04.08.2021.

President Vučić: There will be no more “Storms“, that is the pledge we have made

The Day of Remembrance of the killed and expelled Serbs during Operation Storm which was carried out in 1995 by the Croatian armed formations, was marked tonight in the suburb of Zemun called Busije, which was established by the exiles who came to Serbia 26 years ago.

Besides President of the Republic of Serbia and the Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, the event was also attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Nebojša Stefanović, PhD, and the Chief of the Serbian Armed Forces General Staff, General Milan Mojsilović.

The Serbian member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, the President of Republika Srpska, Željka Cvijanović, and the five surviving Jasenovac camp prisoners also paid tribute to the victims of Operation Storm. His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Mr. Porfirije and the archbishops served the mass for the victims.

According to the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, by marking the Day of Remembrance of the killed and expelled Serbs during Operation Storm, we remind ourselves of what happened in August 1995, of the terrible pogrom, expulsion of more than 250,000 Serbs, exodus and ethnic cleansing, but we also remind ourselves of who we are, what we are, where we come from and where we are going.

“We are talking about columns of refugees on tractors, the exodus and the murders on Petrovačka cesta, which have become part of our identity and about someone's clear intention to expel all Serbs from Croatia," Vučić said.

He added that Jasenovac and Jadovno camps, the Prebilovci massacre, every pit, hammer and dagger used to kill Serbs as part of the same policy - the extermination of Serbs, 50 years earlier, had been built into our identity forever.

“We have learned that ‘history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme’. Today, we are marking one of its rhymes, the one where, 50 years later, the word ‘hammer’ rhymed with ‘bullet’, ‘dagger’ rhymed with ‘bomb’, ‘extermination’ with ‘expulsion’", the President of Serbia said.

We are marking, he said, the words of the Ustaša Minister of Justice, who said in 1941 that Serbs would either kindly remove themselves from their homeland, or be expelled by force, rhyming with Tuđman's words uttered in 1995 saying that Serbs should be hit so hard as to practically disappear.

And the Serbs, he pointed out, did practically disappear from Croatia, they were evicted, expelled, banished, at least from the Croatian point of view.

"Croatia is now celebrating the Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day. Victory over whom? Over the good and modest people, citizens of Knin, Vrgin most, Dvor, Kostajnica, over honest farmers who used to live in the villages of Lika, Dalmatia, Banija, Kordun", President Vučić pointed out.

Certainly not the one, he says, that Nikola Tesla was referring to, the man whose 91 family members were killed by the Ustaša, 14 of which in Jasenovac concentration camp, and whose monument in Gospić was blown up with explosives in 1992.

“For us, these are not just large numbers of victims. We will never forget the endless columns of tractors driven by boys who barely escaped a bullet, bomb or dagger. The images engraved in our memories and the eternal foundations of our identity are mothers clinging to their babies in fear that the persecutors will suddenly appear and finish their long-planned bloody job", said Vučić.

The images of those columns of refugees, he said, are still alive.

And the world and international justice, Vučić pointed out, said what they had to say about all that.

He noted that in 2011, the Hague Tribunal had found Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač guilty of participating in a joint criminal enterprise led by Tuđman, sentenced Gotovina to 24 years and Markač to 18 years in prison.

"However, only a year later, the Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber acquitted them of all charges. So much about international justice, about law, about justice for us Serbs", said Vučić.

He thanked everyone for coming to the central event in Busije tonight, thus showing how much we love our people and that we will not forget the things that the Krajina Serbs had to go through.

President Vučić said that we should not expect the world to recognize our victims, and to those who are trying to rewrite history in the region he said that we would protect our country and people, that there would be no more "Storms" or "Flashes" and that this was a pledge that we had made and that we would keep.

"We will never get international recognition of our victims, no one will cry for Serbian children. Not even for the Serbian boy who was walking in a refugee column when he was killed on Petrovačka cesta. They will never say that a crime was committed against you in Jasenovac," he emphasized, addressing those present, especially the Jasenovac survivors.

He said that this should not be expected from anyone.

"They will never say that Serbs were killed. The only truth for them is that Serbs stick out, that they are disobedient, unwavering and defiant, and that they do not need them. Those who stick out must not stay. "Never expect anyone’s apology or repentance for the crimes against Serbs," Vučić pointed out.

He said that he partially understood that, having in mind how we had treated the victims ourselves, they had often apologized for others committing crimes against them.

"I am proud that Serbia has matured, that it has a new generation that wants to keep its Serbian head up, talk about the crime against our people, point to the crime of others, and not apologize for the crimes against us," he added.

According to Vučić, as long as he is the president of Serbia, he will not apologize to those who killed tens and hundreds of thousands of Serbs.

"I want to talk to them about peace, but I will not trample on the killed Serbs, on the people of Krajina whose only guilt is being Serbs. I will not allow anyone in Serbia to trample on those who protected the Serbian name and surname," he said.

According to Vučić, history has never been rewritten like today.

"Those who provoked the Second World War, who killed hundreds of thousands of people in the region, lecture us about being aggressors and committing genocide. They go to the cradles of Nazism sending messages of freedom. Do you think you can scare us? And amidst all of this, you cannot hear a bad word or a threat from us. We do not wish anything bad for anyone, we are only saying that we will protect our country and our people, that there will be no more "Storms" or "Flashes" and that is the pledge we have made and that we will keep," he said.

Vučić said he was glad that every year more and more Serbs come to pay tribute to the victims, that they grow prouder each year of their country and the Serbian nation.

"After everything that happened, Serbia has stood up and it will continue to extend the hand of partnership and cooperation to Croatia and everyone else," the President said.

"We will extend the hand of partnership to today's Croatia and everyone else, realizing that people of this area share a common fate. Everyone will interpret the past in their own way for a long time, but life cannot be stopped," the President of Serbia emphasized.

According to him, Serbia is and will be proud of its history, but also of projects that ensure a successful future and enable Serbia to be a reliable protector of the Serbian people - that pogroms, exoduses, Storms, Flashes, March 17, etc. will never happen again.

"After many decades, a strong Serbia has become the master of its own destiny," Vučić said.

He referred to the fate of Ljuban Jednak, a Serb from Glina, a sole survivor of the Glina massacre in which 2,000 Serbs were killed at the end of July and the beginning of August 1941.

"He was the object of a devil's ceremony in which the Ustaša first slaughtered people and then forced them to sing, he was lying in a pool of blood of the slaughtered, who were then loaded onto trucks and thrown into a pit. He was the only survivor of that massacre in the church in Glina. He continued to live in Glina, until August 1995, when his neighbour told him - run away, Ljuban, they will skin you alive, because he had survived. That is how he joined the refugee column," Vučić said.

He says that, two years later, Jednak died in Serbia, which kept silent about it, and that he is still ashamed of Serbia being ashamed of such people.

It was ashamed of its Krajina refugees and closed the roads so that others would not see them, as if there had been a reason for us to be ashamed of the tears of our people, children and the elderly, President Vučić said.

"We hid from ourselves and the world that Ljuban Jednak had died. He had survived two pogroms, and after everything that had befallen him, he did not hate anyone. We failed to bury him with full honours, but even that would not have been enough. Our identity was buried with him then, due to our shameless forgetfulness. It must never happen again," said Vučić.

According to him, we must no longer close our eyes to the crimes which were the downfall of humanity, because not only was Croatia left without Serbs then, but every normal person was left without a large part of their soul.

The President emphasized that it was a crime against ourselves to keep silent about such crimes - a crime against all living Serbs and their future.

He says that people live in oblivion with their heads bowed, afraid of themselves and others, and that there is no forgiveness in oblivion.

That is why we have to fight for peace and protect the children in cradles, and there are a lot of them here in Busije, he said.

"This Serbia has said loud and clear and has enough strength and wisdom to clearly and unequivocally confirm that there will be no more Storms. Serbia has stood up after everything that had happened, and it would not have stood up if it did not have the Krajina heart. Serbia that remembers will repay the debt it owes to Ljuban, to its memory and identity. Every nation has the right to show everyone its most beautiful face, the face of Ljuban Jednak, a face without a shred of hatred".

Vučić adds that, thanks to Jednak, we have erased oblivion and that no one can undo that anymore, and that today's Serbia must be based on identity and the culture of remembrance.

That is why monuments have been erected to Stefan Nemanja, Stefan Lazarević, King Petar the First, Gavrilo Pincip, heroes of Košare and others, Vučić added.

Addressing the Krajina Srbs, he said that their children were safe in Serbia and that the Serbs had made a vow to take care of them.

"Serbia is the mother, not a stepmother, Serbia remembers, long live Serbia," Vučić said.

His Holiness Porfirije, the Serbian Patriarch, said tonight in Busije, that we should pray for all the innocent people who had died in the terrible days of August 1995, but also for all those who had suffered in Croatia before that, and that we must not forget, but as Christians we must forgive.

"We do not need self-proclaimed peacekeepers as mediators, because they are often guided by interests unknown to us. Under the guise of peacekeeping, they often impose on us formulas of our misunderstandings with others, as linguistic and eternally defining prisons. In that way, they do not only help create unbridgeable gaps but make them even deeper," said Porfirije.

Tonight in Busije, the Serbian member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, called on all Serbs, wherever they lived, to gather around the successful policy of President Aleksandar Vučić so that Serbian people would not have to form columns again and slide into oblivion.

"Therefore, it is important that Serbia and the Serbian people understand that our future depends on the strength of our negotiators and that there is no reason to diminish that strength at a time when issues of our freedom and future are being resolved," Dodik said at the commemoration of the victims of Operation Storm, the largest exodus since the Second World War.

Dodik said that Serbs should gather around the idea of the "Serbian world" and its values, and not “give up on it just because someone thinks it is decadent”.

"The Serbian world is a value designed to gather Serbs around religion, Patron Saint’s Day, language and script, and our greatest value is that Serbs are a good people," said Dodik.

TANJUG