President Stevandic attended the commemoration for the killed and exiled Serbs in the “Storm”

The President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska dr Nenad Stevandic attended in Prijedor the commemoration Day of remembrance on all killed and exiled Serbs in the pogrom “Storm”, Croatian military-police action in 1995. It was a mutual commemoration of the Republic of Srpska and Serbia.

The central commemoration of the Day of Remembrance has been held for the first time in the Republic of Srpska.

The Commemoration was attended by His Holiness Patriarch Serbian Porfirije, the presidents of the Republic of Srpska and Serbia Milorad Dodik and Aleksandar Vucic, prime minister of the Republic of Srpska Radovan Visković, Serbian member of the BiH Presidency Željka Cvijanović, the president of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Vladimir Orlić and other officials from Srpska and Serbia.

Patriarch Porfirije addressing the gathered people said that peace is the highest quality, the condition for sincere human dignity, calling first religious leaders to keep and construct peace between people and nations.

The President of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik stressed that “Storm” was a joint criminal act of USA and Croatia which could not wait to ethnically clean this territory from Serbs.   

The President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić said that the Croatian action "Storm" is a crime of ethnic cleansing, although they do not want to say that in Europe and said that Serbia will always be with the people of the Republic of Srpska.

The commemoration of 28 years since this great Serbian suffering and the largest ethnic cleansing in Europe after the Second World War was organized by the committees of the governments of the Republic of Srpska and Serbia for nurturing the tradition of liberation wars.

The pogrom of Serbs in "Storm" began on August 4, 1995, with the offensive of the Croatian army and police, and HVO units in the area of Banija, Lika, Kordun, and northern Dalmatia.

According to Veritas data, more than 220,000 Krajina Serbs were expelled during the "Storm", and the records contain the names of 1,869 dead and missing Serbs, of which 1,220 were civilians.

In a February 2015 verdict, the International Court of Justice classified "Storm" as ethnic cleansing.