(4 Aug 2023)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Prijedor - 4 August 2023
1. Various of ceremony with Serbian patriarch Porfirije
2. Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, walking onto stage
3. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska:
”We are here tonight to remember all of our victims. My soul aches. And I want to say that this (operation storm) was a joint criminal enterprise of the United States of America and Croatia towards unarmed and undefended Serbian people.”
4. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic walking on stage
5. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Aleksandar Vucic, Serbian President:
”I came here, to Prijedor, to tell you that I am proud to be with you and I know that good and honest people live here, and not some criminals. People who know what freedom is and who always guarded their freedom.”
5. Wide of audience applauding and chanting
STORYLINE:
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, on Friday, attended commemorations for tens of thousands of Serbs who in 1995 fled Croatia after a Croatian military offensive that marked the end of the Bosnian War.
Both Vucic and Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, used the ceremony to hit out at the United States and Croatia.
The Croatian “Operation Storm,” which started on August 4, 1995, saw the Croatian Army liberate a large part of the Croatian territory that had been under the control of rebel Serbs since 1991.
Croatian forces achieved their military goals in just three days, ousting the rebel Serbs’ unrecognized statelet, the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
The anniversary is marked each year in Croatia as a national triumph, with mainstream media echoing the celebratory patriotic theme.
Among Serbs however, the narrative is very different. Operation Storm is seen by Serbs and their officials as a tragedy because it caused a huge exodus of Serb civilians from Croatia; several hundred Serbs were killed in the operation.
Adding to the simmering ethnic tensions in Bosnia nearly 30 years after the wars ended, Serb officials have decided to hold the exodus commemorations in the northern Bosnian town of Prijedor, where thousands of Bosniaks and Croats were killed during the Bosnian war, many in infamous prison camps set up by the Bosnian Serbs.
In their fiery speeches in Prijedor, both Vucic and Dodik launched into an anti-Western narrative.
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