The Tašmajdan park memorial to the victims of the 23 April 1999 NATO bombing includes

names, ages, and job descriptions of each person killed in the attack. At the bottom of the
memorial there is a photo of the building taken just after the attack during rescue operations.
The NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters occurred on 23 April 1999,
during the Kosovo War. It formed part of NATO's aerial campaign against the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, and severely damaged the Belgrade headquarters of Radio Television of Serbia
(RTS). Other radio and electrical installations throughout the country were also attacked.
Sixteen employees of RTS died when a single NATO missile hit the building. Many were
trapped for days, only communicating over mobile phones. The television station began re-
transmitting 24 hours later from a secret location.NATO Headquarters justified the bombing with
two arguments; firstly, that it was necessary "to disrupt and degrade the command, control and
communications network" of the Yugoslav Armed Forces, and secondly, that the RTS
headquarters was a dual-use object which "was making an important contribution to the
propaganda war which orchestrated the campaign against the population of Kosovo".The BBC
reported that the station was targeted because of its role in Belgrade's propaganda campaign;
RTS had been broadcasting Serb nationalist propaganda, which demonised ethnic minorities
and legitimised Serb atrocities against them.

A new building has since been built next to the bomb-damaged one, and a monument has been
erected to those who were killed in the attack. The murder of British TV-presenter Jill Dando
three days later on Monday 26 April 1999 could be linked to the bombing; a Serb claimed to
have killed her in revenge. With the bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters
NATO recognized that opponents' media is considered a weapon during the war.

While giving a speech at the Overseas Press Club sixtieth anniversary dinner, held on Thursday
evening 22 April 1999 EST at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City, U.S. envoy to Yugoslavia
Richard Holbrooke reacted to the NATO's bombing of the RTS headquarters almost
immediately after it took place: "Eason Jordan told me just before I came up here that while
we've been dining tonight, the air strikes hit Serb TV and took out the Serb television, and at
least for the time being they’re off the air. That is an enormously important event, if it is in fact as
Eason reported it, and I believe everything CNN tells me. If, in fact, they're off the air even
temporarily, as all of you know, one of the three key pillars, along with the security forces and
the secret police, have been at least temporarily removed. And it is an enormously important
and, I think, positive development."

Controversy

A report conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
entitled "Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO
Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" stated:
Insofar as the attack actually was aimed at disrupting the communications network, it was
legally acceptable ... NATO’s targeting of the RTS building for propaganda purposes was an
incidental (albeit complementary) aim of its primary goal of disabling the Serbian military
command and control system and to destroy the nerve system and apparatus that keeps
Milošević in power.

In regards to civilian casualties, it further stated that though they were, "unfortunately high, they
do not appear to be clearly disproportionate."
In the case Markovic v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights found that the government of
Italy had not violated human rights. However, in 2002, Dragoljub Milanović, the general
manager of RTS, was sentenced to 10 years in prison because he had not ordered the workers
in the building to evacuate, despite knowing that the building would be bombed.