STUDENT LIST CANDIDATE ON THE GENERAL STAFF COMPLEX: We must restore its protected cultural heritage status and rebuild it!

Estela Radonjić Živkov, a candidate on the Student List and former Deputy Director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, said that the former General Staff complex of buildings in Belgrade is included in the Student List’s program. She stressed that its status as a protected cultural asset must be fully and urgently restored through legal and procedural measures, followed by its reconstruction.

In an interview with today’s edition of the Nova newspaper, she said there were two possible ways to achieve this. One would be for the Constitutional Court to resume its work and annul the Serbian government’s November 2024 decision revoking the General Staff complex’s protected cultural heritage status, thereby challenging the special law adopted for the project. The other option would be for such a decision to be adopted by the Serbian Parliament.

“Regardless of which option is pursued, the heritage protection authorities will prepare a new proposal to designate the General Staff complex as an immovable cultural asset, this time of exceptional importance. In other words, its classification will be upgraded, thereby restoring its full legal protection,” Radonjić Živkov said.

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She added that a new assessment of the General Staff complex’s structural stability was necessary, given the damage it sustained during the 1999 NATO bombing. A new structural engineering design would also have to be prepared before discussions could begin on its restoration, reconstruction and future purpose, which, she stressed, must serve the public interest.

“It must be restored and probably reconstructed as well. Reconstruction is entirely permissible, given that the complex was destroyed during the bombing. Restoration is possible under all applicable conservation standards,” Radonjić Živkov said.

Conservation expert Estela Radonjić Živkov is one of the witnesses in the proceedings against Culture Minister Nikola Selaković, the ministry’s Secretary Slavica Jelača, and the acting directors of the Republic and Belgrade Institutes for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasić and Aleksandar Ivanović. They are suspected of abusing their official positions and falsifying documentation in order to strip the General Staff complex of its protected status.