Radislava Dada Vujasinović was born on February 10, 1964 in Čapljina, near Mostar in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina, then a part of Yugoslavia. Dada worked as a reporter for the news magazine "Duga." She covered the war in the former Yugoslavia from its inception, and frequently visited the front lines, including Sarajevo while it was under siege.
In 1992, Dada announced that she would no longer report from battle fields because she could not bear writing about the destruction of cities and the killing of children. She returned to Belgrade and started reporting on politics. One of her most famous articles is a piece about the notorious Željko Ražnatović, aka Arkan, in which she describes how a criminal was promoted to a national prophet.
Dada was found dead in her apartment on April 8, 1994. The police originally ruled it “suicide by hunting rifle,” but the evidence clearly disputes this. She was active the day before and was busy making plans for the future.
In January 2009 the District Prosecutor in Belgrade instructed police to gather the evidence based on ballistics expert Vlada Kostić’s expertise, who determined that Dada’s wounds could not have been self-inflicted.
We demand that Serbia ’s judiciary undertake a thorough and intensive investigation into the still unresolved murder of Dada Vujasinovic. It has been nearly 18 years since this high-profile assassination took place, and we are left in a judicial vacuum, without suspects, without any specific and well-articulated judicial process.
The situation is both agonizing and ultimately untenable for Dada’s family and friends, and for human rights advocates around the world. As Serbia gradually moves closer to EU membership, we believe that the appropriate adjudication of this and other wartime crimes and cover-ups will ultimately benefit the ascension process and all the citizens of Serbia and of the former Yugoslavia.
