O
n Tuesday, December 2, in Washington DC, a conference on victims of communist terror in Serbia was held for
the first time under the auspices of the Victims of Communism Museum Memorial Foundation and with the
support of the Serbian National Defense (SND) from Chicago. Special guests from Serbia were Dr. Srđan
Cvetković and Dr. Ena Mirković, who presented their book “In the Name of the People”, which has been
translated into English, as well as a multimedia presentation in which they presented in an accessible and
scientifically substantiated manner all the horror and terror of the communist tyranny that began in September
1944, when more than 60 thousand Serbs were killed without trial or conviction in a period of just a few months.
The conference participants were horrified by the information that was skillfully hidden from the American
public by the Tito regime, as due to the geopolitical interests of the United States during the Cold War. The
lecturers proved that in terms of their intensity and brutality, the communist crimes committed against the
Serbian people were not even a little behind the crimes of the Bolsheviks in the USSR.
The oldest Serbian national organization was represented by Proto Sasha Petrovic, president of the
SND, and Miss Dragana Petrovic, vice president of the organization. In his speech, Father Sasha presented to
the audience the fact that communist crimes were not limited to the borders of the former Yugoslavia, but that
Tito’s infamous UDBA killed prominent Serbs in the diaspora, and that people from criminal groups who were
offered amnesty were very often used for these murders. Prota Petrović pointed out that the SND was also
targeted by communist criminals. Namely in June 1977, Dragiša Kasiković, editor of the newspaper Sloboda,
and nine-year-old Ivanka Milošević were massacred with dozens of stab wounds. The perpetrators of this
horrific crime have not been found to this day, while the Republic of Serbia still refuses to open the secret
archives of UDBA, which would shed light on many political murders, as well as all of UDBA’s associates, both
in academic ranks and in the ranks of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Father Saša presented the audience with
the shocking information that the Yugoslav communists, in terms of their atrocities, surpassed even the
Ustashas and the Germans combined in terms of the number of priests killed – they killed over 400 clergymen!
He also emphasized that the current regime in Serbia must be viewed and treated as a historical continuity of
the Titoist dictatorship, which is now redressed in “European garb” As the evidence to this assertion Fr Petrovic
pointed out three facts –
- secret archives of UDBA still remain closed,
- the Serbian Parliament has refused to adopt the Resolution on the Genocide of Serbs in the NDH for the
third time. - the recent laying of wreaths by the current BIA director Vladimir Orlić on the graves of two greatest
communist criminals Krcun and Ranković confirms that the BIA is in fact an organic continuity of the UDBA and
that nothing has changed in Serbia after the fall of Milošević. The conference was attended by representatives
of the US diplomatic corps and from several other countries, numerous guests from Chicago and New York, as
well as Father Vasilije Vranić, parish priest of St. Luke’s Church in Washington.
and his associate, Mr. Stefan Mandić, a political science graduate student.
Interestingly, Serbian Ambassador Dragan Šutanovac did not respond to the invitation to participate in the
conference, but sent one of his “advisors” who demonstratively left the hall immediately after Father Saša
Petrović’s speech
The so-called Serbian Foreign Minister, Marko Đurić, was also in Washington on his mission of (in vain)
kneeling before American officials regarding sanctions against NIS.
This is the first time that a conference of this type has been held at such a significant location and at such a
high level, so the museum director, Mr. Paterson, and Father Sasha Petrović reached an agreement on
cooperation between the SND and this important educational institution in the future, because the SND can
contribute greatly to the successful work of the museum by providing the historiographical materials it
possesses in its rich library and archives.
The next lecture by Dr. Srđan Cvetković and Ena Mirković is scheduled for Sunday, December 7th at the
Church of St. Stefan of Decani in Chicago. SNDinfo
