NOVAKOVIĆ: CRIME AGAINST JNA CONVOY - BEGINNING OF MASS KILLINGS AND EXPULSION OF SERBS

BIJELJINA, MAY 14 /SRNA/ - The crime against the JNA convoy during the agreed withdrawal from Tuzla in 1992 marked the beginning of mass killings and the expulsion of Serbs from the Tuzla region, where Serbs today have been reduced to a statistical error, said a survivor of the convoy, Slavko Novaković.

"The goal was not to intimidate, but to destroy as many people as possible, using any means available," Novaković said at a press conference in Bijeljina.

On the eve of tomorrow's marking of the 34th anniversary of the crime against JNA members in Tuzla and the subsequent exodus of the Serb population from the region, Novaković said that the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH has still not made any progress in prosecuting this crime.

Milenko Mićanović, president of the Homeland Association of Tuzla Residents in Bijeljina, said that May 15, 1992, is a day of Serb suffering in the Tuzla region and the beginning of the expulsion of 80,000 Serbs from that area.

According to him, only around 1,500 Serb families live in Tuzla today.

Adviser to the Mayor of Bijeljina, Radoslav Ostojić, said that the attack on the Tuzla convoy was a major unpunished crime that reflects the character of the war and the reasons for the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

The 34th anniversary of the crime against JNA members in the Tuzla convoy from 1992 will be marked tomorrow in Tuzla and Bijeljina. The convoy was attacked by Muslim paramilitary forces while the army was withdrawing peacefully from the Tuzla barracks under a previously agreed-upon arrangement.