27th anniversary of the deaths of Marija and Nikola Petrovic commemorated: The pain endures, justice absent

In Gracanica today, a memorial service at the cemetery and the laying of wreaths at a commemorative plaque at the “Kralj Milutin” Primary School marked the 27th anniversary of the deaths of Marija and Nikola Petrovic, who were killed in 1999 when a NATO projectile struck a Nis-Ekspres passenger bus on the Luzane bridge near Podujevo.

Marija was only 14 years old when she died, while her brother Nikola was two years older. Their grandmother Smiljana was also killed, along with 41 other people.

Their mother, Zorica, said that even after 27 years, the pain has not faded.

“The pain does not go away, the suffering does not go away. When May 1 comes, I neither sleep nor eat.

I only feel heavy inside and ask myself when that day will come and when it will pass—I count the days. I remember how it was, how everything happened, and what I went through. But what can I do—what is, is. As long as our health allows, we go to the cemetery, visit them, and light candles. I wonder how so many years have passed and when such misfortune struck them. No one could have imagined it—had I known, I would never have let them leave home. They were forced to go. They say it was fate, but it was not fate—it came out of nowhere, like a bolt from the blue,” she said.

She thanked Marija and Nikola’s friends who never forget the anniversary of their deaths.

Their father, Dragisa Petrovic, said that holidays are the hardest, when their home remains empty.

“For 27 years, it has all passed in pain. This can never be forgotten. Look what the perpetrators did. Only if there is God to punish them—but it is unlikely we will live to see that. The hardest times are the holidays. Everyone has someone coming to them, while our house is always empty. Especially on our patron saint’s day, Easter, Christmas… We wait, we hope, we think someone will come,” Dragisa said.
Marija and Nikola’s friends initiated the installation of the memorial plaque in the yard of the “Kralj Milutin” Primary School in Gracanica. Miodrag Zivic stressed that what hurts most is that even after 27 years, no one has been held accountable for this crime.

“It is an understatement to say that Marija and Nikola are missed. They are missed by us as friends, and we can only imagine how much they are missed by their parents. The question arises—what wrong did a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy ever do to anyone? They were young, full of life, with hopes for the future, and this is how they ended. What hurts most is that even today no one has borne responsibility, no one has been punished for the crime committed against the Petrovic family and all the others. All that remains for us as their friends, and for their parents, is to remember them—to mark this day, to come both to the cemetery and here to the memorial plaque,” Zivic said.

At the site of the attack, beneath the bridge in Luzane, the Kosovo authorities have installed a memorial plaque with the names of Albanian victims, while the names of the Serbian victims are marked with three dots.