(c) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
This interview was published in Al Jazeera Balkans on May 31
"Serbian citizens, join your army and police in the pursuit of these extremists. Other citizens, Muslims and Croats, must hang white flags on their houses and apartments and tie white ribbons around their hands. Otherwise, they will suffer severe consequences."
This is the message that announcers Senija Džafić and Jadranka Vejo-Račević read for the first time on Radio Prijedor on May 31, 1992. This warning has been repeated for years since, marked as White Ribbon Day, in memory of the Bosnian and Croatian citizens who were forced to endure numerous concentration camps during the war, and in commemoration of the suffering imposed on the Bosnian city of Prijedor.
The non-Serbian population of Prijedor was marked and divided into two groups: men under 65 in one, and women, children, and the elderly in another. The men were taken to the Keraterm and Omarska camps, and the women to the Trnopolje camp, where some of the most serious crimes against humanity took place.
WJC Executive Director of Operations Ernest Herzog: The darkest and saddest chapters in Bosnian history
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) has launched a social media campaign this year in commemoration of the events that transpired in Prijedor and to educate the general public of what occurred there during the war of 1992-1995.
Ernest Herzog, WJC Executive Director of Operations and a native of the former Yugoslavia, told Al Jazeera Balkans that the crimes in Prijedor constitute one of the darkest and saddest chapters of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"The manner in which Bosnian Muslims and Croats were killed and tortured in Prijedor, as evidenced by the testimonies of survivors and The Hague tribunal's verdicts, clearly demonstrates that there was a systematic plan for the 'ethnic cleansing' in that part of Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said.
The WJC is committed to raising international awareness of the horrific crimes against humanity committed in Prijedor, Herzog said, and to honoring the memories of the innocent men, women, and children who were killed there simply because of their ethnic and religious background.
Herzog noted that Jakob Finci, the President of the Jewish Communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has accurately pinpointed the paradox of this war, saying “’These people were killed for having different ways of praying to the same God’.
Thousands of innocent victims
The WJC campaign covers not only the events in Prijedor during the war, but also in the years that followed. It is alleged that more than 3,000 innocent people were killed throughout the Prijedor municipality as part of the ethnic cleansing against non-Serbs in that part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Moreover, thousands of people passed through the concentration camps that were formed. Children, women, the elderly, and men of all ages were imprisoned in Omarska, Keratern, Trnopolje, where they were beaten, sexually abused and raped, humiliated, starved, and eventually killed. The remains of the victims were found in mass graves throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, with one of the largest in Tomašica, where 360 people from the Prijedor municipality were buried.
Until the present day, the authorities [of the entity] of the Republika Srpska have not allowed the families of the victims of the ethnic cleansing in Prijedor to erect a monument in their memory.
The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague on the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia has indicted 27 Bosnian Serbs for crimes inside and outside the Omarska camp. As of May 2020, 13 of those indicted had been convicted.
