DODIK: PREBILOVCI - SYMBOL OF SERB SUFFERING AND RESISTANCE TO OBLIVION

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 5 /SRNA/ – Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik emphasizes that Prebilovci, a place where every stone bears a scar of war, is one of the symbols of the suffering of Serbs, but also of resistance to oblivion, adding that truth and justice must be defended without compromise.

"The crime that happened in this place is not just a wound of Prebilovci, but a wound of the Serb people, no matter where they live. It was not merely a crime against one village, but an attempt to erase an entire people, a systematic extermination that many have tried to remain silent about, cover up, and consign to oblivion for decades," the president of Srpska told SRNA on the occasion of marking 84 years since one of the most brutal crimes against the Serb people, committed by Ustasha in Prebilovci between August 6 and 11, 1941, under the command of Ivan Jovanović Crni. President Dodik recalled that in August 1941, in Prebilovci near Čapljina, Ustasha committed a massacre of 850 innocent Serbs, turning this village into a mass grave in just a few days. "Women, children, and the elderly were murdered in the most brutal ways. Children happened to be in the village school were slaughtered, while their mothers and sisters were raped. They were thrown alive into the karst pits of Herzegovina, without graves or crosses, without a voice or remembrance, without justice - all because they were Orthodox Serbs. That was not war, that was not a clash of soldiers – it was a premeditated, organised, and planned crime carried out with such brutality that even Nazi officers were shocked by the cruelty of their Ustasha allies," the president emphasized. He added that, according to available data, the first child in Prebilovci to reach school age did so only in 1956, and the first young man to go for military service left in 1967. "These facts alone speak volumes about the crime in the Serb village of Prebilovci, which had around 900 inhabitants before the massacre, 850 of whom were killed," stated the president of Republika Srpska. He pointed out that what followed after the monstrous crime perhaps hurts even more – decades of silence and shameful disregard for the Serb victims, whose blood was deemed "irrelevant" because it didn't suit the narratives of false brotherhood and unity in former Yugoslavia, where it was forbidden to speak about crimes committed against Serbs. "They told us to forget, to remain silent, not to `stir the waters`. The communists even cemented over the pits where, by Ustasha hands, the people of Prebilovci ended up – all to hide the victims and the horror of the crime. Today we ask – how much longer are we supposed to remain silent?! Are we supposed to stand and wait to be killed again or dragged before fake courts and tried by laws made up by those who always acted as occupiers and colonizers – those who believe they can eliminate the Serb people through force and injustice, because they are bothered by our pride, defiance, and fight for justice, for our place under the sun? Do we have the right to truth and justice? Do we have the right, after all this, to ask our people to forget the slaughtered, the murdered, the tortured and abused? We will never forget. We will not forgive, not in the name of those thrown into the pits, nor in the name of the slaughtered Serb children who were forcibly denied the right to live. We will never stop speaking, writing, testifying," Dodik declared. He emphasized that Prebilovci is a place where evil revealed its true face, and where justice remained silent – as it always does when it comes to Serbs. "It is our historical duty to change that. We must write textbooks with the truth. We must teach our children that our people were victims of genocide. While today some still dare to celebrate Ustashism, to rehabilitate war criminals, to turn blind eye to the truth and falsify historical facts – we will stand firm in defence of truth and justice. Because the truth about Prebilovci, Stari Brod, Kozara, Romanija, and Podrinje is not hate, it is a warning. It is the foundation of our identity, our conscience, and our memory," said the president of Srpska. He stated that every Serb is obliged to speak about all crimes, because as a people, we owe truth to our dead and justice to the living. "Let their sacrifice be inscribed in golden letters in our memory and conscience, and may there never again be another Prebilovci – a place of execution for a people whose only `crime` was being a Serb. That is why our pledge is clear: Prebilovci will not be forgotten. The victims will not be surrendered to silence. We, as a people, as a state, as responsible individuals, will have the strength to face the truth, to defend it, and to pass it on to future generations. We owe it to those who rest there. We owe it to our descendants and to history, to the past, the present, and the future, for the benefit of our Republika Srpska," the president concluded.