NEŠIĆ: ONLY AN INHUMANE PERSON COULD SAY THEY REGRET NOT TAKING PART IN PERSECUTION OF SERBS

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 5 /SRNA/ - Only an inhumane person could say they regret not taking part in the persecution and killing of Serbs from Croatia, DNS President Nenad Nešić said, commenting on Croatian Defense Minister Ivan Anušić's statement that he regretted not having participated in Operation Storm.

Nešić described the statement as inhuman and uncivilised.

"Those people belonged where they were and lived on their ancestral homesteads. It is appalling that, 31 years after the largest ethnic cleansing since the Second World War, the crime is being celebrated as a victory, without the slightest respect for the victims," Nešić said.

The DNS president said he did not even want to imagine what the reaction would be if all Croats had been expelled from Serbia and the Serbian defense minister were to say that he regretted not having taken part in it.

"At the very least, they would have faced sanctions and isolation, along with lectures on human rights. Croatia, on the other hand, was rewarded with membership in the European Union," Nešić said.

Nešić said that this message also serves as a warning and a lesson for the Serbian people that, wherever they may live, they can rely only on their own brethren, the DNS said in a statement.

"That is why there must be no discord or divisions among us, and the Serbian people must remain united if they are to have a future," Nešić said.

Croatia once again celebrated its so-called Victory Day in Knin this year.

The criminal Operation Storm began on August 4, 1995, with an offensive by the Croatian Army and police, along with HVO units, in the regions of Banija, Lika, Kordun and northern Dalmatia, during which more than 220,000 Krajina Serbs were expelled from their ancestral homes.

The updated Veritas register contains the names of 1,904 Serbs who were killed or went missing during and after the operation, including 1,250 civilians, about three-quarters of whom were over the age of 60.

The victims also include ten children under the age of 14 and 566 women, about four-fifths of whom were over 60 — which Veritas says represents a particularly grim record of the civil war of the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

In its February 2015 judgment, the International Court of Justice characterised Operation Storm as ethnic cleansing, but not as genocide, although experts in the field around the world maintain that the operation exhibited all the characteristics of genocide.