Posted on 08/05/2014 11:16:28 PM PDT by Ravnagora
The 19th anniversary of Serb exodus from Croatia in Operation Storm was marked in Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS) in Bosnia on Monday [August 4, 2014].
The victims of the continuation of the military operation that took place in the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as Operation Mistral, were also remembered.
In St. Marko's Church in Belgrade, Bishop Jovan of Slavonia headed the memorial service honoring slaughtered Serb civilians and soldiers. The memorial was co-served by priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In the speech delivered after the service, Bishop Jovan said that nobody can say that they seized Lika, Banija and Kordun from Serbs for as long as Serbian holy sites still stand there and called on Serbs to return to the territories.
In addition to several hundred banished Serbs and Serb refugees from Croatia, the service was attended by Serbian Interior Minister Nebojša Stefanović, Belgrade Deputy Mayor Andreja Mladenović and presidents of associations of Serb refugees and Serbs banished from Croatia.
A group of refugees came to attend the service in traditional Serbian folk costumes and some of them wore banners with messages calling for faster exhumation and identification of victims' remains and for return of property and other Serb rights in Croatia.
To mark the anniversary of Serb exodus in Operations Storm and Mistral, a memorial service was held in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Banja Luka, RS, after which wreaths were laid at the local cemetery to honor the victims.
Addressing reporters after the commemoration, adviser to the RS minister of labour and veterans' affairs General Milan Torbica said that Operation Storm aimed to conduct an ethnic cleansing in the Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK).
Drawing from the experience of Serbs from the Republic of Serb Krajina, we need to protect the RS, he said.
President of the Documentation and Information Center Veritas Savo Štrbac noted that the authorities are still looking for 1,900 out of the 7,000 Serbs slaughtered during the civil war in Croatia in the period 1991-1995.
He underscored that Operation Storm conducted by the Croatian armed forces has all the characteristics of genocide and expressed the hope that the ruling of the International Court of Justice will confirm this in late 2014 or early 2015.
During the military operation Storm in the territory of the RSK in Croatia, which was under UN protection at the time, around 2.000 Serbs were killed or reported missing, among whom 1.192 or 62 percent were civilians. In the continuation of this action in neighboring Bosnia, entitled Operation Mistral, the Croatian armed forces, in conjunction with the Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Muslim Army, killed another 655 and expelled about 125.000 Serb residents from 13 Bosnian municipalities.
Aside from the verbal condemnation of the crime, the UN Security Council did not pronounce any sanctions for Croatia. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia established that joint criminal enterprise was committed in Operation Storm, the aim of which was ethnic cleansing of Serbs, but it acquitted two Croatian generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, of the crimes so nobody was held responsible for the crimes to date.
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Ping.
It was an awful crime, and not the last of it’s kind unfortunately.
What is it with the Serbs and the Jews? Good people but the msm and the nwo have turned against them.
Bad PR and oil money combined with the corrupt Clinton WH were too much.
I won’t defend genocide, but the Croats had the foresight to understand they could be in Ukraine’s shoes today if they hadn’t clearly defined their territory. Just as in the division of India and Pakistan, I’m sure plenty of Croats were displaced from Serbia as well.
We never should have gotten anywhere near the Balkans but Clinton wanted to be a war time president and to distract from his crap at home
Having done two tours there, I can tell you that the serbs weren’t the ones who worried me. The croats and muslims were straight up savages.
I have no horse in this race anyway, but I’m sure Bosnians and croats will tell you the same thing about Serbs. I’d guess the truth is somerwhere in the middle...
Most people don’t even know why that war started. I can say it all in one word...moslems.
I thought the reason was much more secular: each group wanted clear claims to their territory. Croats are mostly Catholic, Serbs are mostly Orthodox, and Bosnians are mostly Muslim; the Serb/Croat conflict didn’t involve Islam at all.
Moslems wanted to carve out their own land, Serbs said no way it’s ours, and Croatia took advantage of the resulting confusion in a nutshell.
I’ve heard that before as well from victims of both Croats and Muslims.....and I believe my ears and eyes.
It was a continuation of what happened during WWII.
At one time all were Orthodox Christians. It has always been about religion...especially in the Balkans.
As I recall, the Croats reacted first (and prevented the protracted war with Serbia that resulted in Bosnia); I believe Germany aided them quickly.
“It was a continuation of what happened during WWII.”
While I see all kinds of references to the Grand Mufti and Croatian Muslim troops on this site, the fact is that the Ustasha (a Croatian nationalist movement) was hardly Muslim (most Croats aren’t). It was a continuation of WWI in the sense that peoples who were “given” to Serbia saw that as an affront to their national identity; they didn’t see being owned by Serbia as any better (and in some cases worse) than being owned by Austria-Hungary.
Keeps you on your toes I guess! ;-)
Both are descendants of the same south slavic tribes that fell into different spheres of religiousity.
But no, they were not "all Orthodox" -- unless by "Orthodox" you mean the united Church before 1054. If you mean that, then I agree with you. If you mean Eastern Orthodoxy specifically in terms of following the Greek rite, then historically you are wrong -- from a Christian point of view that doesn't matter, yes, but historically, to be very specific, the South slavs were converted by missionaries both from Byzantium and from Rome -- in the 870s both the "proto Croats" and "proto Serbs" were converted by west and by east respectively.
however, over the next few centuries, Croatia united with the Hungarians and then Austrians while Serbia fell under Byzantine and then Ottoman rule.
They are still similar, but the nation is split by 1000 years of history.
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