04.08.2013.
Memorial service for the victims of "Storm" campaign in St Mark
Memorial service for the victims of the "Oluja", the campaign of the Croatian military and police when 18 years ago thousands of Serbs were killed, displaced and missing, was held in the Church of Saint Mark in Belgrade.Memorial Service was served by Bishop Atanasije Rakita with clergy attended by the President of the Assembly of Serbia Nebojsa Stefanovic, First Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian Army Chief of Staff General Ljubisa Diković, members of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces, family members of those killed or missing and many citizens.
According to Minister Vucic, today is a sad day for all of Serbia, not only for the Krajina Serbs.
- You cannot divide one nation and we have no right to forget the terrible crimes of ethnic cleansing, as Vucic said, the worst type of cleansing since World War II on European soil. Many were killed, many injured, unfortunately without any serious accountability for those who committed these crimes or those responsible for it-as Minister Vucic said, adding that the main message and lesson we learned from what happened to our people was that it was necessary to create a strong and powerful Serbia, and that's the only way to help our people wherever they live.
Vucic also stressed that Serbia has appealed to the international community and if our economic power and prestige in the world increased, the appeal would have more force for those responsible for these heinous crimes are punished as a war crime never gets old.-As regards the feelings we are experiencing, I was talking about it in Zagreb, and I will speak of that in the same way here in Belgrade, we Serbs have the right to say that the dominant feeling is sadness with us today, but we mustered power to despise those who in our behalf committed crimes. We hope that all the other people here in the Balkans will have the same strength to despise those who committed serious crimes against the Serbian people - the minister Vucic.
The Hague Tribunal has ruled that the "Storm" is a joint criminal enterprise with the aim of expelling Serbs from Knin Krajina. More than 200 000 Serbs were driven from Knin and Knin Krajina. The kilometer-long convoys of refugees on 4 August 1995 were sent from western Croatia to Serbia, and unfortunately there were about two thousand people killed in one of the most brutal actions of the Croatian army.
According to the President of the Commission for Missing Persons of the Government of Serbia, Veljko Odalovic, based on the evidence, which is aligned with the Croatian side, from Croatia, a total of about 2,400 people still missing, 1,400 persons of Serbian nationality, 403 citizens of Serbia, who reported his disappearance in our committee, or who were expelled and banished.18 years later, the exhumation of remains is still being conducted, and some of the mass graves have not yet been opened, hence the different data on the number of dead, missing and displaced persons, which, according to the Documentation Center "Veritas" are at least 250,000 people.
