25th Anniversary of Deadly NATO Bombing of Serbian State TV Marked

A memorial service was held early in front of the ‘Why?’ monument outside Radio-Television Serbia’s headquarters in Belgrade on Tuesday morning at 2.06am – 25 years to the minute after NATO bombed the building, killing 16 people.

The service was attended by relatives, former colleagues and friends of those who died, as well as officials including Serbia’s Minister of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs Nikola Selakovic and representatives of journalists’ unions.

After a minute’s silence, Miroslav Medic, the brother of TV technician Sinisa Medic, who was killed in the air strike, addressed the mourners on behalf of the families of the victims.

Medic said that for 25 years, mourners have been gathering to remember the crime committed by NATO, which bombed a media house located in a densely-populated part of the Serbian capital.

“Without any clear warning to the employees, they targeted the Radio-Television Serbia building, not taking into account for a moment the possible number of civilian victims,” said Medic.

“They knew very well that there were always between 150 and 160 people in this building who were just doing their everyday work, nervously waiting for the morning to return to their families,” he added.

The Western military alliance targeted RTS as part of its 78-day bombing campaign against President Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, which forced him to end his campaign of repression against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Sixteen RTS workers died during the attack, two others were seriously injured and 17 slightly hurt. The bodies of two of the victims have never been found.

NATO justified the missile strike by saying that RTS was part of Milosevic’s war machine because it broadcast his propaganda. No one from NATO has ever been held accountable for the RTS workers’ deaths.

Rights group Amnesty International described the attack as a war crime because it argued that the TV station was not a legitimate military target. But a report by a committee set up by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia said there was no justification for the UN court to launch an investigation.

In 2002, Belgrade District Court sentenced RTS director Dragoslav Milanovic to ten years in prison because he did not order the staff to be evacuated to a back-up location, even though such a site existed and he could have arranged it.

Since his conviction, victims’ families have continued to urge the Serbian authorities to investigate and prosecute Yugoslav-era officials who they believe were also responsible for not evacuating the RTS building.

The 16 victims of the NATO missile strike were Jelica Munitlak (28), Ksenija Bankovic (28), Darko Stojmenovski (26), Nebojsa Stojanovic (27), Dragorad Dragojevic (27), Dragan Tasic (31), Aleksandar Deletic (31), Slavisa Stevanovic (32), Sinisa Medic (32), Ivan Stukalo (34), Dejan Markovic (39), Milan Joksimovic (47), Branislav Jovanovic (50), Milan Jankovic (59), Tomislav Mitrovic (61) and Slobodan Jontic (54).