33 years ago, Slovenian journalist Ivo Štandeker was killed in Dobrinja while reporting on the siege of Sarajevo

(Patria) - On this day in Sarajevo, June 16, 1992, Ivo Štandeker, a journalist and photographer for Slovenia's Mladina, was killed in besieged Dobrinja at the age of 31.

Ivo Štandeker reported from the short Slovenian War of Independence, and then from the battlefields in Croatia. In 1992, he reported on the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, and was then seriously wounded in an artillery shell explosion in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Dobrinja. Jana Schneider, a well-known American photojournalist and reporter, was seriously injured alongside him. They spent several months in Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Štandeker was also a connoisseur of comic books and a translator from German and English. He even translated philosophical literature.

In 1992, he was posthumously awarded "for extraordinary merits in the defense of freedom and the achievement of the sovereignty of the Republic of Slovenia".

Several Slovenian journalists were among the first reporters from besieged Sarajevo. The brave Slovenian journalist Darja Lebar, who was on the team with Ivo Štandeker and Ervin Hladnik, was seriously injured at a Sarajevo intersection near the Tobacco Factory. After recovering, she became a resident of Sarajevo.

Slovenian journalists were among the bravest and, along with American journalists, suffered the most while reporting from then media-blocked Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Štandeker was wounded on a pedestrian bridge near the Dobrinja field hospital. Although attempts were made to reach the Koševo hospital, as many claim, soldiers at an aggressor checkpoint in Mojmilo did not allow it. A memorial plaque to Ivo Štandeker has been placed near the site of his injury and the hospital itself.

In his last report, Štandeker wrote a sentence that is engraved on the memorial plaque in Dobrinja, and it reflects his journalistic sensibility and attitude towards war: "I love cities and I hate it when someone attacks them." The significance of his reporting and the dissemination of truth was amplified by the fact that Mladina, for which he was reporting at the time, had an audience in the region, including Serbia.

Even after 33 years, Sarajevo remembers the brave Slovenian journalist.