Brnabic: For first time, world has heard UN testimonies of suffering of Serbs in BiH

BELGRADE - April 30, 2024 will go down in history as the day when, for the first time, the world had an opportunity to see at the UN headquarters the faces of, and hear the personal accounts of, people who testified of the suffering and the plight of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic said on Thursday.

At the initiative of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, eight Serbs who were captured and held in camps during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina spoke at Monday's panel titled Equal Justice For All Victims of the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, attended by representatives of dozens of UN member states.

Their testimonies showed that the Serbs, too, were victims of the war.

"It was the first time the world was able to see sisters Duska and Svetlana Stanic, who were taken to a Rascani camp as six- and eight-year-old girls and tortured and abused. The world saw Rajko Draganic, who, with his daughter, found the dead (and mutilated) bodies of his wife and parents, and Dusan Magazin, whose parents were slaughtered when he was a boy. He was told they were killed by Muslim officers and 'Croatian Defence Council' officers in Konjic," Brnabic wrote in a post on the social media network X, noting that all victims must be shown respect.

She noted the captives' accounts would remain a permanent testimony of ethnically motivated crimes against the Serbs.

"We will never forget nor stop fighting for the truth. However difficult it may be for many to accept, we will continue to share the truth because all the lives that were lost and the tragic fates of survivors bind us to fight for justice and understanding. And that is the only path to reconciliation," Brnabic noted.