Today is the International Day of White Armbands, in memory of the more than 3,000 people killed in the Prijedor municipality from 1992 to 1995.
The surviving citizens of Prijedor will mark this May 31st with a central event on the Town Square, where they will lay 102 roses with the names of the murdered children.
On May 31, 1992, the Serbian authorities in Prijedor issued an order via local radio, ordering the non-Serb population to mark their houses with white flags or sheets, and to wear white armbands around their sleeves when leaving their homes.
“Citizens of Serbian nationality, join your army and police in the pursuit of these extremists. Other citizens, of Muslim and Croat nationality, must hang white flags on their houses and apartments and wear white armbands. Otherwise, they will suffer serious consequences,” the order read.
According to official information from victims’ associations, 3,176 civilians were killed in Prijedor, while 31,000 people were detained in camps around Prijedor. The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo states that from 1991 to 1995, 5,209 citizens of Prijedor were killed or disappeared in direct military actions, of which 4,093 were Bosniaks, 898 were Serbs, and 182 were Croats.
More than 50 verdicts have been issued for crimes committed in the Prijedor municipality so far, and over 400 mass graves have been discovered, including Tomašica, the largest mass grave in the Balkans, discovered in 2013.
