Fourteen-year-old Dušan Jovanović (1983–1997) was killed on 18 October 1997 near the building where he lived, at 33 Beogradska Street. Dušan was a student at the “Vladislav Ribnikar” school, class VIII/2. His Roma background was the motive for the attack. He was assaulted by a group of youths associated with an informal skinhead subculture. According to available accounts, Dušan had gone to a nearby shop that evening, and on his way back he was physically attacked by the group and later died from his injuries.
In the court proceedings, seventeen-year-olds Milan Čujić and Ištvan Fendrik received the maximum juvenile sentences of ten years in detention. Both served around six years before being released following a decision on amnesty. Two other participants in the attack were never prosecuted.
Two memorial plaques have been placed at the site of the killing. The first was installed by the family shortly after the murder, while the second was erected by the Union of Roma of Serbia in 2007, marking the tenth anniversary of his death. The plaque was unveiled by then President of Serbia Boris Tadić.
There has also been an initiative to name the park near Slavija, known as “Mitićeva rupa,” after Dušan Jovanović. After several years of proposals and public discussion, a decision was made to name part of the park in his memory.
Following the murder, the Jovanović family moved away from the city center. After several relocations, they settled in the Orlovsko naselje neighborhood in Mirijevo. Dušan’s mother died in 2015, and his father in 2016, after long-term health problems. His sister later moved abroad, where she continues to preserve his memory.
Professor Vojin Dimitrijević, former director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, pointed to the broader context of violence against minority groups in a 2010 interview:
“Members of minority groups are victims of a culture of violence established in the 1990s. I recall the young Dušan Jovanović, killed in 1997 simply because he was Roma; the actor Dragan Maksimović, beaten to death in 2000 because he was thought to be Roma; Dejan Nebrigić, killed in Pančevo in 1999 after threats he received as a gay and peace activist; and Živorad Šišković, a sixty-year-old boxing coach who lost his life in 2002 while trying to protect a Chinese citizen from a group of fans who targeted him as racially different.”
