1999 Photo Contest, Children's Award, Individual awards
Photographer

Srdjan Ilic

The Associated Press

01 August, 1998

A Serb policeman offers water to an elderly ethnic Albanian villager in Kosovo. The old man is the only resident who remained in Glodjane after Serb police retook the village from members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Clashes between ethnic Albanians, seeking independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo, and the Serbian security forces, determined to suppress the movement, took place on a civilian as well as a military level. The protests were against increasing ethnic violence. At least 20 people - 16 Albanians and four Serbs - had been killed the previous weekend. Srdjan Ilic: 'As an Associated Press photographer in Belgrade, I covered the conflicts in the former Yugoslav republics right from the beginning: in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as the 1999 NATO-led air campaign and the fall of Milosevic. I was wounded three times in the course of my work, once in Slovenia and twice during the conflict in Kosovo, where this picture was taken. Binak Rama, the ethnic Albanian on the left, was taken to a Serbian police station in nearby Djakovica. He was released after questioning.' (World Press Photo retrospective Children's Jury exhibition, 2003)

About the photographer

Srdjan Ilic

Srdjan Ilic was born in Belgrade in 1966. From 1984, he worked for newspapers and magazines published by Politika, the largest printing house in the Balkans. In 1990 he joined th...

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