PM Krivokapić on the occasion of the NATO bombing anniversary: We remember our victims with sadness

This Government is firmly determined to look straight in the eyes of all historical facts and to kneel before the sacrifice made or being made by any of our citizens. Our Euro-Atlantic integration course, of course, obliges us to take into account our role in the global interest of both Europe and humanity, but above all to take into account the suffering and efforts that all the citizens of Montenegro have endured and are enduring.

Today, we remember our victims with sadness and we most sincerely share the pain with the families who lost their loved ones in the NATO bombing of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Twenty-two years ago, we as a society and a nation lost citizens who would today represent our striking creative, progressive and restorative power. As a parent, as a man, as the Prime Minister, and as a citizen whom "all the wounds of my own kin hurt", I bow before their innocent victim.

Today, I would not mention justice or injustice, judges or executioners, or the reasons or goals that preceded this tragedy. It is superfluous to talk about all this when we stand today over the tumuli which are an outcome that cannot be fixed and has no consolation. And of course we will remember the victims, and the sirens, and the bomb fall whistle, and the suffering, and of course our memory will be a reminder to everyone and always that we are a society to which all must show true respect, esteem, understanding, and I emphasise, repentance.

The bridge that the famous Nobel laureate wrote about as a point where civilizations, philosophies, cultures, religions and centuries meet, exchange and enrich themselves, in Murino became a symbol of tragedy for Montenegro and an example of how everything a genius mind can conceive becomes a monument of sorrow and tragedy with just one forceful and ruthless move.

On the twenty-second anniversary of the beginning of the NATO bombing, we especially remember and mention the names of children who are our unforgettable, most tragic symbols of the cruel suffering of civilians: thirteen-year-old Miroslav Knežević, ten-year-old Julija Brudar and twelve-year-old Olivera Maksimović and other heroic victims in 1999, but also all those of our ancestors who lost their lives also in the bombings that hit Montenegro from everywhere during the Second World War, when innocent citizens were also killed.

All our losses and all our sufferings today should remind us that we paid dearly and that the opportunity we have to build a prosperous society of understanding and tolerance came after our great righteous and innocent victims, and that we must not miss this opportunity.

Perhaps someone will say or think that our modest commemoration of this sad day is an expression of hypocrisy or mere protocol. One may cite as an argument for such an attitude some of our diplomatic guidelines, the European integration of the Western Balkans, or Montenegro's membership in NATO, but I want to say to well-meaning critics and those who certainly are not, that we are not the Government that trades or bids with human souls and the most intimate feelings, nor we will ever do that. There neither exists, nor will exist, government concept or agenda that will grow our hearts cold or alienate us from our citizens, because then we would not perform the duty for which we were constituted.

Of course, we should not forget nineteen-year-old Saša Stajić, nor any sacrifice we have made during the past, because by forgetting we would betray the sanctity of life. But for the sake of the same sanctity and the future of our children, we are turning a new page in our history, in which, hopefully, there will be no blood and tears!