Sarajevo Journalist Rajko Zivkovic of Oslobodjenje Dies
The journalist who stayed in the newsroom during the siege and sold the paper on the street was a secretary of the Serb Civic Council. Funeral is Monday at noon.
Journalist Rajko Zivkovic, a founder of the Serb Civic Council, an organization of Sarajevo Serbs that has advocated for a Bosnia and Herzegovina of equal peoples since the war, died in Sarajevo on October 16. According to the portal Klix he was 74. The funeral will be held on Monday, October 19, at 12 p.m. at the Vlakovo city cemetery.
Who was Rajko Zivkovic?
Born in 1952, he belonged to the generation of journalists who, under editor Kemal Kurspahic, brought Sarajevo’s Oslobodjenje to the top of the Yugoslav press in the late 1980s. The paper was then named the best daily in the country by Slobodna Dalmacija, and in 1992 it won a newspaper of the year award in Britain.
During the siege of Sarajevo, Zivkovic did not leave the newsroom. He came to work from his apartment in Vojnicko polje, near the front line, exposed to sniper fire and shelling. Besides writing and editing, he helped distribute the paper, sold wartime issues of Oslobodjenje on Sarajevo’s streets and drove reporters and photographers to the field.
When the news agency Onasa was founded during the war, Mehmed Memica Husic chose him as his first associate.
The Serb Civic Council and Kazani
In March 1994, Zivkovic was among the founders of the Serb Civic Council, which brought together Sarajevo Serbs committed to a shared state. The council was assembled by Mirko Pejanovic, then a member of the wartime Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Zivkovic served as its secretary and a member of its leadership, and in 2022 as vice president. After the war he wrote less and took on other professional duties, but according to Avaz he never fully left journalism.
He regularly came to Kazani, a site where civilians were killed in besieged Sarajevo and where he himself was taken during the war. The Kazani crimes were committed by members of the 10th Mountain Brigade of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, commanded by Musan Topalovic Caco. By 2022, 14 members of that army had been convicted for them, with sentences ranging from ten months to six years in prison.
At the commemoration of Remembrance Day for the murdered Serb citizens at Kazani in November 2022, Zivkovic spoke about the duty to come to that place and pay respects to the dead. He also told what happened to him in the war:
“I remember Caco from before the war. During the war they picked me up once too and brought me here, and I was lucky that Caco knew me. He asked me what I was doing here, and when I told him his men had brought me, he said I should go back.”
Klix carried the statement at the time. It shows that a journalist from Oslobodjenje was among those taken away, and that a personal acquaintance with the commander allowed him to return.
Words of farewell
On social media, businessman and former senior SDP BiH official Nijaz Skenderagic said goodbye to Zivkovic. On Facebook he highlighted his kindness, loyalty to friends and devotion to his family:
“With deep sadness in our hearts we say goodbye to our Zika, a man who with his whole being remained faithful and devoted to his Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Physician Dragan Stevanovic said Zivkovic will be remembered as a persistent fighter for Bosnia and Herzegovina and for the equality of all its citizens and peoples, and also as a journalist with a sharp mind and pen.
