THEY WANT TO PORTRAY THE SUFFERING SERBIAN PEOPLE IN A BAD LIGHT, BUT THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED

PRIJEDOR, JULY 11 /SRNA/ - SNSD President Milorad Dodik emphasized that the Serbian people in Kozara and the surrounding area suffered ethnic cleansing during the Second World War, and that now some are trying to portray Serbs in a negative light, which, he said, will not succeed because it is not true.

Dodik said that today's commemoration at Mrakovica not only marks 84 years since the suffering of Serbs on Kozara, but also reflects the character of the Serbian people, who remain persistent in their struggle for freedom, as well as their endurance. "We are proof here today that they did not win; we did! Even the former Yugoslavia designated Kozara as a place of suffering and execution," Dodik told reporters, recalling that the Serbs defended themselves against Ustasha hordes that were under the command of the German occupying forces. Dodik noted that the communist authorities sought to prevent the suffering of the Serbian people from being mentioned, to conceal the truth about it, and to tell a different story instead. "Even though they ignored Jasenovac all that time, in 1965 they could no longer avoid erecting a monument in Jasenovac that commemorated the greatest suffering in this region," Dodik said. He emphasized that there is hardly a weekend throughout the year when Serbs do not pay tribute to their compatriots who were killed in past wars. Dodik noted that Muslims do not hold commemorations marking the anniversaries of suffering in the Second World War because they were on the side of the losers at that time. "It is known that the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo expelled and rounded up every single Serb and took them to Jasenovac, where they perished. It is known how many of them survived; everything is known. And these are indisputable facts," Dodik emphasized. Dodik stated that in his village of Mrčajevci, Ustasha forces consisting of Muslims from Dubrave killed 136 of his neighbors who had been unable to flee, two months after the beginning of the war in 1941. He pointed to the suffering of Serbs in other villages around Kozara as well, where several thousand people were killed, describing it as complete ethnic cleansing. "And now they want to shift that narrative of being the bad guys onto the Serbs. Of course they cannot, because it is not true! As time goes by, you will see," Dodik said.