Ozren March Marks Serb Exodus, Search for 129 Continues
The Exodus Trail march set out from Tumare on Ozren, a 22 kilometer walk to St. George's Church in Stog near Vozuca, marking 31 years since the expulsion of Serbs and the search for 129 missing.
On September 10, the Exodus Trail march set out from the village of Tumare on Mount Ozren, a procession marking 31 years since the expulsion of Serbs from the Vozuca area, the Krivaja river valley, and the southern and western parts of Ozren. Eleven buses and a number of passenger vehicles left Doboj for Tumare, and from there participants are walking 22 kilometers to St. George’s Church in the settlement of Stog near Vozuca, in the municipality of Zavidovici in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the Serbian public on both sides of the Drina, the march is an annual reminder that the search for 129 fighters and civilians who went missing in those days of 1995 still has not ended.
What happened at Vozuca in 1995
From September 10 to 24, 1995, the Second and Third Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH) carried out a military operation known as “Uragan” and “Farz,” which broke the defense of Vozuca. Thirty Serb villages were burned, and 1,920 Serb families, roughly 7,680 people, were driven out. According to Vesti Online, around 500 soldiers of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and civilians were killed during and after the fighting, with 459 Serb fighters losing their lives. Of the 412 people listed as missing, 283 have been identified so far, while the search continues for 129 VRS fighters and civilians.
According to the same source, some of the victims were killed in ritual murders carried out by the El Mujahideen detachment, a unit commanded at the time by General Sakib Mahmuljin, then commander of the Third Corps of the ABiH. The fate of captured fighters later became the subject of the documentary film “Ljubi brata.”
Zoran Blagojevic, president of the Zavidovici Natives’ Association from Doboj, which has organized the march for 15 years, explains why the procession ends specifically in the churchyard in Stog.
“We end the Exodus Trail march in front of St. George’s Church at Vozuca, in whose churchyard a mass grave was discovered in 1997, from which 21 bodies were exhumed, 17 of them without heads. That is why laying wreaths and candles at the memorial cross in the churchyard, for all those who died defending Vozuca, is a mandatory part of the ceremony.”
Who takes part, and what status the march holds
The march has been listed among events of special significance for Republika Srpska since 2022. It is organized by the Zavidovici Natives’ Association from Doboj and the Coordination of Associations of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Serbia, and among the pilgrims is Radan Ostojic, Republika Srpska’s minister of labor and veteran and disability protection. Ostojic said the march symbolically recalls the Serb suffering of the Homeland Defense War.
Why the search for 129 people continues after 27 years
Zoran Panic, secretary of the Natives’ Association and himself a veteran of the Fourth Ozren Brigade, says the decades long search for the missing keeps running into obstruction from the other side.
“There have been many obstructions to the search for the bodies of our fallen comrades. Quite often, remains are moved and hidden, and the malice of those responsible is shown by the fact that some bodies, even after DNA identification was completed, were kept hidden for years in federal centers for tracing missing persons, with neither the families nor our own services ever notified.”
Panic adds that there are also indications that some bodies were buried at the Potocari memorial center, passed off as Srebrenica victims.
Lidija Zaric, director of the Doboj Cultural Center, who reported for the First Krajina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska during the war, also witnessed those days. She recalls that along much of the defense line held by the defenders of Vozuca, fighters refused to abandon their positions despite the hurricane of fire the attack opened with.
“It is very difficult to describe everything that happened between September 10 and 24, 1995, but even in the moment when the defense lines were broken by the hurricane of fire and the El Mujahideen unit was pushing toward the only path of escape, the fighters refused to abandon their positions. Along most of the defense line held by the people of Vozuca, not a single trench fell, and the waves of attackers kept retreating in the face of our fighters’ stubborn resolve.”
The only final conviction
The only person finally convicted of war crimes committed during operation “Uragan” is General Sakib Mahmuljin, then commander of the Third Corps of the ABiH, sentenced first to ten and later to eight years in prison. According to Vesti Online, he is currently free in Turkey instead of serving that sentence.
Jovan Cakarevic, president of the Coordination of Associations of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Serbia, believes the sentence itself was disproportionate to the scale of the crime.
“Had he robbed a bank or trafficked drugs, he would have received more years in prison in the West than he did for these horrific tortures and abuses of prisoners, the ethnic cleansing of an entire region, and ritual killings by beheading.”
Besides the Exodus Trail march, the Coordination of Associations of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Serbia each year also organizes a memorial service for the victims of Operation Storm on August 4 at St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade, as well as a march along the roads of the Sumadija Division of the second levy at Vrani Kamen, honoring soldiers killed in World War One. Serbian newspapers have not previously reported on earlier editions of the Exodus Trail march.
