The 32nd anniversary of the beginning of the dissolution of the Manjača camp, near Banja Luka, was marked. Manjača is one of the earliest camps established, where mainly Bosniaks and Croats were imprisoned, and sometimes members of the Serb nationality were also imprisoned. It is estimated that around 5,000 inmates passed through the camp.
The anniversary was attended by several hundred former camp inmates, their family members, citizens and representatives of various levels of government.
The Manjača camp, one of the earliest camps established in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was established in 1991 on a tank military training ground above Banja Luka, with the task of detaining captured Croatian residents of the then battlefields in the Republic of Croatia.
-The world-famous entrance, with the Cyrillic inscription ‘Camp’, fenced with barbed wire and minefields, brought back images from World War II and without a doubt pointed to the fact of what kind of facility and intentions it was – the Association of Camp Inmates in BiH reminds.
Vice President of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Refik Lendo attended the anniversary today, and visited the Bunarevi pit, a mass grave in which the remains of 23 murdered Bosniaks from Ključ and Sanski Most were found.
The Association of Camp Inmates in Bosnia and Herzegovina notes that during the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this camp was used to detain mostly Bosniak and Croat inmates from the surrounding areas of Sanski Most, Ključ, Prijedor, Kotor Varoš, Doboj, Mrkonjić Grad, Šipovo, and Banja Luka.
The cattle barns that the Yugoslav National army (JNA) had previously used to house animals for quartermaster purposes became the place where the inmates lived and died.
The first dissolution of the camp, largely thanks to Bernard Kouchner, took place on November 14, 1992, when a larger group of inmates was released, some were exchanged, and a larger number of inmates were transferred to the Batković camp near Bijeljina. But soon after, the Manjača camp was reopened and remained in operation until 1996 and the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It is estimated that around 5,000 inmates passed through ‘Manjača’, and in the immediate vicinity, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found mass graves where the bodies of murdered inmates were hidden from the public.
Before the ICTY in The Hague, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the county courts in Split and Zagreb, and the District Court in Banja Luka, Milomir Stakić was sentenced to 40 years in prison, Radoslav Brđanin to 30 years, Nikola Kovačević to 12 years, Mirko Graorac to 15 years, Dane Lukajić to six years, Željko Bulatović to 11 years, Siniša Teodorović to eight years, and Zoran Gajić to six years, for a total of around 130 years in prison, Fena writes.
