Kosovo List

Experienced war correspondents claim that the most dangerous times for journalists begin immediately after a cease-fire is proclaimed. These are the times when journalists should be especially alert. Experience from many wars indicates that most journalists are killed or disappear during the transition between war and peace, when all roads are officially open, while at the same time, behind every bend there may be a forgotten mine or the remains of an army.

As a veteran journalists, Vladimir Dobricic, Tanjug’s photo-journalist, should have been aware of this rule. Since 1991,  when everything started in Knin and Vukovar, through the Bosnian war, all the way to the most recent Kosovo “play-off’, Dobricic had spent far more time ‘in action’ than in the office. While the majority of his colleagues spent Sunday 18 October in front of Pristina’s ‘Grand’ Hotel, waiting for the arrival of the first OSCE ‘peace verifiers’, Dobricic decided to set once again for the countryside.

In a Yugo-florida car registered in Belgrade, Dobricic, together with Nebojsa Radosevic, Tanjug’s young Kosovo correspondent, left for Magura, a village situated twenty kilometers south-west of Pristina. Neither  journalist has been seen or heard from since.

The evening before the disappearance, for the first time since the begining of the Kosovo crisis, a police patrol was fired upon near this particular mining village, leaving two policemen wounded. A bullet ridden police car and blood stains marked the spot of the attack. The road to Magure used to be thought of as ‘very safe’, considering that it runs next to a civilian and military airfield. However this applied to times when police still controlled the roads and junctions in Kosovo. After the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, resulting in a police and army retreat, the members of the KLA  returned to the ‘check-points’, and reestablished control over the passage of vehicles through ‘their territory’. It is thought that Tanjug journalists stumbled upon one such check-point and thus found their way into Kosovo’s lengthy ‘missing persons’  list. Dobricic and Radosevic are not the only journalists on this list. Two months ago, Djuro Slavuj of Radio Pristina and his driver Djuro Perinic disappeared around Orahovac. There is no official information about the fate of the missing journalists. There were no witnesses, and an unofficial investigation by fellow journalists suggests that the two were not registered by the infrequent police patrols (which in the past used to note the registration numbers of all vehicles passing down a particular road). Unofficially, the disappearance of the journalists seems to have provoked concern on the Albanian side, and allegedly, a number of influential Albanians have inquired further into this case. It is feared on both sides that the already extensive missing persons list could become even longer if this and other similar cases are unresolved.

During the last couple of days, a hundred or so domestic and foreign journalists stationed in Kosovo have done a lot  to help Tanjug’s journalists. They knocked on the doors of many of those in Pristina who could help.  On Tuesday morning, a large group of journalists left for Magure, and organized a ten minute strike at the location where Dobricic and Radosevic are thought to have disappeared. Cameras, notebooks, and other equipment was laid on the ground together with a message-yesterday it happened to them, tomorrow it could happen to us. It was noted, by those whose job it is to note such things, that of the ‘big’ TV stations, only CNN was absent from this expression of journalistic solidarity.  There were also those who regretted that colleagues from ‘Koha Ditore’, the most influential Kosovo newspaper in Albanian were also not there. However, the situation in Kosovo has deteriorated to the point where any expression of solidarity with the other side represents an unforgivable sin.

The evening before he disappeared, Tanjug’s photo-journalist Vladimir Dobricic sipped coffee in the Pristina Media Center, recounting various dangerous situations which he found himself in during the war in Bosnia. For example, he mentioned the episode when his car ran over a land mine which failed to explode. A number of journalists employed by the ‘independent media’ and foreign agencies claimed jokingly that the worst time for journalists is yet to come and that peace, together with Seselj’s information legislation will be far more dangerous. Also jokingly, they asked Dobricic to photograph them so that Tanjug would be the first to have the photos of journalists who will, as a result of the new legislation, either end up in prison, or in the Serbian equivalent of Paul Pot’s rice fields.

By a twist of fate, twenty-four hours later, in that same Media Center,  it was the photo of Dobricic which was sought, so that journalists could inform their readership of his disappearance.