Grabovica: Lies are being used to equate victims and perpetrators

A memorial cross appeared this morning on Zlatište above Sarajevo, and earlier the Alliance of RS Camp Detainees claimed they would erect it by the end of September, reports the Patria agency.

The president of the alliance, Branislav Dukić, said that the Alliance of RS Camp Detainees had fulfilled its earlier promise to erect a memorial cross on Zlatište, thereby best refuting all possible speculations about abandoning its erection, Srna reports.

- We erected a memorial cross for God to see and for Serbs to see and guard it - Dukić stated.

Dukić reiterated that, as he said, "no one has the right to forbid the remembrance of 6,500 people who perished in Sarajevo, just as no one has the right to deny that there were 126 camps in that city, where 5,000 victims never saw freedom." During the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, 11,541 people perished, including 1,600 children, and the city was shelled from positions where the memorial cross was placed.

Fikret Grabovica, president of the Association of Parents of Murdered Children of Sarajevo, told Patria that he was surprised and taken aback.

- This is clearly one of a series of provocations, an attempt to realize what they have intended. To place that cross and that memorial on Zlatište, a place from which many innocent citizens of Sarajevo were killed, including a large number of children. This provocation should not be allowed to pass. This is state land, as far as I know, and I think the authorities should do everything in this case to prevent it from happening – Grabovica said.

As Grabovica stated, lies and fabrications are being used at all costs to equate victims with aggressors and perpetrators, and that has been the intention all along.

The issue of the cross on Zlatište was also brought up in June, when the Office of the High Representative in BiH also reacted, stating at the time that "religious symbols must not be used to intentionally incite inter-ethnic tension."