MINIĆ: THE MOST MASSIVE CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE AGAINST SERBIAN PEOPLE WAS CARRIED OUT IN GARAVICE

BIHAĆ, JULY 27 /SRNA/ - Republika Srpska Prime Minister Savo Minić stated today that the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ carried out the most massive criminal enterprise against the Serbian people at the beginning of the Second World War in Garavice near Bihać.

"The mass criminal enterprise showed the level of organization, the scale, and the way it was prepared for the extermination of the Serbian people in these areas," Minić told reporters in Garavice near Bihać, where he attended the commemoration of 85 years since the suffering of more than 12,000 Serbs in this place. Minić said that Serbian generations must remember this monstrous crime and the systematic destruction of Serbs during the NDH in this area. He pointed to the fact that the Serbian people, whenever they were not organized in terms of an administrative, socially-organized unit, were subjected to extermination in the most brutal way. Minić said that the Serbian people in Republika Srpska should do everything to never again find themselves in a situation where they are left at the mercy of those people who have clear plans on how to destroy them as brutally, as massively, and as quickly as possible. He stated that the Government of Republika Srpska, in cooperation with its Committee for Nurturing Traditions, National Liberation War associations, and organizations stemming from the Defense-Patriotic War, will engage to ensure that the truth about the events of World War II and the past war is known. Garavice, a place two and a half kilometers from the center of Bihać, is one of the largest execution sites of the Serbian people in the Independent State of Croatia. At the beginning of the Second World War in 1941, the Ustashe killed 12,000 Serbian civilians in Garavice, and among the victims was a large number of children. According to British intelligence data, between 14,000 and 14,500 people were killed in the wider Bihać area, and the authorities of the former Yugoslavia covered up the massacres and murders of Serbs due to the proclamation of the idea of brotherhood and unity, which completely equated the executioner and the victim. The commemoration of this event is organized by the Republika Srpska Government Committee for Nurturing the Tradition of Liberation Wars.