White Armband Day was marked on Sarajevo’s Eiffel Bridge on Sunday under the slogan “For equality and the right of all victims to remembrance”, Fena news agency reports.
Activists of the informal group “Because it concerns me” symbolically paid tribute to the victims of Prijedor and showed solidarity with residents of Prijedor, but also with all other victims who have been fighting for the right to remembrance for years.
The gathering in Sarajevo was organized at the same time as in Prijedor, where the parents and relatives of the murdered children are urging local authorities for the right to build a monument for their murdered children.
On behalf of the “Because it concerns me” Initiative, Nedzad Novalic told reporters that this was support from Sarajevo.
“In this way, we use the bridge, as a symbolic object, as a place of remembrance for the murdered children in Prijedor,” said Novalić.
He pointed out that there is a continuous fight for the right to build monuments in Prijedor.
Last year, hundreds of people gathered for the funeral of 86 Muslim victims of a massacre committed in Prijedor by Bosnian Serb forces at the beginning of the 1990s Bosnian war.
The remains of the victims, mostly male and many teenagers, were found in 2017 in a mass grave at Koricanske Stijene, a mountain region of central Bosnia.
The remains were found at the bottom of a cliff, in a natural pit, and were covered by an enormous amount of stones.
The victims were part of a group of more than 200 civilians, notably Bosnian Muslims, but also several Catholic Croats, previously held in a detention camp at Trnopolje, in the region of Prijedor.
On August 21, 1992, they were loaded onto buses, officially for a prisoner exchange.
Remains of 80 killed camp detainees have not been found to this day, reminded Jasmin Mešković, President of the Association of Camp Detainees in BiH. He said that truth about remains of the killed at Korićanske Stijene must be revealed, so that the families could find their peace.
After the bodies of camp detainees fell into the pit, members of the intervention squad of the police of RS continued shooting them and throwing bombs, so that no one would survive. Twelve people survived the massacre and their testimonies contributed to the punishing of some of the responsible ones. They helped record the truth about this crime.
It is still being searched for 80 percent of remains, because bodies of the killed camp detainees were transported and buried at other localities, which is testified by recordings of the Service for Public Safety Prijedor from September 4, 1992. However, those responsible for this crime and those who participated in the transportation of bodies (members of the police of RS and civil protection from Skender Vakuf) are still silent about the location of the bodies.
(Photo: tacno.net)
