NOVI GRAD, August 6 /SRNA/ – Veritas Centre director Savo Strbac stated Monday in Novi Grad that a total of 548 women were killed in the Croatian military and police 1995 Operation Storm and more than 80 per cent were 60 years of age or older.
Strbac added that of the total number of people killed in the operation 60 per cent were civilians “which explains who the Croats defeated and what they are boasting about these days.”
According to him, Veritas made a documentary about the suffering of civilians on the road from Glina to Dvor where the Croatian Army and the 5th Corps of the so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina killed around 200 people.
These days, the regional media have reported an incorrect statement by Croatian generals that the Serb civilians had actually been killed by soldiers of the Republic of Serbian Krajina during a withdrawal of tanks, he said.
Mayor of Novi Grad Miroslav Drljaca said that 23 years after Storm, Serbs are a national minority in Croatia including mainly the elderly who will eventually disappear.
“This has to be a warning that we must do everything we can to preserve Republika Srpska as a guarantor of our survival,” said Drljaca.
Nikola Puzigaca, head of the Association of Workers and Disabled Workers who Fled Croatia, believes that the local and international institutions have not done anything to protect the rights of members of his association.
He noted that members of the Association from Republika Srpska and Federation of BiH will stage a strike outside the BiH joint institutions, that is, the ministries of civil affairs, foreign affairs, and human rights and refugees.
A memorial service was held Monday morning in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul the Apostles in Novi Grad, marking the 23rd anniversary of the Serb exodus from the Republic of Serbian Krajina during the Croatian 1995 Operation Storm.
After the commemoration, candles were lit along the street leading from the church to the bridge over the Una River at the border crossing and flowers were thrown into the river there. In August 1995, the “bridge of salvation” was crossed by 100,000 Serbs expelled from the Republic of Serbian Krajina, mainly from Banija, Kordun, and Lika.
Numerous delegations then laid wreaths to a memorial to civilian casualties in the settlement of Tunjica outside Novi Grad, the point where the Croatian forces entered Srpska in September 1995. Within two days of the offensive, 37 civilians, 18 soldiers and two police officers were killed and 17 civilians, three soldiers and one police officer were injured.
A memorial service was held in Svodna and wreaths laid to the memorial cross which was erected in 2012 by Veritas in honour of six civilians killed in a refugee convoy shelled by the Croatian army.
According to the data provided by the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees, the aftermath of the Croatian Operation Storm was 250,000 Krajina Serbs expelled, 1,856 killed and 836 missing.
The operation began on August 4, 1995 with an offensive on Banija, Lika, Kordun and northern Dalmatia.
Marking the 23rd anniversary of the exodus was organised by the Veritas Centre and Novi Grad municipality.
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