Commemoration for Serb victims at site of Serb war crimes

The commemoration is for the victims of Croatian operation Storm which led to the expulsion of some 200,000 Serbs from their ancestral homes in breakaway areas of Croatia. At least 1,800 people died in the operation. It will be attended by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije.

The choice of venue for the commemoration has led to speculation that it is part of attempts to deny war crimes, many of which were committed in the Prijedor area.

Prijedor is located in northwestern Bosnia near the border of what was the Republic of Serb Krajina in Croatia. It had a pre-war population of Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats with the Serbs accounting for just over 40 percent of the population and the Croats for about 6 percent with the Bosniaks making up the rest.

The Yugoslav National Army deployed in the area and the local Serbs were armed from its stockpiles and formed into para-military units. In May 1992 the local authorities ordered non-Serbs to raise white flags in front of their houses and wear white armbands as a form of identification.

The area was also infamous for the camps in the area (Omarksa, Keraterm and Trnopolje) where mostly Bosniaks were interred and endured torture and other forms of abuse. Some 100 Bosniaks were captured, tortured and executed by Serb forces in the area. Their remains were found in one of the biggest mass graves in the war-torn areas of Bosnia and Croatia. According to the Bosnia-Herzegovina camp inmates organization, 3,176 Bosniaks and Croats were killed in the area including 102 children.

An official of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) said that Prijedor was chosen for the commemoration as part of efforts to deny the war crimes. “That commemoration, that is the choice of location shows that it is in the service of denying the war crimes in Prijedor committed by the RS police and army,” YIHR official Marko Milosavljevic said.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik said that more Serbs than others were killed in the Prijedor area. “A victim is a victim, we see no problem there,” he is reported to have said. “The most important thing is to blacken everything here, the Serbs can’t be victims, they can’t even commemorate their victims,” he added.