ATTACKS ON RELIGIOUS SITES AND WAR RHETORIC DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO PEACE AND STABILITY

SARAJEVO, SEPTEMBER 17 /SRNA/ – Attacks on religious sites, as well as other manifestations of hatred and war rhetoric, in no way contribute to strengthening interethnic and interreligious dialogue, nor to the establishment of peace and stability in BiH, the Embassy of the Russian Federation in BiH told SRNA regarding the increasingly frequent attacks on Serbs and Serb property in the Federation of BiH /FBiH/.

"We are deeply outraged by the news of the destruction of the Orthodox cemetery in Zenica. We expect the competent institutions to take all necessary measures so that the perpetrators are quickly identified and punished," the Russian Embassy said. The Embassy of Russia emphasized that it agrees with the reasonable reactions of officials from Republika Srpska and FBiH who condemned this crime. In FBiH, attacks on Serb returnees, their property, and their holy sites have become frequent. A procession carrying war symbols and shouting intimidating slogans,to which ritual killings of Serbs by beheading were carried out, passed through Serb returnee villages in the municipality of Bosanski Petrovac on September 14, when 30 years since the ‘liberation’ of that Krajina municipality was being marked. A few days earlier, on September 11, at the Orthodox cemetery in the village of Pečuj, two kilometers from the center of Zenica, 60 tombstones were destroyed. It has not yet been established who broke the crosses, some of which are more than 150 years old, testifying to the centuries-old presence of Serbs in those areas.