President pays tribute to victims of 1999 NATO bombing

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic on Thursday laid a wreath in a tribute to the people killed in the 1999 NATO air attack on Belgrade’s Dragisa Misovic Hospital.

“For as long as Serbia exists and for as long as there is memory, places of suffering such as this should be visited because a lack of memory would transform us into some other nation and some other people,” Nikolic told reporters after laying a wreath at a memorial to the seven soldiers and three patients killed in the May 20, 1999 bombing.

In the bombing of the hospital, there were casualties in a place where people were fighting for their lives and where no bombs should have fallen, said Nikolic, who noted that, on each anniversary of the NATO bombing, he always visits a different site targeted by the air attacks because, he said, the aggressor did not choose its victims either.

“All such places – this one more than any other – are the disgrace of a civilisation at the end of the 20th century that was in a conflict with a policy and a leadership that did not suit it,” Nikolic said.

In the bombing of Serbia, many states joined forces in order to commit a crime, which is why this must be remembered, Nikolic said.

Source: Tanjug