Bosnians Mark 25 Years Since Omarska Camp Closure

Survivors, victims’ associations and well-wishers will commemorate on Sunday the beginning of the release of detainees from Omarska in August 1992, and pay homage to those who died at the camp.

Mirsad Duratovic, the president of the Prijedor ’92 association of detainees, said a convoy would depart from the stadium in Prijedor and proceed to the site of the former detention camp.

Duratovic recalled how he was taken to Omarska on July 20, 1992, following a Bosnian Serb operation in the village of Biscani, when he was just 17 years old.

He said that while he was held at the camp, he was given the full “treatment” like all the other detainees.

“This means I was taken out for examinations, beaten up, and starved. Whatever they did to all other detainees, they did to us, the minors, as well as to the women who were held at the detention camp. Thirty seven women used to be raped several times a day,” he said.

Duratovic said he had sent invitations to officials at all levels of government and international organisations to attend the commemoration.

“All those who should take care not only of protecting the rights of former detainees, but also those of civilian victims of war, have therefore been invited,” he told BIRN.

“They should come to Omarska and see that there is not a single memorial board or any sign to remind people of what happened in the period from May 25 to August 21, 1992,” he added.

Around 6,000 Bosniak and Croat men and women were detained at Omarska and some 700 of them were killed in the three months during which the camp operated at the beginning of the Bosnian war.

It was finally closed on August 21, 1992, when the last group of detainees was transferred to Trnopolje detention camp.

Activist Sudbin Music said the fact that there was still no memorial at the site of the camp was shameful.

“The mere fact that not a single sign has been placed here to remind people of the suffering and killing that took place in Omarska says enough about the progress made in Bosnia and Herzegovina when it comes to coming to terms with the past,” Music said.

The Hague Tribunal and the Bosnian state court have found several defendants guilty of committing crimes at detention camps in the Prijedor area, including Omarska.

Former Bosnian Serb military and political leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are both on trial in The Hague, are also accused of responsibility for crimes in Prijedor.