14.06.2019.
Commemoration Ceremony 'Battle for Košare – Not to forget'
Commemoration ceremony 'Battle for Košare – Not to forget', on the occasion of marking the 20th anniversary of one of the most difficult battles in the recent Serbian history, was held tonight at the Great Hall of the Sava Centre. Among the participants there were Aleksandar Vučić, President of the Republic of Serbia and Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces, Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister, Maja Gojković, National Assembly Speaker, Aleksandar Vulin, Minister of Defence, General Milan Mojsilović, Chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, veterans and families of the killed heroes who fought on Košare and Paštrik.
Addressing the audience, President Vučić reminded that in the past 15 and 20 years the heroism of our people and population was not only whispered about, but it was also hidden, as if we were ashamed of it and afraid to speak about this, in an effort to be servile to those who fought against these heroes and killed our people.Referring to the recent parade of veterans at the demonstration dubbed ‘Defence of Freedom’, held in Niš, President Vučić said that these fighters should not be ashamed of because they are the best part of us and that the whole world should hear that.
- I could have felt this kind of contempt in some people or hatred against Serbia in some of them, hatred against these wonderful people who walked with us in Niš for the first time, at our great military show or parade, when it was for the first time, after 20 years, that our veterans, our fighters, people who fought for the freedom of our Serbian homeland appeared. And they started attacking us from everywhere, but today I can proudly speak from here, maybe it was for the first time, but it will be every next time.
President Vučić pointed out that after the story of our soldiers, which talks about our withdrawal and our not military, but political defeat, the question is: Who won?
- And I have always used to say: “We have lost”, but today, I am no longer so sure, because whose victory was that? Was it the victory of all of these rugged, arrogant and high-handed countries who wanted to cut off head of a small country or, regardless of the loss of territory and the loss of personnel, it was the victory of a small, freedom-loving country, a small, liberal people, who dared to tell everyone in the world: “Yes, we have our own country, we have our freedom that is more important and bigger than anything.”
Quoting the old saying: “When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honour scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism, that is bravery”, President Vučić said that this is most likely and the most accurate explanation of the whole sequence of events that happened in Košare and in 1998, and especially in fatal April 1999, when our army and our Serbian soldiers managed, as he says “to overcome fear and to laugh at destiny and to ignore death – and there is nothing more difficult than that – and to heroically defend their country”.- It took exactly 67 days in that 1999 as long as the battle Košare lasted and exactly 108 lives under this outpost were given as present to the fatherland, without any regrets, without any resentment of those 18 officers and non-commissioned officers, 53 servicemen, 13 military conscripts and 24 volunteers. They stubbornly decided that death was a better choice than the defeat of their fatherland, that the fatherland was more important than life and they put their bodies between the fatherland and the enemy, between freedom and slavery. They were under 25 on an average. This should always be remembered. It was because of Serbia that they refused to grow older.
President Vučić said that today we do not have the right to silence and that he is proud that we are no longer silent and that we are boasting, loudly and freely speaking about our heroes. He added that the sacrifice of all those who died in the wars of the 1990s deserved answers to a number of important questions: Why did all this happen? What did they defend? What else did they lose, apart from their precious lives? What have we got? Do we, for the sake of whom they died, know where and how we are heading to, and are we able to get there?- Telling them that their death was part of a major political victory, would be a lie and an insult for them. But it was part of another victory – the victory of the spirit, the victory of courage. And how would we, the Serbs, differ from all other nations if we could not boast about that? They fell in a battle that we did not lose. We lost it on the political field and not against the Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija, but against the world's biggest powers, joined in the intent to punish us and take away part of the territory. The heroes fell after a decade in which Serbia could not always and in the best way define what it wanted, nor how it thought to achieve that. What I admire all these people and their families for is that they did not ask for a false or sufficient reason to get themselves out of trouble. It was important for them to hear the voice of the state, to hear the voice of the homeland, to fight to the end for their country, to leave their lives, to die for their country – the president said.
According to him, the success of Serbia, the future of Serbia, our ability to finally define this country, to define its goal, to know exactly where its borders are, to reach those goals, is the only way to explain the death of the heroes from Košare and to prove that they did not give their lives in vain.
- What we have is another task that is especially difficult to pronounce before the families of the perished and the killed ones, and that is for our future that we should have more of the living population, and to have less and less dead, to have more maternity wards than ossuaries, to have more delivered babies, and to have those who die only when it must be so, just as it was the case with the heroes from Košare. May the books, knowledge, schools, science, culture be the largest and most powerful weapon, and the real weapon that defends all that be so powerful that nobody dares to go against Serbia any more, as they started then across Košare – President Vučić said.At the commemoration ceremony, former commander of the battle group of 63rd Parachute Brigade, Colonel in retirement Vidoje Kovačević spoke about his memories, saying that the Battle of Košare has, over time, become a symbol of courage and determination in defending the homeland and the nation. As he points out, the veterans are particularly pleased that the state has been cherishing the memory of the battles in the last few years appreciating the efforts and sacrifices offered by the fighters, thus paying respect to the veterans.
The former member of the 5th Battalion of the Military Police, Vladimir Ilić, also spoke about his memories of the days of the battle and the comrades who fought bravely. Ilić concluded his address, saying that “our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them”.
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