DODIK: NATO BOMBING OF REPUBLIKA SRPSKA WAS AN UNPRECEDENTED CRIME

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 8 /SRNA/ - Every calendar has dates we would gladly forget, but history remembers them even when, faced with the weight of the past, we wish those dates and the events associated with them had never happened. Unfortunately, one such date is the remembrance of the Serb victims of NATO aggression against Republika Srpska, President Milorad Dodik said.

“Remembering difficult moments, dark dates, and the enormous Serbian sacrifice throughout our history is the most painful, but also the loudest, kind of silence. For me, as someone who loves my people and my Republika Srpska, remembering the Serb victims is the deepest act of patriotism. Being a patriot does not mean merely celebrating achievements, but also nurturing a culture of remembrance and ensuring that those who paid the highest price for Republika Srpska and its freedom are not forgotten,” Dodik stressed.

Ahead of the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Aggression against Republika Srpska in 1994 and 1995, which will be held tomorrow in Istočno Sarajevo, Dodik told the Republika Srpska Media System – SRNA that NATO aircraft began bombing military and civilian Serbian targets in the area around Goražde on April 10, 1994, while in the operations known as “Deliberate Force” and “Dead Eye,” from August 31 to September 14, 1995, they bombed Serbian targets across Republika Srpska.

“When we speak of these days, I always think of innocent civilians, of those who simply wanted to live and survive the war that day, of lives cut short, and of families whose lives stood still during those days, while grief and pain became their eternal companions.

“I also think about those who made the decision to bomb Serb civilians, as well as the pilots who ruthlessly dropped their deadly payload on civilians, among them siblings Radmila and Radenko Galinac, whose lives were cut short on September 9, 1995, at the Semizovac site by bombs dropped in the name of a military force that calls itself a ‘guardian of peace,’” Dodik stressed.

He said that the bomb neither hit a military target nor brought an end to the civil war in BiH, but instead struck at the heart and soul of one family, destroyed their parents’ world, and left an indelible scar and wound on the soul of all of Istočno Sarajevo and Republika Srpska.

“To make the tragedy even greater, their brother Radovan, Radenko’s twin brother, was killed just two weeks earlier. That is a crime that cannot be justified in any way. And today, they say that NATO bombing was not aggression!? It was — a textbook example of aggression, just as the aggression against Serbia in 1999 was,” Dodik said.

He stressed that the consequences of NATO aggression continue to this day, and who knows how long they will last, because the deadly payload that NATO pilots dropped from the skies over Republika Srpska consisted of ammunition containing depleted uranium.

“Not only did they kill people during the operations they cynically called ‘Deliberate Force’ and ‘Dead Eye,’ but they also poisoned the land, water, and air, which in itself speaks to the sinister nature of these attacks, the consequences of which we are still suffering today, as our children and population are being afflicted with severe forms of cancer on a massive scale,” Dodik stressed.

He said that the NATO bombing was an unprecedented crime, a crime against humanity with a clear genocidal intent to destroy Republika Srpska and everything Serbian in this region.

“That is why it is our duty not to allow time to erase the faces of innocent Serb victims from our collective memory, because if we forget their suffering and the sacrifice they made, we lose a part of ourselves and our future,” Dodik stressed.

He said that every resident of Republika Srpska must feel a responsibility towards those who are no longer with us and who gave their lives to the foundations of Republika Srpska, and that we should speak their names with the utmost respect.

“Republika Srpska remembers and will remember the relentless sound of NATO aircraft and the sorrow that united us at that time over a sacrifice that became part of the foundations on which we build our lives today in a free Republika Srpska. Remembering the victims of NATO aggression is remembering injustice, but also a reminder of the strength of a people who, despite everything, survived and endured, because many would not have withstood all that the Serb people and Republika Srpska endured during the civil war in BiH.

And that is why our goal, and the goal of our institutions, is Republika Srpska: to protect and preserve it, to build it, and to make it even better, more modern, stronger and a more beautiful place to live for our residents and future generations, with the hope that the evil we endured will never happen again,” Dodik said.