Victims' Associations: 9 January in RS to be Declared a Day of Mourning and Pay Tribute to Victims Killed in the Joint Criminal Enterprise

(Patria) - Victims' associations have submitted a request to the competent instances of the Bosnian authorities to declare 9 January in the RS a day of mourning and to pay tribute on that day to the victims killed in the joint criminal enterprise.

The request was sent to the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), High Representative Christian Schmidt, RS President Milorad Dodik, and President of the RS National Assembly Nenad Stevandić.

"The Tribunal in The Hague, in its final judgments, has clearly and unequivocally established the following: at the beginning of 1992, while international negotiations were ongoing to resolve the status of BiH, the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs implemented their secret plan to separate the territories they considered theirs from the existing structures of the SRBiH and create a separate state of the Bosnian Serbs.

The Assembly of the so-called Serbian Republic of BiH declared the Serbian Republic of BiH on 9 January 1992, which would be renamed the Republika Srpska on 12 August 1992.

On that basis, until November 1995, there was a joint plan to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from the territories claimed by the Bosnian Serbs through the commission of crimes.

The joint criminal purpose was shared by the political, military, and police leadership in Serbia, SAO Krajina, SAO Slavonia, Baranja, Western Srem, and the Republika Srpska, with key members, among others, who varied depending on the area and time of the commission of crimes.

And these are Slobodan Milošević, Radmilo Bogdanović, Radovan Stojičić Badža, Mihalj Kertes, Milan Martić, Milan Babić, Goran Hadžić, Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, Momčilo Krajišnik, Biljana Plavšić, and Željko Ražnatović Arkan.

In this regard, we request that 9 January be declared a day of mourning in the RS and that every 9 January tribute be paid to the victims of the criminal enterprise, which, among others, was led by your predecessors in office, war criminal Radovan Karadžić and war criminal Momčilo Krajišnik," it is stated in the request signed by the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, the Association Movement "Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves," and the Association "Women of Podrinje."