, or a prosecutorial investigation was never conducted in Serbia,” added Bjelica.

UNS associate Jelena Spasić pointed to more cases unsolved to this day, of Simo Kljajić of Gospić, Croatia, who on October 12, 1991 went out to buy bread and never came back, and Mile Bujević, RTS employee in Priština, who was kidnapped by the the Kosovo Albanian KLA on June 25, 1999.

"Looking into the records, we realized that UNMIK did not conduct any investigation into this case," underlined Spasić.

President of the Croatian Journalists' Association Zdenko Duka and President of the Assembly of Journalists of Bosnia-Herzegovina joined the debate via video link, and said that 14 Croatian and 17 Bosnian journalists were killed during the wars of the 1990s.

Duka pointed to the murder of two Croatian reporters Siniša Glavašević and Branimir Lovina, who were shot dead at Ovčara, near Vukovar, in 1991.

Both noted that in most cases no legal procedures had been launched, and the perpetrators of the murders remain unknown.

B92's Veran Matić, who chairs a commission set up in Serbia to investigate murders of reporters, also attended the gathering to say there had been "much inaction" in the past when it comes to these cases, especially those related to the wars - "in order to destroy the witnesses of the crimes."

"We must do everything to expose the killers of journalists, we must constantly exert pressure for this to be solved, because if we don't, nobody will. That's our obligation, but also, for the sake of basic justice," he stressed.