Fikret Bacic’s wife and two children were killed in the summer of 1992 by the forces of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), around Prijedor. Thirty-two years later, he is still searching for their remains. In Prijedor and its surrounding areas, 3.176 people were killed. Nearly 30.000 non-Serb individuals passed through the Prijedor camps of Trnopolje, Omarska, and Keraterm. The city authorities do not allow any memorials to remember the murdered residents of Prijedor.
“There is no need for fear and panic, and citizens who are loyal to the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are asked to visibly display white flags on their houses,” a radio announcement called on the non-Serb population in Prijedor in May 1992.
“Nermina and Nermin Bacic were six and 13 years old when they were killed, along with their mother Enisa. They were killed by members of the VRS in front of their family home in the village of Zecovi in July 1992. In one day, Fikret Bacic lost 29 family members. 15 children and 14 women were killed, and a total of 159 villagers were killed in the village. The youngest victim was two years old. He survived because he was working in Germany. He learned about his family’s fate in a phone conversation with a relative in August 1992.”
“He told me: ‘Fikret, there is no one left up there; they are all killed. Yours and the others.’ That means they were all killed. When I found that out, for that one month, I cannot describe what was happening to me.”
“I simply have no memory of what happened, how it was. After that, when I came to my senses, I simply thought my life was worthless and that I should not continue living,” Fikret Bacic said.
The last time he spoke to his wife was on the phone in May ’92, arranging for her and the children to come to Germany.
“She sent me a letter then and sent me those two pictures, the ones taken for passports. And I have one picture from when we were at my aunt’s when she took the photo of my wife and daughter. She gave me that to keep as a memory. I have nothing else,” Bacic added, N1 writes.
E.Dz.
