KARAN: GARAVICE - PLACE WHERE IDEOLOGICAL FANATICISM OF NDH KILLED MORE THAN 12,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE

BANJA LUKA, JULY 27 /SRNA/ - Garavice is a place where the ideological fanaticism of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ and hatred towards everything Serbian killed more than 12,000 innocent people - children, women, and the elderly, whose martyr's death was systematically suppressed by silence for decades, Republika Srpska President Siniša Karan stated to SRNA.

"Today marks 85 years since one of the most severe crimes committed against the Serbian people in the Second World War, the mass suffering in Garavice near Bihać, where the Ustashe regime of the NDH killed about 12,000 Serbian civilians in just a few weeks, among whom was a large number of children," Karan told SRNA on the occasion of marking 85 years since the horrific crime against Serbs in Garavice near Bihać.

He pointed out that their only guilt was being Serbs, along with the obsessive hatred of Ustashe formations driven to ethnically cleanse these areas of the Serb population, thinking that by burning corpses and covering them in lime they could erase every trace of Serbian existence.

"They extinguished hearths and wiped entire villages off the face of the earth, but no one has ever managed to extinguish the slava candle. We stayed and survived despite all the crimes committed against us, and today we have our homeland, Republika Srpska, in honor of all our ancestors who died a martyr's death but refused to submit to various criminals and occupiers," Karan pointed out.

The implementation of organized oblivion regarding the execution site in Garavice, as well as many other Serb execution sites that followed after the Second World War, Karan noted, was not just a matter of hiding the facts, but a deliberate attempt to erase the identity and collective memory of the victims.

"Today, the right to remember Garavice is not an act of revanchism or political manipulation, but a civilizational and moral obligation towards the victims and future generations. We must not allow them to be killed again by oblivion, because the truth, no matter how painful, is the only secure foundation for truly facing the past and the suffering that the Serb people went through in the 20th century," Karan emphasized.

He pointed out that tragedies and suffering based on hatred towards the Serb people and the denial of their suffering cannot and will not be the basis for the future.

"For too long, the crimes against Serbs were kept quiet and blended into a general narrative about victims of fascism without clearly naming who the victims were and who the perpetrators were. We cannot and will not allow ourselves to forget the past, our ancestors who suffered a martyr's death in Garavice, Jasenovac, Kozara, Jadovno, Prebilovci, and in those pits and mass graves that were kept quiet about. Had the truth about Serb suffering not been hidden back then, the ethnic cleansing in Sarajevo and the Sarajevo exodus, the horrors in Podrinje, and the Serbian Krajina would not have happened to us," Karan stressed.

He assessed that today and in the future, we must persistently state that genocide was committed against the Serb people in the NDH, which has been confirmed by numerous pieces of evidence, testimonies of survivors, and scientific research.

"We are obliged to preserve the memory of Garavice, as well as Jasenovac, Jadovno, and other execution sites from oblivion, out of respect for the victims and as a warning to future generations so that such evil is never repeated. Even though we are witnessing attempts to revise history and diminish the number of Serbian victims, we will not allow the truth to be concealed," Karan pointed out.

He added that Republika Srpska and its institutions will insist on nurturing a culture of remembrance, not to seek revenge or out of hatred, but for the sake of truth, our descendants, and their bright future.