EXTERMINATION OF THE SERB PEOPLE - JOŠANICA ATTACK’S GOAL

FOČA, DECEMBER 14 /SRNA/ – The goal of the attack on Jošanica near Foča, which murdered 56 residents, was the extermination of the Serb people, exactly as ordered by Muslim commanders from Goražde, said Viktor Nuždić, Acting Director of the Republika Srpska Research Centre of War, War Crimes and Tracing Missing Persons.

Today, Nuždić paid tribute to the Jošanica victims and recalled that on St. Nicholas Day in 1992, Serb children and elderly people were massacred, and 11 married couples were killed. He stated that this clearly shows that the objective of the attack on Jošanica was the extermination of the Serb population. “Even today, the belittling and harassment of the Jošanica victims continues, through statements by certain Bosniak politicians who have the audacity or madness to label children aged two and a half, ten, or nine years as aggressors and legitimate military targets, calling those who carried out these brutal crimes heroes,” Nuždić said. According to him, this is because there has been no punishment and justice, as has often been the case when Serb victims are involved, arrived too late, despite the fact that everything has been documented both by the Ministry of Interior and by the Centre he heads. He noted that more than 30 years had to pass before the Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment, after which the Court of BiH confirmed it and the trial is now underway. “Of course, past practice does not give us much reason to have excessive hope for the success of this judicial process, but at the same time, from this sacred place, I call on all survivors to once again find the strength to testify in this case, so that we do not allow Jošanica to be forgotten,” Nuždić emphasized. He pointed out the obligation to nurture a culture of remembrance and memorialization, but stressed that the judicial aspect must not be neglected. Jošanica is a place of great pain and suffering where, on St. Nicholas Day in 1992, 56 residents were brutally killed and about ten hamlets were erased from the face of the earth. This was emphasized today at the commemoration marking 33 years since this horrific crime committed by Muslim forces. The victims were killed in an extremely cruel manner. The youngest victim was two-year-old Danka Tanović; among the murdered were seven-year-old Dražen and his ten-year-old sister Dragana. The oldest victim was ninety-year-old Rade Pljevaljčić.