This year’s celebration of the Day of the 63rd Parachute Brigade, on October 14th at the Niš airport, will be organized exclusively for active personnel, without the presence of veterans, families of fallen comrades, and civilians who have supported the unit and its tradition for years.
Because of this, the Association of War Military Invalids and Veterans of the 63rd announced with regret and sadness that this interrupts a tradition lasting more than eight decades – the tradition of comradeship, pride, and unity of all generations of paratroopers.
“The Day of the Paratroopers has never been just a protocol event – it was a day when the past and the present, honor and sacrifice, brotherhood and memory meet. We believe that this decision is a shameful precedent, unworthy of the glorious history and sacrifice of the members of the 63rd Parachute Brigade.”
The reason for this, as Radar learns, is the powerlessness of people from the top of the government, from the Government, through the Ministry of Defense to the relevant Ministry for Veteran Affairs, to prevent the participation of the veterans of the 63rd in securing student protests, and to prevent them from being attacked by one of the government’s mercenaries from the ranks of criminals and fan groups. The author of this text, as a veteran of reporting on various protests, but also wars in the last 35 years, has seen the veterans of the 63rd, many of whom he knows, at all protests since November 1st last year. Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Niš, and then it spread throughout Serbia. The veterans were always there to prevent conflict and restrain the “SNS toughs.” They never clashed with the police, they explained to them that they were on the same mission, it was a cohabitation.
“Tradition is not the property of one man, function, or institution. It belongs to all paratroopers – living and fallen, old and young, those who have just stepped into formation and those who can no longer, but still stand in the heart of each of us. Political circumstances, current decisions, or personal will must not be an excuse to forget what is bright in the history of our army and state. Such actions not only violate the dignity of veterans but also extinguish the spirit of unity that has always singled out the 63rd Parachute as a symbol of honor, bravery, and brotherhood,” the Association believes.
Just as a reminder, the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, on June 14, 2020, while presenting the flag to the 63rd Parachute Brigade, which regained this formation from the battalion rank it was in, said that “the state has introduced a new practice” and that special attention will be paid to our veterans. “You will always be with us even when the homeland needs you,” Vučić said and added that “we are not ashamed of our veterans, but are proud of them.”
He gave various promises to the veterans then, which, of course, he never fulfilled, and now he has declared them unsuitable and “enemies of the state.” Those people who did not ask questions when they needed to go to the battlefields from Slovenia to Kosovo, both active and reservists. Vučić and the top of the then Radicals, and today Progressives, were in deep cover; no one can publicly boast of veteran status and show a veteran’s ID. Neither the first nor the last promise he made and did not fulfill, that is his habit anyway, because a promise costs nothing.
A day before writing this text, the former commander of the 63rd Parachute, retired Major General Ilija Todorov, died. Who knows if he also received an invitation to the celebration or was ignored.
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Source: Radar.rs, Photo: Elmedin Hajrovic / ATAImages