The laying of flowers on the plateau in front of the former Koštana Hospital in Stolac marked the 33rd anniversary of the suffering and persecution of the Bosniaks of Stolac and the memory of the victims of the “Koštana Hospital”, organized by the Stolac Camp Inmates Association.
The president of this association and a minor camp inmate, Amer Đulić, said in an interview with Fena that the memory of this event is always difficult and painful.
“The message from us is always the same, and that is that oblivion must never come and that the truth about the suffering of this people and the then Stolac municipality must be presented and proven both by writing books and documentaries, because a great crime did occur here in 1993, when Stolac lost 8,100 Bosniaks. Approximately 3,000-3,500 people ended up in a concentration camp, and about 5,000 of them were expelled to the Blagaj and Mostar areas,” said Đulić.
He adds that several hundred people passed through the “Bone Hospital”, including three who died from the beatings.
“I was among those beaten, but I survived, and three more died from the consequences of the beatings in the Gabela camp. Our goal is to fight for the truth and prove the truth, and we currently want and are trying to make the Bone Hospital a memorial center for all three peoples,” said Đulić.
He adds that today, more than three decades later, it is very difficult to preserve the culture of memory.
“The biological clock is slowly ticking, I was 17 at the time, and today I am 51. I am one of the younger people who went through the concentration camps, and many witnesses who were there are no longer alive, and that is a problem for prosecutors and courts because we do not have enough evidence, but we continue our fight,” said Đulić.
He stressed that he was satisfied with the prosecution of war crimes committed in Stolac and the Koštana Hospital, but not with the verdicts, which, he said, were not what they should be.
The Chairman of the Stolac City Council, Edim Šator, emphasized that August 4, 1993, is deeply imprinted in the collective memory of this city.
“In addition to the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks that was committed then, an incredible urbicide was also committed in Stolac, which gave us a clear message that there was no place for Bosniaks here in those crazy ideas of darkened minds in the 1990s, so we must remember this day. The fact that we are here today and witnessing the 33rd anniversary shows that the Bosniaks, with their return, completely destroyed that crazy project and that they can most certainly be considered moral victors,” Šator said.
According to the Association of Prisoners, almost five hundred Bosniaks passed through the Koštana Hospital, which was a HVO transit camp, of which at least five were killed. In November 2017, the Hague Tribunal sentenced Jadranko Prlić and five former officials of the former Herceg Bosnia to a total of 111 years in prison, among other things, for crimes committed in the “Bone Hospital”, Fena writes.
