Women Victims of War Association condemns Christmas Eve gathering in Visegrad

The Association Women Victims of War issued a public statement yesterday condemning the Christmas Eve gathering in Drazevina.

We transmit their statement in full:

On January 6th, 2023, the Ravna Gora Chetnik movement in Visegrad sent an invitation to gather for Christmas Eve in Drazevina near Visegrad. The departure of the column is planned from the city centre, accompanied by Chetnik symbols and iconography.

At the end of last year, the members of the movement were sentenced to 5 months in prison each for causing national, racial, and religious hatred, discord and intolerance in the area of Visegrad and its surroundings in March 2019.

Despite this, the members of the movement organize public gatherings and processions, which make it clear that they do not respect the judgment of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina BiH and therefore neither the country in which they live. In these activities they have the full support of the local authorities in Visegrad, as well as the police.

It is about glorifying and praising an ideology and movement that has been aimed at the extermination, slaughter and mass persecution of Bosniaks in Visegrad and other towns in Podrinje for more than two centuries. Such actions in peacetime send a message to the already small number of Bosniak returnees to Visegrad that they are not welcome and that the pre-war multi-ethnic city of Visegrad wants to become an exclusively Serbian city in every possible way.

The continuity of the criminal ideology is maintained through such gatherings and it should be recalled that terrible crimes were committed against the Bosniaks of Visegrad under the banner of the Chetnik movement.

On behalf of the Women Victims of War Association, we call on the representatives of local authorities in Visegrad, headed by the mayor, the police, but also the competent state authorities to urgently prevent Chetnik orgies and harassment of the already small number of Bosniak returnees to that city, the Association stated.