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Alessandro Ota

Alessandro Ota

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WHO WAS

Alessandro Saša Ota was born in Trieste on July 15th 1957 into a Slavic family. As a boy he attended scientific high school and took a great interest in  music which he shared with his brother. His youthful passion for photographic images accompanied him throughout his life. Photography and filming became his profession when, in 1979, he joined the state broadcaster Rai in its regional headquarters in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Saša also outside of his work looked at the real  world with a sharp spirit of observation and documented  it with great sensitivity. With a group of friends he set up the “Fotoclub 80” and popular traditions become one of his favourite subjects. He also participated in the making of two films. Around 1987 he met Milenka Rustia, who in 1990 became his wife and in the same year his son Milan was born.

Saša spoke Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian and so also for that he was  the ideal reporter to describe with images what was happening in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in 1990 when Yugoslavia began to break up. Among other things, in May 1993 he was the only videographer to record Milosevic’s declaration when he announced Serbian denial of the international community’s peace proposal. In January 1994 he completed his last mission in Mostar with the journalist Marco Luchetta and the technician Dario D’Angelo. In east Mostar, he is photographing the sad eyes of Zlatko, one of the children in the refuge which the crew had managed to enter when there is an explosion that kills them. Zlatkos survives

READ HIS STORY

  • Biography of Alessandro Ota
    taken from the Luchetta Prize website
  • History of the Rai troupe
    taken from the collection edited by Monica Andolfatto for the book Day of Memory of Journalists killed by mafias and terrorism, Rome, 2008.

THE SEARCH FOR THOSE RESPONSIBLE

(Update by Grazia Pia Attolini, 3 May 2020)

Alessandro Saša Ota and his colleagues were victims of one of the most intense  daily bombings to which East Mostar was subjected. This is the most plausible explanation  of their death. Following the attack, an investigation was opened and immediately closed.

The presence of Italian journalists and media workers in East Mostar was known, their having passed several checkpoints to reach Mostar, but the investigations did not reveal precise responsibilities regarding the intentionality of their killing by the Bosnian-Croatian forces.

RECOGNITION

  • 1994 – The Foundation created in Trieste immediately after the tragic events is dedicated to the memory of Marco Lucchetta, Alessandro Ota, Dario D’Angelo and Miran Hrovatin, a reporter from Trieste killed in Somalia together with the journalist Ilaria Alpi, has the aim of welcoming and supporting children with diseases that cannot be treated in their home countries.
  • 2004 – The section of the Marco Luchetta International Award for best reportage is dedicated to Ota. The Luchetta Prize was the initiative of the Foundation, on the tenth anniversary of the tragic deaths of the correspondents of the state broadcaster RAI, and rewards reportage that describes children’s rights being denied.
  • 2014 – A municipal garden in Trieste was dedicated to Ota, Luchetta, D’Angelo and Hrovatin.
  • Alessandro Ota’s name is included in the Memorial of Bayeux (Normandy), created on the initiative of the municipality and Reporters Sans Frontières and dedicated to reporters who died in the course of their work.
  • Alessandro Ota’s name is included in the Journalist Memorial of the Newseum in Washington which contains the faces and names of journalists killed while doing their work.
  • At the Casa del Jazz in Rome, Ota is remembered on the plaque of the innocent victims of mafias affixed at the entrance and on the Memorial Panel of Ossigeno per l’Informazione .
  • In the municipality of Mostar, a plaque placed on the site of the attack commemorates Ota, Luchetta and D’Angelo.

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