UNS: Memorial Plaque to Journalists Djuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenic Destroyed for the Ninth Time

The memorial plaque dedicated to the abducted Radio Pristina journalists Ranko Perenic and Djuro Slavuj, installed by the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) together with its Kosovo branch on the road between Velika Hoca and Zociste, has once again been destroyed, UNS announced.

The plaque, which has now been demolished for the ninth time, bore the inscription:

"Here, on 21 August 1998, our fellow journalists Djuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenic were abducted – we are searching for them."

UNS President Zivojin Rakocevic said that the act marked "the ninth destruction of a monument to truth and media freedom."

"For the ninth time, the only memorial to these two professionals, to their lives, and to the pain of their families and colleagues who have repeated for twenty-eight years, 'We are searching for them,' has been destroyed. Who are the people who destroy memorials? What kind of society and community erase every trace of people who fought for the truth, who were abducted and disappeared?" Rakocevic asked.

He said that for the past four years he had hoped hatred had subsided and that the memorial to the innocent journalists would remain as a call for justice and for those responsible to be brought to light.

"The fanatical persistence in destroying the memorial plaque dedicated to the RTV Pristina news crew, Djuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenic, has become a symbol of the killing of truth, a symbol of murder after death, and a measure of the failure of Kosovo's institutions. During the commemoration of our colleagues' abduction in August last year, plainclothes police officers filmed us with mobile phones bearing the KLA emblem, while Slavuj and Perenic were abducted in 1998 by members of that very organisation. That paradox reflects part of the tragedy, and perhaps the fate, of our colleagues," Rakocevic said.

He announced that UNS and its Kosovo branch would restore the memorial plaque for the tenth time.

"We will continue restoring it for as long as we exist and for as long as this profession exists. We will restore it as proof that we are alive and that we live here – among those who destroy, abduct and kill. There is no other known memorial that has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times over the past twenty years. No force in the world can stop it from being raised again. Truth always rises from destruction and ruins, and the colleagues and families of Slavuj and Perenic will once again stand beside the memorial this year, repeating through their work and their grief: 'Their truth, and ours, lives on. We are searching for them,'" Rakocevic said.

UNS and the Society of Journalists of Kosovo i Metohija first erected the plaque in 2012, on the 14th anniversary of the journalists' abduction.

Of the repeated acts of vandalism, police have identified a perpetrator only once. Saban Berisa (47) received a suspended three-month prison sentence and a EUR 200 fine for destroying the plaque.

Although Berisa admitted during the investigation that he had uprooted the memorial using construction machinery and had been motivated by ethnic reasons, that circumstance was omitted from the court's judgment. UNS, as the injured party, was never summoned by the Basic Court in Gjakova and was not granted access to the case file, the association added.

On 21 August 1998, Djuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenic set out for the Monastery of the Holy Unmercenaries (Sveti Vraci) in Zociste to prepare a report on abducted monks. After travelling several kilometres, 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. To this day, the Slavuj and Perenic families have received no official information regarding their fate.

UNS has conducted an extensive investigation into the abduction of Djuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenic and published a series of articles that are available in the UNS Dossier on murdered and missing journalists.