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On October 18, 1997, shortly after 9 pm, Thirteen-year-old Dušan Jovanović left his home in the very center of Belgrade. He went to a nearby store to buy Coca-Cola. Since he did not return home for a long time, his parents were worried. Father Aleksandar went to look for him near Jovanović’s house on Belgrade Street, he found alarmed citizens gathered around the boy’s immobile body. It was Dusan, who was beaten to death by skinheads just because he was a Roma. 17-year-old Milan Čujić and Istvan Fendrik de Zemun are blamed for this heinous murder, which, according to eyewitnesses, was committed by four members. They were sentenced to ten years in prison, of which they served six, because their sentences were subsequently reduced.
The fact that this horrible case is still remembered today, exactly 23 years later, shows how much this cruel crime offended the Serbian public. Meanwhile, in 2007, the Romani Union of Serbia erected a commemorative plaque in Belgrade in memory of Dusan Jovanovic, whose name has become a symbol of the suffering of Roma due to racist violence against people, mostly members of organizations. right-wing extremists and supporter groups.
Unfortunately, these incidents were also not absent in the following period. Just three years after Jovanović’s murder, on November 18, 2000, actor Dragan Maksimović was brutally beaten in the Zeleni venac in Belgrade, and succumbed to his injuries four months later. According to the media, the culprits thought he was a gypsy because of his darker complexion, which was “reason” enough to brutally beat him. The perpetrators, who were publicly speculated to be skinheads and FC Rad fans, were never found. Maksimović was 52 at the time, his health was already affected by diabetes and asthma, and he underwent eye surgery immediately prior to the tragic incident. He died on February 4, 2001. His colleagues said that he refused to identify the attackers until the last moment, demanding that these “young people not be detained.” A commemorative plaque dedicated to the fallen actor was erected at Green Wreath in 2006, with the signature: “His Belgraders.”
Recalling this tragedy, Osman Balić from the Permanent Conference of Associations of Roma Citizens in Serbia states for our document that Maksimović was not even Roma, testifying that hate crimes against ethnic and social minorities pose a danger to the entire society .
“The attacks against the Roma send the message that our freedom is limited in every way, from speech to movement and freedom of development. All these attacks are individual, but in reality it is a collective attack,” says Balić.
It also recalls the case of Ervin Bilicki, a 17-year-old who was found dead in front of a bakery on March 17, 2013, outside Becej. Media reported that he was beaten, after which he lost consciousness and drowned in a pond. A fourteen-year-old perpetrator is a suspect in the attack and was convicted.
A similar tragedy, for which it was not clear whether it was motivated by racial discrimination, occurred on January 25, 2007 in Boljevci, in the Surcin municipality in Belgrade, when Branko Jovanovic (17) was assassinated. He was beaten by two perpetrators with a wooden and metal bar in the center of that settlement. Jovanovic lost consciousness from the beatings and the perpetrators covered his nose and mouth with duct tape on his legs and head. Then they confiscated his mobile phone, MP3 player, USB cable, phone charger and watch. With two assistants, they carried Jovanović’s body onto his bicycle and thus pushed him onto the bridge over the Vok canal, where they threw the bicycle with the body into the canal. Jovanovic’s lifeless body was found the next day. For this crime, brothers J. .. and NJ, who were 17 and 16 at the time, were sentenced to ten years in prison.
A recent serious incident took place in a separate department of the primary school “Jovan Jovanović Zmaj” in Masurica, near Surdulica, when, according to local media, the husband of a teacher broke into a classroom and beat a Roma child with disabilities development.
These examples, along with hundreds of incidents against Roma that did not result in death, show that, according to Balic, violence against Roma should not be tolerated. Although the number of attacks against Roma in Serbia is currently significantly lower than in the countries of the region, it cautions that the statistics refer only to reported cases.
“Roma preserved us from fear, we know when to flee and flee because we are completely powerless,” says Balić.
Media liability
The sociologist and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of Nis, Dragan Todorović, believes that the roots of the poor inclusion of Roma in Serbian social space lie in insufficient knowledge of Roma culture by the non-Roma population. It notes that the stigmatization of this ethnic community is also fueled by certain media reports of individual examples of violations of legal norms by the Roma themselves, worded in such a way as to stigmatize the entire Roma community.
“A change in citizens’ consciousness towards Roma can be helped by a makeover of them in the media space, first of all affirming the ethical attitude that it is inadmissible to report individual incidents in a way that stigmatizes the entire community, highlighting and condemning outright racist outbreaks. ” as well as finding affirmative stories instead of focusing on negative news about Roma, “says Todorović for” Politika “.
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