A joint commemorative session of the Sarajevo Canton Assembly, the City Council of Sarajevo and municipal councils, as well as a commemorative program and laying flowers at the site of Markale Market marked the Day of Remembrance honoring the killed citizens of Sarajevo during the war from 1992 to 1995 and the 27th anniversary of the murder of our fellow citizens in the massacre at Markale Market.

The anniversary of the massacre, together with representatives of the executive and legislative authorities of the Sarajevo Canton, was marked by numerous delegations of all levels of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, representatives of the Association of Civilian Victims of War of the SC, Association of Parents of Killed Children of the Besieged Sarajevo 1992-1995, veterans' associations and families, relatives and friends of the killed citizens.

On this day in 1994, a 120 mm mortar shell was fired from the aggressor positions in the area of the village Mrkovići on Markale, killing 67 and injured 142 fellow citizens.

A former member of the wartime Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Professor Mirko Pejanović, spoke about the suffering of Sarajevo residents at the commemorative session, emphasizing that this session is an act of expressing sympathy for the victims of Sarajevo during the siege.

He reminded that the military siege of the city began during March and April 1992 by the forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, which was later renamed the Army of the Republic of Srpska.

-The Greater Serbia state plan had the idea of destroying the state of B&H and carrying out its ethnic division. This project brought violent persecution and mass suffering of the Bosniak people. The realization of such a plan basically had a fascist intention and policy, and that is the destruction of the other and different- said Pejanović.

He pointed out that this policy was managed by extreme Serbian nationalists Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, who were sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide in Srebrenica.

-The war goal to ethnically divide and destroy B&H has led to a hellish endeavor to prevent the resistance of patriotic democratic forces and to prevent the defense of the entire and internationally recognized B&H by years of siege and shelling of Sarajevo and mass killings of its citizens from the siege lines,” Pejanović emphasized.

Preventing the resistance and defense of the city of Sarajevo, he said, also meant preventing the defense of the entire territory of B&H, because all leading state institutions operate in Sarajevo.

-Interreligious and inter-ethnic tolerance, which has been nurtured in Sarajevo for centuries, has made it a brand of common multinational living with widely known interpersonal and inter-neighborly relations of tolerance. The grenades did not choose on a national basis, the victims of the shelling were all citizens. During the siege of Sarajevo, civilians were killed at 230 locations throughout the city- Pejanović concluded in his address.

During the siege of Sarajevo, 11,541 people were killed, of whom 1,601 were children. More than 61,000 people were injured, of whom 15,000 children.