KOJIĆ: DEATHS OF 12 BANJA LUKA BABIES FOREVER ETCHED IN SERB COLLECTIVE MEMORY

SREBRENICA, MAY 22 /SRNA/ - The deaths of the 12 Banja Luka babies were not an accident or a coincidence, but a crime against innocent children that remains forever etched in the collective memory of the Serb people, Branimir Kojić, president of the Organization of Families of Captured and Fallen Soldiers and Missing Civilians of Srebrenica, told SRNA.

Thirty-four years after the deaths of the 12 babies, the Serb people still carry the same pain and an unhealed wound, he stressed.

"When babies die because they were denied oxygen, then humanity itself has died. On that day, empathy was defeated, civilization was defeated and everything the world hypocritically invokes when speaking about human rights was defeated," Kojić stressed.

According to him, the deaths of the 12 Banja Luka babies remain the clearest proof of how the so-called international community viewed Serb suffering - remaining silent while innocent children died.

"For us Serbs, this is a wound that will never stop hurting. It is the deepest wound of the Serb people in recent history because nothing is more sacred than a child, and here those who had not yet spoken, walked or experienced life were killed," Kojić emphasized.

He added that the babies live on in every tear shed by their parents, in every Serb heart and in every person who has not lost their soul.

"Those 12 angels today are stars shining above Republika Srpska, warning that there are crimes time cannot hide or erase," Kojić said.

He noted that this is not only remembrance, but also a warning that Serb victims must never again be ignored, nor Serb children considered less worthy than others, because a people who forget their 12 babies have forgotten themselves.

Banja Luka today is marking 34 years since the deaths of 12 babies at the then Clinical Center, who died because world powers did not allow the transport of oxygen.

The Republika Srpska Organization of Families of Captured and Fallen Soldiers and Missing Civilians, organizer of the commemoration, reminded what it described as the inhumane and uncivilized 1992 decision by world powers to prevent the transport of oxygen to Banja Luka, resulting in the deaths of the 12 babies at the Banja Luka Clinical Center.