An exhibition with the names of more than seven thousand missing persons who are still being searched for was set up in Banja Luka on Tuesday, on the International Day of Missing Persons.
Billboards with the names of 7.628 people who disappeared in the past war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were placed in the city center, and family members, dressed in black T-shirts with the words “Where is he/she?” (”Gdje je?”), walked from the beginning of Gospodska Street to Krajina Square, in order to mark International Day of the missing persons and pointed to the fact that, even 27 years after their disappearance, the fate of a large number of citizens of BiH is still unknown.
Ferida Nisic from Hadzici found her father’s remains, but she is still looking for her brother Mujo Music.
“We have been searching for 30 years without success,” she said and appealed to the BiH Prosecutor’s Office to find about ten of her relatives with the surname Music and her brother.
“They disappeared near Sarajevo. Everything is known, the names of who took them from Lukavica are known. To this day we have no trace. Attempts were made to find it four times during this period, but without success. Therefore, the information was incorrect,” said Nisic in Banja Luka.
Mladen Zivanovic, chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH, said that the dynamics of searching for missing persons is getting slower and finding them is getting harder, because there are fewer witnesses.
“Unfortunately, our witnesses die due to biological aging and we even have second- or third-hand information that is unreliable,” he said, adding that investigators are doing their best, but the information is often not valid.
“While I was talking to the investigators in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Brcko District, the only information they receive is from people who are seriously ill and have a conscience. Therefore, only those people have valid information,” said Zivanovic, who is also a member of the Association of Families of the Missing Brcko District.
“This is an opportunity to invite all institutions, as well as individuals, that have information to exchange it,” said Mujo Hadziomerovic, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Searching for Missing Persons, adding that the Institute still has the task of finding 7.628 missing persons.
“BiH is a unique example in the world, the first country to have the Law on Missing Persons, the first country – after the evil that befell it – that managed to find 80 percent of the missing persons,” concluded Hadziomerovic, Detektor writes.
E.Dz.
