DODIK: ANNIVERSARY OF EXODUS OF SERBS FROM SRBOBRAN IS NOT JUST A DATE, BUT TRAGIC FATE OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 11 /SRNA/ - The anniversary of the exodus of around 9,000 Serbs from Donji Vakuf, formerly known as Srbobran, and the surrounding areas is one of the most difficult and painful moments for our people from this region, one that always reopens old wounds but also reminds us of their strength to carry on with their lives despite everything, President Milorad Dodik said.

“No one who was not part of a refugee convoy can fully understand the gravity of the moment when a person realizes that they can no longer remain on their own doorstep. To this day, those who were part of the refugee convoys divide time into ‘before’ and ‘after’ the exodus, because it was not just an ordinary convoy, but a convoy of mothers and fathers, children and the elderly, families who overnight had to leave behind what cannot be taken with you — their homes, hearths and the graves of their ancestors,” President Dodik told SRNA on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the exodus of the Serb people from Srbobran and the suffering of Serb civilians, which will be commemorated tomorrow at Glogovac Monastery near Šipovo.

Dodik said that behind those people remained the doors of their homes that they locked for the last time, the gates to their yards that they closed for the last time, the streets they walked along for the last time, churches and graves, while ahead of them there was only one thing — uncertainty and a journey into the unknown.

“That is why today we cannot speak of it simply as a date, because the anniversary of the exodus is not just a date; it is the fate of thousands of people that stays with them throughout their lives and with which they learn to live, because they were innocent people who were forced to leave their homes. Despite that suffering, these people carried on with their lives with dignity and strength, never forgetting the weight of that final step as they left their homes, the sound of the last closing of the gate to their ancestral hearth, or their final walk down the street of their childhood...” Dodik said.

He stressed that, even 31 years later, remembering Srbobran hurts just as much as it did on the first day. “Those people left in a refugee convoy, fleeing the advance of Muslim-Croat forces, leaving behind the warmth of their homes and taking with them only memories and luggage filled with hope that one day they would return to the place where they had left their hearts,” Dodik said.

That is the moment, he stressed, when a person is confronted with complete emptiness, when they realize that they have taken only themselves with them, while everything they had, both material and intangible, has been left behind to the enemy, to time and to memory.

“Leaving for the unknown against one’s will is the moment when one’s past is forcibly taken away, when one carries one’s entire life up to that point only in memory, while the future seems like a cold and empty corridor leading to some new city and a new home. That long refugee convoy from Srbobran, in which everyone was left alone with their thoughts, reached Gradiška, which opened its doors wide to them during those difficult days. Many stayed there, while others moved on and found new refuge and new homes in other cities and municipalities of Republika Srpska, Serbia or elsewhere in the world, but Srbobran still lives on in them,” Dodik said.

Dodik stressed that this memory keeps all Serbs from Srbobran proud, dignified, and standing tall, as demonstrated by their regular gatherings on the great Orthodox feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, the patron saint's day of their church, through which they preserve their connection with their town.

“During the Defensive-Patriotic War, a large number of our people survived exoduses and ethnic cleansing. The perpetrators cut their roots, but they failed to uproot us, destroy us, or erase our existence. Although the painful wartime period is behind us, a new home was built, and a new life began among our own people in our Republika Srpska.

“But what we must never allow ourselves to do is let time erase what happened, for the sake of the truth and for the sake of those who went through the experience of exile. It is a pain that never goes away, because you can change the places where you live, you can build new homes and start new lives, but a person carries their ancestral home within them. That is why Srbobran today is not the name of just one place, but a memory, a wound and a part of the lives of thousands of people who were forced to leave,” Dodik stressed.

He said that it is the duty of all of us to remember, to pass on to our descendants where their parents and grandparents came from, so that they know what it means to lose one’s home and never forget their roots.

Dodik stressed that remembering the exodus of the Serbs from Srbobran and those tragic days cannot pass without also remembering the unpunished crime in Bravnice near Jajce, where members of the Croatian Army killed 81 Serbian civilians, including eight children under the age of 12, one of them just two years old, in an attack on a refugee convoy heading towards Banjaluka on September 13, 1995.

“The grief over one’s home is immense, but a living person will carry on and keep fighting, which is why this crime is a much deeper wound that will never and cannot heal. The attack on the refugee convoy only confirms what kind of monsters they were. They are inhuman people ready to attack unarmed civilians, mothers with children in their arms, and the elderly. And what is saddest of all, no one has ever been held accountable for this crime,” Dodik stressed.

That is why, he said, we must never again allow ourselves to forget, because that is the least we can do for our victims, and every day is a day when we must remember those who were killed, expelled and missing...

“We owe them respect, truth and remembrance, which should serve as a warning that no child should ever again have to walk in a refugee column, that no mother should ever again have to fear for her children in the face of perpetrators, and that no one should ever again be forced to leave their home with fear in their heart.

“That is why today we stand tall, proudly and with dignity, so that we can remember and preserve the truth, because a people that forgets its victims has lost a part of itself, while a people that remembers preserves its dignity and its Republika Srpska, which is the only guarantee of our survival in this area,” Dodik concluded.