FAILURE TO PUNISH ATTACKS ON ORTHODOX CEMETERIES AND SERB PROPERTY ENCOURAGES PERPETRATORS

BANJA LUKA, NOVEMBER 5 /SRNA/ - Attacks on Orthodox cemeteries and Serb property in the Federation of BiH /FBiH/ continue to recur due to the lack of concrete responses from the judicial institutions in the entity, Đorđe Radanović, president of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Serbs in the FBiH, told SRNA.

Speaking about the latest incident, in which a shelter at the Orthodox cemetery of Gradina in the village of Lozna, near Banovići, was damaged, Radanović said that it had been damaged with a chainsaw. Local residents had built the shelter to provide a place for people to sit when visiting the cemetery.

Radanović pointed out that this was not an isolated incident, noting that damage to Orthodox cemeteries had been reported at several locations throughout the year, including Trnovac near Travnik and Vučinići near Kladanj, where gravestones had been vandalized on several occasions.

"When it comes to Orthodox cemeteries, the situation has reached a terminal stage. This is nothing new; it is just being reported more frequently," Radanović said.

He also pointed to cases in Ilijaš, where gravestones had been repeatedly destroyed, prompting families to give up on repairing them.

"People repaired a gravestone once, only for it to be smashed again. Eventually, they gave up. They no longer repair them and do not know what to do," Radanović said.

He identified the failure to identify and punish the perpetrators as one of the key problems and called on the relevant institutions to make public data on cases in which offenders had been prosecuted.

"We call on the police, the relevant cantonal prosecutor's offices and the Federal Prosecutor's Office to speak out and tell the public how many people have been held accountable so far. The key problem, therefore, is the lack of response from the authorities," Radanović stressed.

He also recalled the case of the Orthodox cemetery of Lemezi in Sarajevo, which was damaged three times by the same man.

Radanović said the incidents occurred in February and April 2023, and again in December of the same year, when the suspect was arrested.

He said that the recurrence of such incidents called for more decisive action by the police and judicial authorities, but added that he was not optimistic that anything would change unless the perpetrators were brought to justice.

Radanović stressed that the Committee had photographs, video footage and information on a larger number of damaged Orthodox cemeteries, stretching from Sarajevo to Zenica, and that it was ready to provide documentation and details of the specific locations.

"We will continue to publicize these cases more and more. They have only been discussed more extensively in the past few years because information about damage that had occurred even earlier has begun to be made public," Radanović said.