GRABOVAC URGES AUTHORITIES TO PREVENT FORMER HVO MEMBERS GATHERING IN MODRIČA

BROD, APRIL 3 /SRNA/ – The president of the Organization for Searching for Fallen Soldiers and Missing Civilians from Brod, Marko Grabovac, told SRNA that a gathering of former members of the 105th HVO Brigade is planned for April 11 in Modriča, and that institutions of Republika Srpska should ban it, otherwise veterans' associations will do so.

"Institutions of Republika Srpska must prevent the arrival and gathering of former HVO members in Modriča, because their increasingly frequent gatherings in Republika Srpska in recent times humiliate the Serb people and soldiers of the Republika Srpska Army who gave their lives for Srpska", Grabovac pointed out.

If the gathering of former HVO members on the territory of Republika Srpska is not banned, Grabovac said that municipal veterans' associations will take action themselves.

He pointed out that their arrival at sites of Serb suffering in Posavina causes particular pain for Serb families of fallen soldiers and civilians who are still searching for the remains of their loved ones.

Grabovac said that he has still not found the remains of his mother, Rosa Grabovac, who was killed in 1992 in Liješće near Brod, while his brother Mladen Grabovac was slaughtered in the Health Center in Derventa, whose remains he exhumed in 1993 from a mass grave.

Grabovac stressed that authorities in Croatia have never allowed Serbs to cross the Sava River to hold memorial services for fallen Serbs in Slavonski Brod or to lay wreaths at sites of suffering.

“Authorities in Slavonski Brod have never allowed Serbs to erect a memorial cross at the site where a Serbian Orthodox church under construction once stood, which was demolished and replaced by a parking lot,” Grabovac concluded.