28 YEARS SINCE THE ABDUCTION OF SLAVUJ AND PERENIĆ

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, AUGUST 21 /SRNA/ - Today 28 years ago, Radio Priština journalists Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić were abducted while on a journalistic assignment on the Velika Hoča–Zočište road.

Their abduction has never been solved, while their families and colleagues have been searching for the truth and justice for almost three decades. On August 21, 1998, Slavuj and Perenić set off for the Zočište Monastery, dedicated to the holy healers, to prepare a report on the return of abducted monks. They were seen in Velika Hoča in the morning, from where they headed towards Zočište. After driving several kilometres, their Zastava 128 car turned onto the wrong road, which led them to members of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army /KLA/. From that moment, any trace of them was lost- Their families and colleagues have to this day received no official information about their fate. A memorial plaque was erected near the site of the abduction in 2012 in order to keep the unresolved case from falling into oblivion. It bears the following inscription in both Serbian and Albanian: "Our fellow journalists were abducted here on August 21, 1998. We are looking for them." However, the memorial plaque has been vandalised and destroyed nine times to date, most recently at the end of July this year. For this reason, the Association of Journalists of Serbia, together with its Kosovo and Metohija branch, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo and Metohija, has announced that it will restore the memorial for the tenth time. In 2017, EULEX confirmed that Perenić and Slavuj had been abducted by KLA members, who, after threatening them with weapons, took them in an unknown direction. However, EULEX suspended the investigation due to a lack of evidence. The abduction of Ranko Perenić and Đuro Slavuj is only part of a tragic series of unsolved disappearances and killings of journalists in Kosovo. Between 1998 and 2005, while carrying out their work, 19 journalists and media workers were killed, kidnapped or went missing in Kosovo, the Kosovo Online portal recalls.