OSTOJIĆ: THE HISTORY OF THE SERBIAN PEOPLE - TRAGIC, YET GLORIOUS

PREBILOVCI, AUGUST 5 /SRNA/ - The Minister of Labour and Veterans-Disability Protection of Republika Srpska, Radan Ostojić, said tonight in Prebilovci that the history of the Serbian people is both tragic and glorious, because they have always fought for freedom.

Ostojić stated that emotions in Prebilovci, as a major site of Serbian suffering, are always mixed.

"On the one hand, there is sorrow, and on the other, love and kindness. We Orthodox Christians cherish these values," Ostojić told reporters in Prebilovci, where an evening service will be held tonight on the eve of the commemoration marking 85 years since the Ustaša crime against Serbs.

He said that the Serbian people have gathered in Prebilovci to express in prayer their kindness and love for the freedom for which Serbs have always sacrificed everything.

"We never had the privilege of someone bringing us freedom. We have always fought for it, and since our inception, we have followed the path of Christ. A nation that has set itself on that path endures suffering," Ostojić said, adding that the Serbian people suffered the most during the Second World War.

Ostojić noted that the crime in Prebilovci is one piece of the puzzle of a monstrous agenda that was defined even before the Second World War.

"During the war, it was translated into a legal norm, a genocide occurred, and extermination followed. Bearing history in mind, there is no place where there are no Serbian bones," Ostojić emphasized.

Although Serbs forgive, Ostojić says, they are not a people who forget, because the greatest sin is to forget the suffering of one's own people.

"It happened that we forgot this crime as well, that we forbade ourselves from marking the execution sites, the pits were concreted over. The sin we committed then probably led to the crime being repeated against us in the Defense-Patriotic War," Ostojić warned.

The evening service in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Prebilovci tonight will mark the beginning of the commemoration of 85 years since one of the most horrific Ustaša crimes committed against the Serbian people in this village and lower Herzegovina during the Second World War.