PRIJEDOR, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday bade farewell to four more victims identified to have been killed in the Prijedor massacre.
The newly identified Bosniak civilians who were killed in the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995 were buried at the Kamicani Memorial Center.
Alija Foric, Bademi Music, Nazif Music and Enver Aliji were both identified 32 years after being killed.
At the event, Bosniak member of the Presidential Council Denis Becirovic said those murdered by the Serbs were buried in 73 separate mass graves.
Underlining that crimes including elements of genocide were committed in Prijedor, Becirovic said: “I would like to remind you that World War II criminals were tried in Nuremberg in 1945-1946 for crimes against humanity. Everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina should learn from this and focus on building a safer future.”
He urged people not to forget the “innocent victims” to prevent such an incident to happen again in the future.
Saliha Duderija from the Bosnia and Herzegovina Missing Persons Institute said that Prijedor is the place where the most missing people are found after 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
Noting that they continue to collect DNA samples to find the missing people, Duderija said: “We request those who know something about the events to inform our institute. This way, we can identify the missing people, and their families will have the opportunity to commemorate the relatives they are looking for in a humane way.”
The process of adequately identifying victims involves unearthing bodies from mass graves and finding relatives to match DNA samples.
What happened in Prijedor?
Serbian Simo Drljaca, who was appointed head of the State Security Agency in the former Yugoslavia in March 1992 when the war in Bosnia had just begun, armed 1,775 Serbs serving in 13 police stations in Prijedor within a month.
On the night of April 29, Serbian troops captured the city of Prijedor, whose population was mostly Bosniak at that time. Heavily armed Serbian troops attacked villages around Prijedor on May 23, 1992. In the massacre in Prijedor and its surroundings, 3,176 civilians, including 102 children, lost their lives.
In an announcement made on local radio on May 31, 1992, Serbs instructed “non-Serbs to hang white sheets on the windows of their houses and to tie white ribbons on their arms when going out.”
Non-Serbian civilians who had to carry out the instructions of the occupying Serbs were identified by this method. Those identified were taken to prison camps and subjected to massacres, torture and rape.
Approximately 30,000 civilians from Prijedor were taken to concentration camps in Omarska, Keraterm, Kozarac, Trnopolje and Manjaca at that time. Tens of thousands of people were exiled from the land of their birth.
Bosnian civilians who lost their lives in the massacre in Prijedor and were identified are buried after the funeral ceremony held on July 20 every year.
