The ninth time the memorial plaque for journalists Đuro Slavuji and Ranko Perenić has been destroyed.

“On August 21, 1998, our colleagues, journalists Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić, were abducted here - we are searching for them,” read this commemorative plaque.

The President of UNS, Živojin Rakočević, stated that “for the ninth time, a monument to truth and media freedom has been destroyed.”

“For the ninth time, the only memorial to two professionals, to their lives, and to the pain of families and colleagues who have been repeating for twenty-eight years: ‘we are searching for them!’ has been destroyed. Who are the people who demolish monuments, what kind of society and community erases every trace of those who fought for the truth, who were abducted and disappeared?” Rakočević asked.

For four years, Rakočević said, “we hoped that hatred had faded and that the plaque for innocent professionals would remain to call for justice and the discovery of the perpetrators.”

“The fanatical persistence in destroying the plaque dedicated to the journalistic team of RTV Priština, Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić, has become a symbol of the killing of truth, a symbol of murder after death, and a measure of the downfall of Kosovo’s institutions. During the commemoration of the abduction of our colleagues in August of last year, plainclothes police filmed us with phones displaying the emblems of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and it was precisely members of that organization who abducted Slavuj and Perenić in 1998. In this paradox lies part of the tragedy, and perhaps the fate of our colleagues,” he emphasized.

Rakočević announced that the UNS, along with its branch in Kosovo*, would renew the plaque for Slavuj and Perenić for the tenth time.

“We will keep renewing it as long as we exist and as long as this profession exists. We will renew it as proof that we are alive and that we live here - among the destroyers, abductors, and murderers. There is no known monument that has been so repeatedly destroyed and restored over the past twenty years – there is no force in the world that can stop its raising. The truth always rises from all ruins and wreckage, and this year, the colleagues and families of Slavuj and Perenić will stand beside the plaque and, through their work and pain, reiterate: ‘their truth and our truth are alive. We are searching for them!’,” he stated.

About the plaque

UNS and DNКiM first installed the plaque in 2012, on the 14th anniversary of the abduction of the journalistic team.

For the multiple demolitions of the plaque dedicated to the abducted journalists, the police found the perpetrator only once. Shaban Beriša (47) was conditionally sentenced to three months in prison and a 200 euro fine for the destruction of the plaque.

Despite the fact that Beriša confessed during the investigation to having ripped the plaque off using construction machinery and that he was motivated by ethnic reasons, this circumstance was omitted in the verdict. UNS, as the injured party, was never invited by the court in Đakovica, nor was it allowed to access the case file.

Let us recall that Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić, wishing to make a report about the abducted monks, headed towards the monastery of Saint Vrači in Zočište on August 21, 1998. After traveling a few kilometers, they took a wrong turn that led them to members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). From that moment, all trace of them was lost, and to this day, the families of Perenić and Slavuj have no official information about their fate.

UNS has thoroughly investigated the abduction of Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić, publishing a series of articles on the matter, which can be found in UNS's dossier on murdered and missing journalists.

Source: UNS