With speeches at the ceremony of unveiling the monument in Pale dedicated to the creators and defenders of the Republika Srpska (RS), convicts for war crimes and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were glorified, and the former president of the RS, Milorad Dodik, denied the Bosniak people.
The monument in Pale was unveiled alongside Dodik by the president of the National Assembly of the RS (NARS), Nenad Stevandic, the president of the Association “Creators of the RS” Stevan Medic, and the president of the Veterans’ Organization of RS Radan Ostojic.
After the unveiling of the monument, Medic said that October 24th is an important date for the RS because on October 24th, 1991, the Assembly of the Serbian People of BiH was founded.
“Here was the leadership of the RS, and thanks to them and the wisdom of Mr. Karadzic, the courage of Mr. Krajisnik and the heroism of Mr. General Mladic, we managed to preserve our people so that what happened from 1941 to 1945 would not happen to them, and we managed to get a state, which was our goal,” said Medic.
He said that the Serbs were then “attacked by age-old enemies, and that today villains such as the high representatives want to arrest in the RS”.
“You know where our heroes and martyrs are, where our first president is, where General Mladic is, we know how Krajisnik ended… We have our police officers who are sentenced practically to life imprisonment,” said Medic.
Radovan Karadzic, former president of the RS, was in 2019 sentenced by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) to life imprisonment for genocide against Bosniaks from Srebrenica, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats across BiH, terrorizing the population of Sarajevo during the siege of the city, and holding members of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces hostage.
Karadzic’s wife, Ljiljana Karadzic, attended yesterday’s gathering in the first row together with Dodik and Stevandic.
Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Army of the RS (VRS), was in 2021 also sentenced by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to life imprisonment for the genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, terrorizing the citizens of Sarajevo, and taking members of UNPROFOR hostage.
Momčilo Krajisnik was in 2006 convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for war crimes committed in BiH, crimes against humanity, persecution, extermination, murders, and deportation of non-Serbs across the country. He was also convicted for participation in a joint criminal enterprise with other leaders of the Bosnian Serbs. Three years later, the prison sentence was reduced from 27 to 20 years. He died in 2020.
Miroslav Radovanovic from the Association “Creators of the RS” said that genocide was “being prepared against the Serbs in the 1990s”.
“With us is not our saint and martyr Radovan Karadzic. He suffers today, and we must remember him as being in the line of Tsar Dusan, Obilic, Karadjordje, Njegos… he is the most important historical figure of these areas,” said Radovanovic, adding that Dodik is the savior of the Serbs and the new Serbian “vozd”.
Stevandic said that the people whom Medic mentioned are “martyrs in the dungeons, who deserve to be buried in their RS”.
Dodik, who was sentenced before the Court of BiH for disrespecting the decisions of the high representative, said in his address that the RS was a “historical necessity that had the right people who knew what the circumstances were”.
“They knew then that the most important thing in the life of a people is the state, and only then can it make an economy. Sometimes I disagreed with them, but we were together in the wartime assemblies,” stated Dodik, and he praised Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the presidents of the United States (U.S.) and the Russian Federation.
“Today, the main levers are in the hands of the U.S. Trump shows political and value differences, compared to a year ago, in views of what needs to be done. We believe that his policy can be the one we can join as well. We believe in the rehabilitated power of Russia and its president, who has built a powerful force. We believe that the two of them will remodel the world anew beyond the enraged Europeans,” said Dodik.
The former president of the RS ended his speech with a message that the “state community of BiH” can be preserved, but that an “anti-constitutional Bosnia” is not acceptable, denying the Bosniak people.
“It is necessary, while things are not resolved, to precisely call them what they essentially are in the basis of the conflict in these areas, and those are Bosnian Muslims. They can consider themselves a nation however they like, but in the historical description, they are Bosnian Muslims, and the world understands that. I will respect your Bosniak people if you respect my people, and it has been shown that you do not respect,” said Dodik.
In the end, he mentioned a “surge of Islamization”, claiming that Christians are endangered in these areas and that Muslims in these areas are “a base for the arrival of other Muslims who would break our social fabric.”, Detektor writes.
