VUČIĆ: I GUARANTEE THAT SERBIA WILL NEVER AGAIN ALLOW ANOTHER OPERATION STORM

MRKONJIĆ GRAD, AUGUST 4 /SRNA/ – Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić has said this evening that he guarantees Serbia will never again allow another Operation Storm, another pogrom, or further suffering of the Serb people anywhere, whether in Republika Srpska or in any part of Serbia, regardless of who might stand on the other side.

"Serbia is strong enough. It will protect and defend its people. It will not wait, it will not step aside, and it will not look for reasons or excuses to abandon its people," Vučić said during the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance for Serbs Killed and Expelled in Operation Storm.

According to him, had Serbia not strengthened itself economically, politically, and militarily, it would already have been overrun.

Vučić said that no one has been held accountable for crimes committed against Serbs and recalled the words of former Croatia’s wartime president Franjo Tuđman at the Brioni meeting -"the Serbs should practically disappear", noting that similar rhetoric had been used by Ustashas, Ante Pavelić and Maks Luburić during the Second World War, and that many Serbs had been expelled as a consequence of such policies.

"We have gathered here in Mrkonjić Grad, where the Serb people is standing tall once again. New generations are coming, and they will never again allow themselves to be trampled as they were in the past," Vučić stressed.

He argued that Serbia's opponents had used various tactics to divide the Serb people by using terms such as "Bosnian Serb" and "Croatian Serb".

"We are neither Croatian Serbs, nor Bosnian Serbs, nor Serbian Serbs. We are simply Serbs. We belong to the same nation. Do not divide us or invent names for us, otherwise we will start inventing names for you as well," Vučić said.

He added that although he was born in Serbia, he is not Serbian, but a Serb, and asked why, in Sarajevo, Sulejman Ugljanin is referred to as a Bosniak rather than a Serbian.

"You will call us Serbs. Otherwise, we will call you whatever we choose. You will respect us. There is no difference among Serbs. If you do not change your behaviour, we will show you what it looks like when someone else starts assigning names and labels," Vučić said.

He also pointed out there had been Serbs who collaborated with occupying forces and belonged to various intelligence networks that sought to weaken Serbia.

Vučić recalled the death of 12-year-old Siniša Dobrić, speaking of the boy's angelic eyes, as well as the killing of other Serb children during Operation Storm on the Petrovac Road. He said that Croatia celebrates the operation as a great victory, while foreign agencies attempt to convince Serbs that they themselves were responsible rather than those who killed and expelled them, which is a pogrom against the truth.

He also recalled that Serbia lost 29 percent of its total population during the First World War, it helped Croats and Slovenians join the victorious side after the war, while during the Second World War Serbs were subjected to mass killings of exceptional brutality. He added that Belgrade was the only capital city in the former Yugoslavia to have been bombed.

"But a new generation of Serbs has emerged; one that is not afraid to speak the truth and that will not forget the angelic eyes of little Siniša Dobrić just to receive applause in Zagreb, Sarajevo, or Podgorica," Vučić said.