DODIK: STAMPING MONSTROUS LABELS ON SERB PEOPLE IS DELIBERATE ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY PERSECUTION AND ETHNIC CLEANSING

BANJA LUKA, OCTOBER 20 /SRNA/ - Defacing the flag of Republika Srpska with the inscription "genocidaires", which insults an entire people, is not an act of courage but a cowardly attempt to rewrite history and do violence to the truth, President Milorad Dodik stressed.

"Stamping monstrous labels on an entire people and on Republika Srpska is not merely hate speech, but a deliberate attempt to justify the initial persecution and ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Sarajevo," Dodik told SRNA.

He said that every such act of belittling, intimidating or insulting Serbian identity, its values and freedom represented a direct continuation of the persecution that Serbs had endured over the centuries, including during the last Defensive-Patriotic War.

"Our flag, our symbols and our Republika Srpska did not emerge from genocide, but from peace and the people's will to survive, because where they had lived, they were no longer free or accepted," Dodik said.

He said that the vandals who had written the offensive graffiti on the mural depicting the Serbian tricolor in Istočno Novo Sarajevo should know that neither their threats nor their shameful messages would deter the Serb people or erase their existence, just as they had failed to do so in the 1990s.

"We know who we are, what we are and where we were driven from. We know what we are defending today in Istočno Sarajevo and throughout Republika Srpska, and their provocations only prove how necessary and inevitable our perseverance is, particularly in a city that rose from the ashes," Dodik said.

He recalled that Istočno Sarajevo had not been created out of defiance, but out of the Serb people’s need to survive and remain on their own land.

"They drove us from our homes, but they failed to drive our identity, our faith and our right to exist out of us. We wish no harm to anyone, nor do we wish to insult anyone, but we will not allow ourselves to be trampled on either. Istočno Sarajevo bears witness to our sacrifice and symbolizes our struggle for life," Dodik stressed.