Azem KurticSarajevoBIRNFebruary 6, 202311:22As commemorations were held in Sarajevo for the 29th anniversary of the Markale market killings, when 68 people were killed by a shell blast, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik claimed the Bosnian Serbs were falsely accused.
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A Bosnian woman laying flowers at the site of the Markale killings. Photo: BIRN.
Relatives of victims and officials including the international overseer of Bosnia’s peace deal, High Representative Christian Schmidt, laid flowers and paid tributes on Sunday to those who died when the Markale market in Sarajevo was shelled by the Bosnian Serb Army on February 5, 1994.
A total of 68 people were killed and 142 injured in what was one of the worst crimes during the 1992-95 siege of the city.
“Twenty-nine years later, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a different place facing a secure future in the European family. But we must not forget those who were killed or wounded while buying basic food for their families,” said High Representative Schmidt.
Just after the commemoration at the site of the killings, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik, criticised Schmidt’s presence at the event and claimed the Bosnian Serbs were not responsible for the massacre.
“A fake High Representative at the commemoration of a crime that’s been falsely reported,” Dodik wrote on Twitter.
“The only truth of Markale is the innocent victims, whose killers will be known someday. Markale is a crime of which the Serbs have been falsely accused twice and was used as a pretext for the NATO bombing of the Republika Srpska,” Dodik wrote.
Republika Srpska officials have often alleged that the Bosnian Army shelled its own people at Markale in order to blame it on Bosnian Serb forces.
Dodik refuses to recognise Schmidt’s authority as High Representative because he was not appointed by a UN Security Council resolution. Security Council member Russia, an ally of Dodik, opposed the appointment of Schmidt and also refuses to recognise his authority.
There was a second Bosnian Serb attack on the Markale market near the end of the war on August 28, 1995, when 43 civilians were killed and 84 wounded.
The Hague Tribunal in the cases against two men who commanded the Bosnian Serb Army’s Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, Stanislav Galic and Dragomir Milosevic, found that both attacks on Markale came from Bosnian Serb positions.
Both Galic and Milosevic were found guilty of terrorising the population of Sarajevo with artillery and sniper attacks.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
