Belgrade Mayor lays wreath at monument for victims and defenders

The monument was unveiled in the Hajduk Veljkov park just down the street from the Serbian government headquarters and near the Belgrade Waterfront development, a project backed by the authorities.

Sapic told the ceremony that the fighters in the wars of the 1990s are often forgotten “because of the atmosphere we fell into”. “The Serbian people are not the only ones to blame for those conflicts,” he said.

Wreaths were also laid by members of the Association of war-time military invalids whose spokesman Zeljko Vasiljevic said that the dead warrior is not the one who died but the one who was forgotten. “Our figthers have not been forgotten. There were a lot of problems in raising this monument but we did it,” he said.

The monument was formerly located at Savski Square but was removed when the square underwent reconstruction as part of the Belgrade Waterfront project.