White strips as a feature of hell – personal attitudes

Namely, 31. May, in Prijedor in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), but everywhere where people have empathies and needs, white strips are marked. That day is a symbol when all nine circles of inferno emerged from the ground and swallowed the last atoms of humanity in this area. You damn ’92. year, 30. April, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) with the help of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), has violently undertaken the government in Prijedor Military Shuilt. The first decision they brought was to discharge all employed Croats and Bosniaks.

Shortly then, for a month later, 31. May, through the waves of Radio Prijedor, to all Bosniaks and Croats were ordered to show loyalty to the newly established Serbian government. How? By hanging white sheets on the windows and balconies of their houses – as a signal surrender, obedience, belonging to the category of others. And when they go out on the street, they will have to wear white strips around the hand.

The order, which will later be repeated, for the first time, the speakers Seni Račević read the sentences, which will remain as an audio-record of institutional racism: « Citizens of Serbian nationality, join your army and the police in pursuit for these extremists.

Other citizens, Muslim and Croatian nationalities, must report white flags on their houses and apartments and put white strips on their hands. Otherwise, it will bear difficult consequences.  » On that day, the city of Prijedor became another pebble in the Great Serhy Mosaic of Strava and Horror.

Unfortunately, at that Nazi celebration of non-Serb origin people, the event of evil did not care. So after that act, three notorious camps were made, in the vicinity of Prijedor – Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm, which are taken away by men, women, children and old men. Brutality and crumples are only part of horror that happened in these places, but survived witnesses and witnesses tried to convey these nightmare experiences before the Hague tribunal on the beasts that were made over them.

The facts of death and suffering speaks the following: More than 3,176 civilians were killed in the Municipality of Prijedor, of which 102 children were killed. More than 50,000 people (mostly Bosniaks and Croats) were expelled. For war crimes committed in the Municipality of Prijedor during the war and Herzegovina, almost all leading political representatives of Republika Srpska, including Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic and Momcilo Krajisnik, were sentenced.

The verdicts were imposed and a number of members of police structures, as well as commanders of security, shift elders and other responsible persons in Prijedor camps. Dusko Tadić, Zoran Žigić, Miroslav Kvočka, Mladen Radić, Zoran Žigić, Dragoljub Prcać, Milojica Kos, Tanja Miškin Šušnjar and others. The Commander of the General Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska, Ratko Mladic, is also finally convicted of crimes committed in Prijedor. The indictment was filed against General Momir Talić, who was at the head of the first Krajina Corps, but the trial was not held due to his death.

Refik Hodžić in the Pređan for the book « Book of Men’s Prijedor ‘or Croats are written from this area. And successful. The facts of the organization of the then Serb authorities have been found beyond any reasonable doubt before the international tribunal in The Hague and in many scientific Works. The post-war return of a certain number expelled, but should be somewhat on the results of the nature and count the Prijedor Bosniaks and Croats in some ten years to obtain a full image of the scale and far-reaching crimes. « 

Prijedor, however, is an introduction to the anatomy of genocide, which was then culminating in Srebrenica after that. After humiliating, beating, torture, throwing, rape, shooting, Prijedor can no longer reach the point of rehabilitation, as everyone is made blind and deaf to people who survived and families who lost their loved ones.

As long as we don’t talk in Antivucician circles about Vukovar, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Prijedor, Srebrenica, Suhuka, Racak, Batajnica and many other black points, these things will hang and fall out of the closet. It wasn’t that far, it was, it was 2013. revealed a mass grave at Tomašica locality in the surroundings of Prijedor where a large number of people were overwhelmed. Who knows which pit we will disgust.

« Our Prijedora is no longer and will never be sacrificed for strategic goals and the creation of a state of others, the entities where the comrades and neighbors are reduced to the enemies of which one should stay away from self-insulation.

Our Prijedor was buried with innocent people whose names are leaning from these pages as in the proclaims from Omarska and Keraterma. He will live in our stories about Copical Children in Kozar, Golden Everters in the confectionery ‘near Rama’, stories that will be taken carefully, whose lives will be rooted elsewhere, from Chicago to Ljubljana, from Melbourne to Sana Bridge. That Prijedor will live for as long as our memories will last and a trace that we leave, « Hodzic wrote.

On the trail of his words, Serbia apparently forgot that she ever felt. Many will say today, « Non now, it’s not a moment! » He’s going to repeat, « there’s nothing down, but there’s still you, because this is just the surface of that inferna over which these spaces rest. Prijedor Viri from our collective subconscious as a warning and bloody trace to the ambis, which we turned into and from which we cannot exit.

The author is a free journalist

The author’s attitudes in the dialogue not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Danas.