33 YEARS SINCE THE ATROCIOUS MASSACRE OF SERBS IN JABUKA

FOČA, JULY 23 /SRNA/ – A memorial service was held today at the Božovac City Cemetery in Foča for 43 Serb victims from Jabuka near Foča, who perished in a heinous massacre committed by Muslim forces on this day in 1992.

This was the first mass killing of Serbs from Foča, where even elderly women, girls, and children were not spared. During the attack, 18 hamlets of the former Jabuka local community, which after the Dayton Peace Accords became part of the Federation of BiH /FBiH/, were burned down, and the Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord was mined and completely destroyed. The youngest victim was thirteen-year-old boy Novo Elez. Among those killed were blind elderly woman Milka Kovač, immobile Zorka Simović, a Partisan veteran from the Second World War and hero of the Battle of Sutjeska and the Srem Front Miloš Vuković, elderly couples Milovan and Marija Skakavac, Miloš and Anđelka Trivun, Ostoja and Sofija Ćosović, Drago and Joka Stojanović. The president of the Association of Displaced Persons from Jabuka, Ljubiša Simović, reminded that the perpetrators were led by their own neighbors, Muslims from Jabuka. "In a well-organized action, which was the first and strongest in the Foča municipality area, they killed, destroyed, and burned everything, and unfortunately, they even abused the dead victims, cutting off heads and stabbing them with knives," Simović, who is also a witness to the crime, told reporters. Simović has been fighting for decades for this crime to have a judicial epilogue. "Recently, representatives from the BiH Prosecutor's Office were here, taking additional statements from witnesses, supplementing the case, and we hope that by the end of the year an indictment for the Jabuka massacre will be raised," Simović emphasized. Witness Gordan Mastilo said that all they can do is remember the victims so they are not forgotten, even though nothing is being done to punish the perpetrators. "They were not a military target or objective; it was the civilian population that perished, mostly the elderly, women, and children. All traces of life in Jabuka were erased; everything is deserted," Mastilo stressed. He noted that many witnesses have died, as have many perpetrators of this monstrous crime, but that some satisfaction would be if at least some sentence were handed down. At the Božovac cemetery in Foča, where after the Dayton Agreement and the exodus of the remaining Serbs from Jabuka the remains were reburied, relatives of the victims and municipal delegations lit candles and laid flowers. The people from Jabuka will gather again this year in their homeland on the Feast of the Transfiguration, celebrating the patron saint's day of their church, which was rebuilt in 2005 with donations from the faithful.