MARKING NATO BOMBING VICTIMS REMEMBRANCE DAY

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 9 /SRNA/ – The Day of Remembrance for the victims of NATO bombing of Republika Srpska, which killed more than 50 members of the Republika Srpska Army and civilians, and wounded more than 120 people, will be marked today in Istočno Sarajevo.

At 11:00 a.m., a memorial service will be held and flowers laid at the memorial to the first civilian victims of NATO bombing in Srpsko Sarajevo at Grlica local cemetery, the Ministry of Labour, War Veterans and Disabled Persons Protection announced. A memorial service for all Serbs killed in the NATO aggression against Republika Srpska will be held at 11:30 a.m. at the Church of St. Peter of Dabar-Bosnia in Vojkovići, followed by addresses by officials and a spiritual and artistic programme. The markig of this historic event, which is of republican significance, is organised by the Republika Srpska Government’s Committee nurturing tradition of liberation wars. During the NATO aggression against Republika Srpska, between August 30 and September 14, 1995, 47 members of the Republika Srpska Army and seven civilians were killed, while more than 100 soldiers and 21 civilians were wounded. NATO’s Operation “Deliberate Force” began on August 30, 1995, at 2:12 a.m., with the “explanation” that it was intended to “bring the Serbs to the negotiating table”, and was carried out as open support for Muslim and Croat forces in the final phase of the war. More than 5,000 NATO troops from 15 countries and more than 400 aircraft, including 222 combat aircraft, took part in the operation. NATO aircraft bombed positions controlled by the Republika Srpska Army, telecommunications facilities, bridges, command equipment, air-defence systems, ammunition depots and other logistical infrastructure. NATO aircraft dropped a total of 1,026 bombs on Republika Srpska Army positions, including 708 guided bombs, while the total weight of the explosives dropped amounted to around 10,000 tonnes. Over three weeks, 3,515 combat sorties were carried out from the Italian Aviano air base and from the US aircraft carrier “T. Roosevelt” in the Adriatic Sea. A total of 338 military and civilian targets were attacked, including command posts and defensive positions of Republika Srpska Army units. Fifteen bridges and 13 communications towers were destroyed or damaged. The Žica hospital in Blažuj was also targeted. The pretext for the NATO aggression was the explosion at the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo on August 28, 1995, for which the Serbs were blamed, although an independent commission’s report from that period stated that “there is no clear evidence that the shells came from Serb positions”. That report was also personally confirmed by the then UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Balkans, Yasushi Akashi, while then-UNPROFOR commander General Michael Rose said that following the Markale incident it could not be established where the shell had been fired from. None of these statements meant anything to NATO, which openly sided with the Bosniaks and Croats. Simultaneously with “Deliberate Force”, NATO also launched Operation “Dead Eye”, whose aim was to disable the Republika Srpska Army’s air-defence system. During the operation, a radar installation on Jahorina was bombed, while a NATO airstrike on a telecommunications tower on Zlovrh killed ten members of the Republika Srpska Army who had been assigned to guard the tower. That fateful night, Ljubomir and Dragomir Bakmaz, Zoran and Radenko Sorak, Velimir Ujić, Miloš Jovičić, Darko Motika, Zoran Nerić, Andrija Obradović and Milan Stanišić were killed. The bombing of Republika Srpska ended on September 14, 1995, when an agreement was reached for the Republika Srpska Army to withdraw its heavy weapons from the so-called safe zone, which was carried out on September 17. For the bombing of Pale, Jahorina, Hadžići, Vogošća, Ilijaš and Bratunac, areas under the control of the Republika Srpska Army, NATO criminals used depleted uranium. Most of the former residents of the municipality of Hadžići who later died from its effects had moved to the Bratunac area after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement. At the Bratunac cemetery, just four years after the bombing, around 400 people were buried, most of whom had suffered from some form of cancer. Many foreign soldiers who were stationed in these areas during and after the bombing are also experiencing similar health problems today. The consequences of the use of radioactive depleted-uranium ammunition will also be felt by future generations of Republika Srpska residents, which is among the leading countries in the region in terms of the number of malignant diseases. According to a decision by the Republika Srpska Government’s Committee nurturing tradition of liberation wars, September 9 has been designated as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Bombing in Republika Srpska. The date was chosen in remembrance of the day when sister and brother, Radmila and Radenko Galinac, from the Grlica settlement in Vojkovići were killed in a NATO bombing. The Galinac brother and sister were among the first victims of the NATO aggression when, on September 9, 1995, they were killed by a NATO pilot on a destroyed bridge in the Semizovac settlement near Sarajevo. The proposal for this event to be given significance at the level of Republika Srpska was submitted on November 23, 2018, by SNSD MP Staša Košarac in the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, in accordance with an initiative previously launched by SRNA. In his letter to the Government’s Committee nurturing tradition of liberation wars, Košarac recalled that SRNA had launched the initiative and published a series of articles documenting testimonies about the NATO aggression in Republika Srpska and victims of bombing involving depleted uranium. The initiative to commemorate the Day of Remembrance for NATO bombing victims was launched in Andrićgrad on August 26, 2018, at SRNA’s proposal.