Today marks 27 years since the deaths of Nikola and Marija Petrović from Gračanica, and their grandmother, who perished on May 1, 1999, in a NATO strike on a bus on the Priština-Niš main road, near Lužane.
On this day in 1999, 60 people were killed in a “Nis Express” passenger bus, which was split in half by a missile from a NATO plane while crossing a bridge in Lužane near Priština.
A memorial plaque was placed at the site of the accident in Lužane in memory of the victims. The names and surnames of 31 people, mostly of Albanian nationality, are inscribed on it, while the names of Marija, Nikola, and other perished Serbs are not listed; instead, three dots were placed.
The attack on the “Nis Express” bus was carried out on May 1 around noon, in perfectly clear weather, which means that the NATO pilots clearly saw what they were targeting.
Dragiša and Zorica Petrović from Gračanica, the parents of Marija (15) and Nikola (17), once told the media how they hope that, one day, the perpetrators of this terrible crime will be punished and that justice will be served.
As they testified, the two of them sent their children to relatives in Serbia to protect them from the NATO bombing, but fate dictated that they leave and never return. Nikola, Marija, and their grandmother Smiljana were returning from Niš to Gračanica on that fateful May 1.
Zorica heard on the radio that a NATO bomb had blown up a “Nis Express” bus and, as she emphasizes, she immediately knew that her children had perished. Still, she hoped it was not true.
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That morning I was kneading bread, preparing lunch, so that everything would be ready when they arrived; I was listening to the radio to pass the time, and then I heard that a Nis Express bus traveling to Priština had been hit. It was hit on the bridge in Lužane; the dough fell from my hands, I started to cry – Zorica recalls, adding that it is true that they were officially informed of their children’s deaths after more than 24 hours.
Dragiša had to go and identify them after seven days, and he managed to recognize them, as he says, by the small cross and chain they were wearing.
“We strongly condemn the attack on our colleague, Prof. Dr. Goran Radojev. Concerned by the increasingly frequent physical attacks on professors and students, the desecration of faculty buildings with graffiti containing hate speech, and systematic media attacks on the academic community as a whole, we draw the public’s attention to the absence of an adequate reaction from the competent institutions to these phenomena,” stated the deans of five faculties of the University of Novi Sad in a joint statement.
As they added, they particularly point to improper attempts to introduce criteria of moral-political suitability into the academic space, which collapse the already endangered autonomy of the university and call into question the survival of fundamental academic values.
“We call upon the competent authorities to take concrete measures without delay in order to protect members of the academic community, sanction the perpetrators, and preserve the basic principles of freedom, security, and dignity of educational institutions. We will consider the continued ignoring of such destructive phenomena as complicity in their promotion,” the deans’ statement reads.
The statement was signed by the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad, Srđan Rončević; the Dean of the Faculty of Economics in Subotica, Aleksandar Čučković; the Dean of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Zoran Krajišnik; the Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Subotica, Milan Trifković; and the Dean of the Faculty of Education in Sombor, Saša Marković.
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Source: Serbian Times Photo: Printscreen