INSTITUTIONS MUST IDENTIFY AND PROSECUTE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR INCIDENTS

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 17 /SRNA/ - The president of the Homeland Association "Petrovačka Cesta" Boban Lipić said that the competent institutions of the Federation of BiH /FBiH/ must identify and prosecute both the participants of the incident that disturbed Serbian returnees in Bosanski Petrovac and the vandals who desecrated the Orthodox cemetery near Zenica.

"This process must also actively involve representatives of the international community, who allegedly advocate for multiethnicity and coexistence in BiH," Lipić told SRNA. He warned that intimidation of the already small number of Serbian returnees in FBiH could lead to their permanent departure from their homes, thereby fulfilling the wartime plan of the Muslim wartime leadership for ethnic cleansing and the permanent expulsion of Serbs. "Serb representatives in the joint institutions of BiH must demand from the authorities of FBiH and the Council of Ministers greater protection for Serb returnees in FBiH, as well as a thematic session in the BiH Parliament dedicated to this issue," Lipić emphasized. A column carrying wartime flags of the so-called Army of BiH and shouting "Allahu Akbar"-the same chants accompanying ritual executions of Serbs by beheading—passed through Serb returnee villages in Bosanski Petrovac municipality, where, according to the organizers, they marked 30 years since the "liberation" of that Krajina municipality on September 14. Bosanski Petrovac is one of 13 Krajina municipalities in western BiH that were attacked by units of the HVO and the Fifth Corps of the so-called Army of BiH. For crimes committed in that area against Serbian soldiers and civilians, proceedings are underway before the Court of BiH against Fifth Corps commander Atif Dudaković and 15 other commanders. The indictment charges them with the killing of more than 300 Serbs, most of them civilians, as well as the destruction of numerous Serbian villages. At the Orthodox cemetery in the village of Pečuj, two kilometers from the center of Zenica, 60 headstones were recently destroyed, some more than 150 years old. The vandalistic desecration of Serbian graves in Pečuj is the latest in a series of attacks on Serbs and their property in FBiH.