Monument to the victims of March 17 was unveiled in Kosovo, marking 20 years since pogrom

Dušica Nikolić, deputy director of the Office for the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and the People's Republic, addressed those gathered in front of the memorial plaque.

"At the initiative of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, today we are unveiling a memorial plaque in memory of our fellow citizens who died in the March pogrom. At the initiative of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, today we nurture a culture of remembrance and remember all our victims with due care and reverence. The goal of uncovering this plaque is to foster a culture of remembrance of the heaviest day of Serbian suffering in Kosovo and Metohija. A symbol of reminder of the torn Serbian lives. The names of the martyrs are carved into this stone and bear witness to our martyrs. This stone from Šar mountains is a symbol of the strength, strength and survival of the Serbian people in these areas. It is a symbol of the strength of our people to endure the calvary it is going through, but also a symbol of unpunished crime for 20 years," she said.

She emphasized that the director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petković, could not be with us even today.

"The Director of the Office, Petar Petković, is not with us because of the ban on Pristina, but that is why I am passing on his message to you, in which he says that it is up to us to do everything, to never again allow new pogroms, nor new storms, to protect our people and to preserve peace as the greatest value. May eternal glory be given to all the innocent victims throughout Kosovo and Metohija, so that no one will ever repeat the crime that the Serbian people experienced," his message reads.

"Today we remember one of the most dramatic events of our centuries-old national history, when embodied hatred, which in just a few hours took the lives of not a small number of our innocent compatriots, expelled more than 4,000 people, destroyed several tens of our sanctuaries and hundreds of homes. It was a day when centuries of existence and duration disappeared before the eyes of the whole world in the flames of hatred," said Dejan Ristic, director of the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade.

Just to recall that two decades ago, on March 17 and 18, 2004, a pogrom took place over the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija, in which 16 Serbs were killed, hundreds were injured, 4,000 were expelled, and more than 1,000 houses, churches, monasteries, shrines were destroyed.