PODRINJE IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF MINIMIZING SERB VICTIMS

SREBRENICA, JANUARY 16 /SRNA/ - Podrinje is the best example of insulting and minimizing the Serb victims of genocide, said the president of the Organization of Families of Captured and Killed Soldiers and Missing Civilians of Srebrenica, Branimir Kojić.

Reminding that today is 32 years since the Muslim crime against the Serb people in Skelani, Kojić asked how else to call, if not genocide, what happened in a place where death was spread by snipers, where people sought salvation across the bridge to Serbia. "How else do you call but genocide what Cvetko Ristić experienced that day, who lost his father, mother, sister and brother? He still hasn't found his brother's bones and no one has been held accountable for that," Kojić told SRNA. He also recalled the fate of the Dimitrijević family, which he said was nothing more than genocide, because on this day the sons of the mother of Milica Dimitrijević, the Serbian heroine, were killed just because they wanted freedom like every other child. Kojić emphasized that little Aleksandar was only five years old, his brother Radisav was 12, and his brother Slaviša, who was wounded, was 11 years old. He noted that the same people who attacked Bjelovac in the municipality of Bratunac a month earlier, then Kravica on Christmas Day, continued the slaughter in Skelani with the desire to kill and expel all the Orthodox from these areas. He asked if it was possible that no one was held accountable for this, as well as why no one was held accountable for the death of Gordana Sekulić, who was killed by a bullet in the back of the head while she was holding her son Đorđe in her arms. "What do you call it, the judge of the court of injustice in Bosnia and Herzegovina?" Kojić asks. According to him, Serbs do not expect justice from such a court, but they count on the fact that their representatives at all levels of government will make a decision on non-recognition of such a court, because this is anything but justice and fairness. "While Serbs are sentenced to draconian punishments for slapping, our executioners walk freely, sit in high positions and get pays for this from the system of Republika Srpska, which they call the most derogatory names every day," Kojić noted. He believes that every Serb must be protected from the Court of BiH as long as that institution insults and minimizes Serb victims because this is nothing but ethnic cleansing and rewriting of history. At the Central Monument for 305 martyred Serb civilians and soldiers in Skelani near Srebrenica, a memorial service will be held today and honor will be paid to the murdered Serbs from this place and neighboring villages, 69 of whom died on that date 32 years ago in an attack by Muslim forces. Continuing the ethnic cleansing of central Podrinje and the destruction of everything Serbian, which began in April 1992, strong Muslim forces of several thousand soldiers from Srebrenica, under the command of Naser Orić, attacked the Serb villages around Skelani at dawn on January 16, 1993. Two thirds of the victims were civilians, including several children. 165 locals were wounded. Out of the 30 prisoners, half did not survive the torture in the Srebrenica casemates, and four of them are still listed as missing. Residents sought salvation by retreating towards the border bridge towards Bajina Bašta in Serbia, while some tried to save their lives by swimming across the Drina river.