The 29th anniversary of the closure of Manjača Camp was marked yesterday.
This concentration camp was led by the military forces of Republika Srpska in order to detain prisoners, primarily Croatian civilians and soldiers from the war in Croatia, and then also Bosniak civilians and soldiers during the war in bIH, whom they brutally killed, tortured and humiliated.
According to estimations, around 5.000 inmates passed through the camp, mostly from Prijedor, Sanski Most, Doboj and Kozarac. The number of killed ones is unknown, but the International Court of Justice stated that a mass grave with 540 remains was found in the vicinity of the camp, and that the victims were most probably detainees from Manjača.
On November 14, 1992 the Red Cross managed to move 755 detainees to the refugee camp in Karlovac and the next month they moved the remaining 2.436 detainees. Thus the camp was emptied and closed on December 18, 1992. However, it was reopened in October 1995 for a while.
The camp was formed at a former cattle farm and conditions in which the detainees were held were under every minimum of human dignity. One detainee had around two meters by 70 centimeters of personal space, the detainees slept on concrete, and landmines were placed between the fences that surrounded the camp. The guards wore uniforms of the Yugoslav People’s Army, while some of them wore Chetnik hats or labels of the paramilitary unit “White Eagles”.
