News in English     | 06.08.2018. 19:46 |

Anniversary of the closure of notorious Omarska concentration camp marked today

FENA Jasna Avdibegović

PRIJEDOR, August 6 (FENA) - Former detainees and family members of the killed marked today the 26th anniversary of the closing of one of the most notorious concentration camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina - Omarska near Prijedor.

They remembered and revived in their memory the painful images from the period from May to August 1992, when they were imprisoned in the complex of this iron ore mine.

The anniversary was organized by the Association of War Camp Detainees of Prijedor and Kozarac and the Regional Alliance of the Associations of War Camp Detainees Camp Banja Luka.

President of the Association Prijedor 92, Mirsad Duratović told FENA that on this day in 1992, following the footage published in foreign media about the Omarska concentration camp and the condition of the detainees, the Serb authorities deported almost all the detainees from the Omarska to the other two concertation camps, Manjača and Trnopolje.

“Here, they left only a small group of detainees that they needed as smokescreen, a mask, for some future media houses that would come to show them that it was not all that horrific as it was shown on the footage recorded on 5 and 6 August 1992,” said Duratović.

Today's marking was attended by former detainees, families of the killed prisoners of the Omarska concentration camp, but also all those who sympathize with the suffering of the detainees of Omarska and the victims of the crimes committed in the area of Prijedor municipality.

More than 6,000 civilians were detained in the camp, and 800 of them were killed in cruelest manner.

Near the Omarska mine, there are two houses – the 'white' and the 'red' one. According to the testimonies of the survivors, the walls in the 'white house' were red from blood, the detainees were tortured and questioned, and women were raped. What had happened in the 'red house' remains unknown to this day, because no one left there alive to tell the story.

Many survivors of the Omarska concentration camp say that they somehow endured the beating, but that the screams and tears of the tortured people will always stay carved in their memory.

The characteristic way of killing the prisoners in Omarska was, as the former victims testified, burning people alive inside truck tires, kicking them with butts, sticks, chains, and starving them to death and leaving them without any water.

The purpose of any detention or concentration camp is to frighten the victims, which is the reason why many of them to this day do not dare to testify about the crimes, and the main reason for it is that the victims still live in the same villages, areas or neighborhoods where they were tortured and abused, without being protected by anyone.  

Some of the detainees from the Omarska concentration camp were killed at Koričani cliffs site and in Hrastova Glavica, the vast places of massacres and brutal killings in western Bosnia, while dozens of detainees succumbed to their wounds after being tortured.

Early in August 1992, renowned American and British journalists Roy Gutman, Penny Marshall, Ed Vulliamy and Ian Williams revealed to the world the existence of the Prijedor concentration camps, and many, thanks to them, managed to escape these places of horror and suffering.

(FENA) S. R.

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