The Croatian leadership honored the memory of Serbian elders killed by their punitive forces
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, Defense Minister Tomislav Medved, together with the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia Boris Milosevic, the founder of the Croatian Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) Milorad Pupovac and the special representative of the Serbian President Veran Matic visited the site of the massacre of Serbs in the village of Grubori.
The bloody incident occurred after the fall of the Republic of Serbian Krajina on August 25, 1995, when Croatian special forces killed six elderly people; to this day, no one has been punished for this crime.
“The damage from the crime in Grubori was caused to Croatia as a state,” said Croatian President Zoran Milanovic, speaking at the funeral ceremony. – The damage that the state inflicts on itself is not absolute; the state cannot exist at any cost. The murder of six innocent old people is horrifying...
I imagined if someone could kill people dear to me in the name of some celestial, cosmic or private principles. This is the biggest shame, and this definition still sounds very censorship... After that, nothing was the same. The wars are over and it's time for a normal life. There was a lot between us. Serbs and Croats are the closest peoples, they are not even Swedes and Norwegians or Czechs and Slovaks... This should not happen again.”
At the end of his speech, Milanović read the heartfelt poem “Stay Here” by Serbian poet Aleksa Šantić, which could be interpreted as an appeal to the Serbian community in Croatia.
“Sympathy and recognition of all innocent victims are a precondition for reconciliation and an end to hatred,” Boris Milosevic said in turn. “And it is time to stop hating and not pass it on to new generations, so that our children do not grow up prejudiced against others just because they belong to other nationalities.”
In the village of Grubori, cleared in 1995, life has not resumed to this day.
At the same time, Milosevic himself, or rather her family, can be considered the personification of the tragedy of the civil confrontation of the 90s: his father, a resident of Croatian Sibenik, despite his Serbian nationality, was drafted into the Croatian army and he fought against his fellow tribesmen from the RSK, while his father’s mother was a grandmother Boris, was killed in the village of Bribirska Mostina by Croatian militants during the purge of the RSK during Operation Storm (Oluja).
“We welcome today’s step forward taken by representatives of the Croatian leadership and the display of reverence for the victims in Grubori,” the human rights Center for Overcoming the Past commented on today’s ceremony. “But although the facts in this case have been unconditionally established, justice has not yet been served for those killed. We remember this crime and call for accountability and an end to the conspiracy of silence.”
The massacre of the remaining residents of the village of Grubori in the vicinity of the former capital of the RSK - Knin, occurred on August 25, 1995. Then the militants of the Anti-Terrorist Special Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs “Lucko” were given the order to clear the territory before the arrival of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Which they did in their own way, killing the old people who remained in the village (they burned one alive in his own house) and burning down the houses. The victims of the crime that day were Maria Grubor (born 1905), Milos Grubor (born 1915), Jovan Grubor (born 1930), Milica Grubor (born 1944), Žuro Karanovic (1954 born) and Jovan Karanovic (born 1922).
Militants "Luchko".
Franjo Drljo, Bozidar Krajina and Igor Beneti were suspects in this case, but two attempts to bring them to justice were unsuccessful.
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