MEMORIAL PLAQUE TO KIDNAPPED SERBIAN JOURNALISTS DESTROYED FOR THE NINTH TIME

BELGRADE, JULY 29 /SRNA/ - The memorial plaque dedicated to kidnapped Radio Priština journalists Ranko Perenić and Đuro Slavuj, which was placed on the road between Velika Hoča and Zočište, has been torn down for the ninth time, the Journalists' Association of Serbia /UNS/ said.

"Here, on August 21, 1998, our fellow journalists Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić were kidnapped - we are searching for them," the plaque read.

The memorial plaque was erected by UNS together with its branch in Kosovo and Metohija.

UNS President Živojin Rakočević said that "for the ninth time, a monument to truth and media freedom has been torn down," and asked: "What kind of society and community destroys every trace of people who fought for the truth, who were kidnapped and disappeared?"

"The fanatical persistence in tearing down the memorial plaque dedicated to the RTV Priština journalistic team, 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 collapse of the /so-called/ Kosovo institutions," Rakočević stressed.

He pointed out that, during a commemoration of the kidnapping of their colleagues in August last year, journalists were filmed by plainclothes police officers using phones displaying the insignia of the terrorist KLA.

"Slavuj and Perenić were kidnapped in 1998 by members of that organization. This paradox contains part of the tragedy, and perhaps even the fate of our colleagues," Rakočević stressed.

He announced that UNS, together with its branch in Kosovo and Metohija, would restore the memorial plaque dedicated to Slavuj and Perenić for the tenth time.

"We will restore 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 destroyers, kidnappers and killers. There is no known monument that has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times over the past 20 years; there is no force in the world that can stop its erection," Rakočević stressed.

UNS and the Association of Journalists in Kosovo and Metohija first erected the plaque in 2012, on the 14th anniversary of the kidnapping of the journalistic team.

For the repeated destruction of the plaque dedicated to the kidnapped journalists, police found the perpetrator only once, and Šaban Beriša, 47, was given a suspended three-month prison sentence and fined 200 euros for destroying the plaque.

Even though Beriša admitted during the investigation that he had torn down the plaque using construction machinery and that he had been motivated by ethnic reasons, that circumstance was omitted from the verdict.

Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić set off on August 21, 1998, for the Sveti Vrači Monastery in Zočište, intending to prepare a report about the kidnapped monks.

After travelling several kilometres, they turned onto the wrong road, which led them to members of the Albanian terrorist KLA, after which all trace of them was lost. They have never been found, and their families have still not received official information about their fate.