Slovenian war correspondent honoured by Sarajevo posthumously
Sarajevo, 5 March - Ivo Štandeker, a Slovenian journalist killed while reporting from besieged Sarajevo at the start of the war in Bosnia in 1992, will be posthumously honoured by the city of Sarajevo with the Citation of the City of Sarajevo.
Ljubljana
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
An exhibition of photos taken by Slovenian war correspondents Ivo Štandeker (1961-1992) and Alojz Krivograd (1964-1992) during the war in Bosnia at the KUD France Prešeren cultural centre in 2012.
Photo: Nebojša Tejić/STA
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
The memorial plaque in memory of Slovenian war correspondent from Sarajevo Ivo Štandeker (1961-1992).
Photo: Slovenian Journalist Association
File photo
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
The memorial plaque in memory of Slovenian war correspondent from Sarajevo Ivo Štandeker (1961-1992).
Photo: Slovenian Journalist Association
File photo
The Citation is conferred on Bosnian or foreign citizens, companies and organisations for their contribution to Sarajevo's development in a number of fields.
Štandeker is considered one of the finest and most critical Slovenian reporters from the 1990s.
He was wounded during the Serb shelling of the Sarajevo borough of Dobrinja on 16 June 1992 and died a few hours later in a hospital in Pale.
Also wounded alongside Štandeker was US photojournalist Jane Schneider, with whom he had wanted to get to a spot from where they could take photos of a nearby hill where the Serb troops were stationed.
A decision to honour Štandeker (1961-1992), war correspondent for the magazine Mladina, has been taken by the city council, a Slovenian association from Sarajevo said on its Facebook page.
A memorial plaque to Štandeker was unveiled at the site where he was wounded in 1997, and he was also posthumously honoured in 1992 with the Order of Freedom, the highest state decoration in Slovenia.
The Slovenian Cultural Society Cankar in Sarajevo said that in his reports from the besieged city, Štandeker sympathised with the locals.
It quoted his statement "I love cities and I hate it if they get attacked", which is inscribed on the memorial plaque.
During the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia, Štandeker also reported from the besieged Croatian cities of Vukovar and Dubrovnik.