Banja Luka exhibition memorializes 1995 Serbian refugee casualties

An exhibition opened in front of the Church of Christ the Savior in Banja Luka titled “Do not forget – Croatian army shelling of refugee columns at Petrovačka cesta and Svodna”. The display, created by Janak Velimirović of the Veritas Documentation and Information Center, documents the suffering of Serbian civilians and refugees during and after the August 1995 Operation Storm offensive.

The exhibition shows the August 7 attack on a refugee column in the village of Janjila near Bosanski Petrovac (Petrovačka cesta), which killed ten civilians, including four children, and a second attack on August 8 in Svodna near Novi Grad that killed three more people. No one has been held accountable for the shelling. Archival material, photographs and a documentary film “Petrovačka cesta” by Tihana Bajić are also presented. The International Court of Justice has classified Operation Storm as ethnic cleansing, though not genocide. The exhibition aims to preserve the memory of the 1,904 Serbs killed or missing, including 1,250 civilians, many of them elderly, women and children.