One Year Later

In 1999, on Orthodox Easter, in the middle of Belgrade and in the middle of the day, Slavko Curuvija (1949) journalist, founder and owner of the Dnevni Telegraf daily and Evropljanin magazine, was murdered. Masked in black, the killers shot him in the back, struck Branka Prpa with whom he was returning home following lunch, thereby momentarily stunning her, "wasted" him with a hit at the back of his head and disappeared from the scene. At the end of the report on the murder and funeral of Slavko Curuvija, as published in Vreme´s war issue (no. 6 of April 17, 1999), a demand made by the public, his colleagues, independent professional associations, public figures and opposition parties was highlighted - that the murder be resolved, in order to evade speculations of a political clash in times of war. It has remained unsolved.

On the day of the murder the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia stated that "the employees of the Secretariat in Belgrade are conducting an intensive search for the perpetrators of this criminal act". Until today, that was all that they announced. Without any official reports on the progress and results of the investigation, the public and the media can only remember. Circumstances: Radio-Television Serbia, a couple of days prior to the murder - and a day prior to its publication in the newspapers - read Politika Express daily´s comments to its viewers on domestic traitors, complete with quotes from statements made by Mirjana Markovic, according to whom Slavko Curuvija had attained the highest level of treason since, allegedly, he supported the American bombardment of Serbia.

One year later, unveiling a plaque at the scene of the crime, the president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, Gordana Susa, asked why the murderers haven´t been found: "Has the state which is supposed to protect us and which is supposed to serve in the interest of its citizens become so arrogant that it doesn´t find it necessary, even after a year, to announce the results of that investigation to the public? Has an investigation been launched at all? Who is being protected by this silence?"

On that same day another comfortable and, owing to the absence of the Serbian Renewal Party (SPO) delegates - who are on strike due to the silence of state bodies on another crime, the October accident on Ibarska magistrala - an almost totally informal session of the National Assembly of Serbia was held. Only the deputy of the Vojvodina coalition, Dragan Veselinov, proposed that the Assembly pay its tribute with a minute´s silence to the murdered Slavko Curuvija, in name of protection of the freedom of information and democracy in the state of Serbia. Probably feeling that he was indirectly being addressed, the vice president of the government and president of the Serbian Radical Party answered that word is of a criminal who was killed in a gangster clash, and reprimanded his colleague, deputy, official, professor and dean of the School of Political Science, Vladimir Stambuk, for still not having dismissed Veselinov as a lecturer.

Thus Borka Pavicevic´s belief was confirmed: "Ever since we have fallen under the reign of what reigns over us, all looks alike, from press conferences to marriages or funerals, so that occasionally you really don´t know where you are. People chat in chapels, too. Death, life and rituals have been emptied of all content and sense." Also speaking at the commemoration at the Media Center, Aleksandar Tijanic - who had added his signature alongside Slavko Curuvija´s to the open letter addressed to the president of the FR of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic and published in Evropljanin, which made it the first victim of the then just passed Information Law - concluded that Slavko Curuvija "wasn´t made great by death, nor did he suffer from a legend syndrome while he was alive". "It was never his intention to be either a monument nor a part of history. He only wanted two things: to do his job and to live like a free man. What heresy in Serbia with its gates locked from the inside! What sin in a system which has, for its basis, adopted fear and unhappiness of its own subjects, and self-continuation as its only goal!"