Balkan Route Award thirty years after the death of three Rai journalists in Mostar

Thirty years have passed since January 28, 1994, the day they lost their lives Marco Luchetta, Alessandro Saša Ota and Dario D’Angelo, the three journalists from the Rai office in Trieste killed in Eastern Mostar by a grenade while filming a report on unnamed children. Since then, the tragedy has become the symbol of journalism that denounces the removal of inconvenient truths, such as the violated rights of minors, forgotten fratricidal wars, the migrations of people fleeing from conflicts or from areas affected by disasters and climate change.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the three journalists, the Luchetta Ota D’Angelo Hrovatin Foundation remembers them with the awarding of Balkan Route Award. A first edition dedicated to a theme that sees Trieste as a gateway to Europe for thousands of people, most of whom come from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, who are often victims of violence and torture along the Route , rejections and arbitrary restrictions. Two days were dedicated to the new award and to the memory of the tragedy that struck not only the professionals, their families and colleagues in the public service, but an entire city, which rallied around them in the days of mourning and which it has not forgotten.
The winners of the Balkan Route Award
For the Press section the Prize was awarded to Linda Caglionifreelance journalist who for Altreconomia collected the testimony of Noureddine, a Moroccan father who lost his son Yasser on the Balkan Route in May 2020. The family, however, was only able to celebrate his funeral in November 2022, after a complicated and expensive bureaucratic process for repatriation of the body from Croatia. Even today, Noureddine fights to know the precise circumstances that led to the death of his son.

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For the Images section have been selected Giulia Bosetti and Eleonora Tundo Of Presadiretta, Rai 3, who with the investigative trip to the border between Bosnia and Croatia documented how the border control technologies financed by the European Union work and what their impact is on the lives of migrants fleeing on the Balkan Route. Helicopters with thermal cameras that track people up to 10 kilometers away, equipment that even detects heartbeats, breathing detectors: millions of euros of investments to transform Europe into an impenetrable fortress.
The two winning reports were chosen from among the thirty applications received by the jury chaired by the journalist Maria Concetta Mattei, director of the School of Journalism of Perugia.

The prize will be awarded on the weekend of January 27-28 Miela Theater in Trieste. Luchetta, Ota and D’Angelo will also be officially remembered in Mostar on Tuesday 30 January in an event promoted by the Italian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the presence of a delegation made up of the victims’ families and some journalists, who will also be received by the municipality of Mostar.