POPOVIĆ: MIGRANTS BROKE INTO CHURCH AND LOOTED IN TRUBAR VILLAGE, FEW SERBS FEARFUL

BELGRADE, APRIL 15 /SRNA/ – Around twenty Serb returnees in the Drvar-area village of Trubar, which after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement became part of the municipality of Bihać, spent the recent Easter holidays in fear and uncertainty after migrants, returned from the nearby Croatian border, broke into the local Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos and burglarized several households.

Trubar resident Rajko Popović told SRNA that in this large village with several hamlets, only 17 people spend the winter, mostly elderly residents in their eighties, and that after these unfortunate events and the fact that no one guarantees their safety, most will leave to stay with their children in nearby Drvar, Republika Srpska, or Serbia. "Due to the inaction and inefficiency of the authorities, primarily in the Una-Sana Canton, who are silent observers of what migrants are doing in these border villages, relatives of the returnees, who are mostly elderly, have decided to take their loved ones away, and some have already left," Popović said. He stated that homes belonging to the Rodić, Rokvić, and Babić families were broken into, while the Zeljković family home was looted and several thousand BAM was stolen. "Police came at his request to conduct an investigation, which is in procedure, but the problem is that everything mostly remains only recorded," Popović said. According to him, it is assumed that the migrants who passed through Trubar came from the reception centre in the village of Lipa near Bihać and were returned from the nearby Croatian border. Popović noted that the greatest migrant pressure is on cross-border villages in the belt from Dinara to Lika, as Croatia has strengthened its border control with additional personnel and video surveillance, securing crossings in a wider area toward Bihać. "They catch them there immediately and send them back. However, migrants always find a way to enter Croatia, and that path always leads through Serb villages on both the BiH and Croatian sides. The Croats take their documents and money and send them back here," said Popović, a former member of the Intelligence-Security Agency of BiH. If the agreement between BiH and Croatia were respected, he says, Croatia should inform the BiH Border Police of its activities, which would then take over the migrants and return them to the reception centre where they were registered, but this is not being done, so they move in larger groups through Serb villages. "When the police expelled them from Croatia, they first came to the Serb village of Kaldrma, in front of the Bursać family home, and blocked the road with a tree trunk to prevent the owner from taking his car and leaving. They entered the house, demanded food, started searching the premises, and were driven away only thanks to the composure of the host and with the help of neighbours. There were about forty of them," Popović said. He added that in recent days migrants have also broken into and looted several homes in Stožišta near Grahovo, and that no Serb in that area is safe. "Our villages are reached by poor dirt roads. Many still do not have electricity. In winter, we are cut off from the rest of the world for months. The elderly returned to die in their homes. The fact that their peace has now been disturbed in the harshest way will unfortunately lead some to go back into exile," Popović concluded.