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Instead of raising awareness of the population and pointing out the problems of the wanted persons and their families, the International Day of the Disappeared, which was celebrated on August 30, started a controversy in our country about the official number of missing persons in Serbia. In response to the information from the “Tijana Jurić” Foundation that there are 75 people on the missing persons register in Serbia, the head of the UK Department for the Suppression of General Crime, Milan Davidović, said that such data was not credible and they contained a lot of inaccurate information. However, the MUP official did not specify the exact number of missing persons in our country. So the public wondered if this number was being manipulated and if it was being hidden.
In a written statement presented to the media, Davidović stated that during the inspection it was established that 14 people, whose names are on the register of the “Tijana Jurić” Foundation, were never reported missing to the Ministry of the Interior.
– Among them is a person who, according to our findings, was in preventive detention, then one who went to Italy 20 years ago, as well as one who went to Germany 28 years ago and who was determined to live and work there. There are nine people at the same site listed as missing, but we determined that the search was stopped because their bodies were found or declared dead. Furthermore, in the meantime, 11 more listed as missing on the “Missing Serbia” website have been found, and the ads have been suspended. The site also contains two people from the criminogenic background, who are wanted by the police and who have been sentenced to several years in prison, according to the written statement of the head of the UKP Department for the Suppression of General Crime.
The declaration, among other things, states that the Ministry of the Interior takes care of all citizens of Serbia and that their safety is an absolute priority. It is added that the members of this ministry do everything possible so that all children and adults feel safe and protected, both at home and on the street.
– It is important to distinguish between leaving home and the crime of kidnapping. Kidnappings are extremely rare in our country and are resolved efficiently, promptly and without delay. Also, if the police, in cooperation with the prosecution, assess that it is necessary to publish a photo of the missing person, and it is related to the crime committed, we inevitably do it immediately and alert the public – said Davidović.
A large number of missing adult citizens are often talked about in public, which is not at all true. According to Davidović, this creates a false sense of insecurity and misleads citizens.
– When it comes to disappearances of adults, it is mainly people who left their home of their own free will and do not want to be publicly exposed in any way. Among them are insane, mentally ill people who want to leave their partners or enter marital and extramarital unions. Including such people in some kind of public record is an equal violation of their right to leave their home, as they have the absolute right to do so and the police cannot prevent them from doing so. Also, it happens that our families report our disappearance, and that we found their bodies shortly after during the search, and this is a suicide case – said Davidović.
Responding to accusations by MUP officials that the record of the “Tijana Jurić” Foundation does not contain true data, its founder Igor Jurić told “Politika” that he was very glad that someone spoke about the number of missing, at least in this way. He added that he can also agree that there is incorrect information in the foundation’s registry in the sense of whether the person they are looking for is alive or not, because their relatives often do not report the result of the registry.
– As regards the numbers that Chief Davidović is talking about in the sense that they are smaller than those in our record, I would like you to tell me what the exact number is. It is not clear to me why Serbia is one of the few countries in the world that does not publish the number of missing persons. If countries like Russia and Australia, where more than one hundred thousand people disappear annually and an average of a quarter is not found, which is the official data of their ministries, can make it public, then I do not see any problem in doing it in our country. – Jurić declared.
The founder of the Foundation added that he initiated a meeting with representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and the commissioner, and that the existence of such a registry was very specifically requested.
– I will be happier when we find ourselves in a situation in which, at the moment the Ministry of the Interior forms said registry, we close ours, if necessary, considering that the state possibilities are much greater than the possibilities of an organization that has one employee and ten volunteers working on this. to the record exclusively for a higher goal – concluded Jurić.
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