The Union of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina sent an invitation and an open letter to the Serbian Minister Ivica Dačić, on the occasion of the planned visit to Prijedor on August 4, to be their guest in Prijedor and to show him the concentration camps Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm, the graves of the prisoners Tomašica and Kevljana and to introduce him to the “wire man” Fikret Alić.
In an open letter, they remind Dačić that a few years ago, in 2019, in a TV show, he denied in a very inappropriate way the existence of concentration camps in Prijedor, the existence of inmates, and therefore the war crimes committed in this city against the non-Serb population by the Army Republika Srpska and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS.
“Because of this, and in connection with the media announcements that the Government of the Republic of Serbia is coming to Prijedor, we at the Union of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina have decided to send you this invitation and an open letter. First of all, we will introduce you to the basic statistics of war crimes systematically carried out in Prijedor against the inhabitants of the municipality, Bosniaks and Croats,” the open letter states.
It is added that Prijedor is the first local community in BiH in terms of the volume of war crimes committed, in terms of the number of mass graves, in terms of the number of death concentration camps, in terms of the number of court cases in international and domestic courts and finally in terms of the number of confirmed verdicts for war crimes committed against Bosniaks and Croats in this city.
The Union of Prisoners in BiH states that 3,176 victims of non-Serb nationality have been recorded in Prijedor so far, among them 102 children and 256 women, and that this number is not final.
“At the end of May 1992, three concentration camps (Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje) were opened in Prijedor, through which more than 30,000 inmates of non-Serb nationality were deported. Camp inmates were illegally imprisoned, tortured, killed, and the survivors were eventually expelled from Prijedor. Special cruelty in the Omarska camp was shown to women inmates through systematic sexual abuse, which was eventually characterized by court verdicts as a special form of war crime,” the open letter points out.
It is also stated that around 60,000 non-Serb citizens were expelled from Prijedor in the summer of 1992, and all the cultural, historical and religious objects of the Bosniaks were destroyed, as well as the largest number of such objects of the Croatian people.
The Association of Prisoners in BiH reminds that the remains of murdered Bosniaks and Croats have been exhumed to date in 503 locations, in 73 mass graves, in 10 municipalities and in three states, and the bodies of the murdered were carried away by five rivers.
“We are still searching for the remains of 471 murdered non-Serb civilians from Prijedor. To date, more than 60 verdicts have been handed down for the war crimes committed against Bosniaks and Croats in Prijedor, and the criminals have been sentenced to prison terms of more than 1,000 years,” the open letter states.
It is also noted that the first verdict for war crimes handed down by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia was for the crimes committed in the Omarska camp (the Duško Tadić case).
“Evidence for our allegations can be found in verdicts for war crimes. If you consider the courts to be biased, the witnesses in the trials trained, and the verdicts politically motivated, then request data from the registry office in Prijedor on the number of death registrations for the year 1992, or ask the Prijedor Red Cross to provide you with records on the number of inmates in Trnopolje from May to October 1992. None of the Bosniaks and Croats from Prijedor would be happier if you were right, Minister Dacic, and that everything was just propaganda – they told Dacic from the Union of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They say that it would be much easier to wear the epithet “liars” than to exhume the Tomašica mass grave, “overturn rocks and stones on Korićanske stijene or Jakarina Kosa in search of the bones of the murdered inmates, descend 25 meters into the depths of the Hrastova Glavica pit or the Lisac pit and extract the remains of the murdered inmates, to exhume the inmates in the green meadows of Kevljan”.
“It would be easier to collect grain in the Prijedor field, instead of the bones of the murdered camp inmates or on more than 500 individual or mass graves, in which the remains of the murdered Bosniaks and Croats of Prijedor were (were) hidden. For these and a number of other reasons, and because of your denial of these facts, we invite you to be our guest in Prijedor and to show you the Trnopolje, Omarska and Keraterm concentration camps, to show you the graves of the Tomašica and Kevljana inmates and to introduce you to ” man from the wire” Fikret Alić. You cannot enter Prijedor without passing along the wire of the former Keraterm camp or past the Kevljani mass grave, you will also pass through Omarska. All this is on your way, and if you really want to know the truth, then you will accept our invitation,” according to the Association of Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They add that, otherwise, they will continue to be on the side of those who protect and glorify war crimes and criminals, which is not exactly in the spirit of social democracy, “and therefore you will continue to cause more damage and pain to your country and your people, than to the inmates of the said camps and their families cama, because they have experienced worse”.
