Arifagić and Alić survived camps: Returned to Kozarac to protect their homeland

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Jusuf Arifagić, a man who was in three Prijedor camps Keraterm, Omarska, Trnopolje, spoke tonight on Centralni dnevnik. He returned from Norway to Kozarac where he opened a company.

“Every night, people were taken out and liquidated in the Keraterm camp. One second, one minute lasted like an eternity,” says Arifagić.

He spoke about a camp inmate who was beaten so badly that he died. He looked death in the eye every day.

“A camp inmate who survived the horrors of the camp cannot escape them even if they go to the ends of the earth. My company and farm are three km from Keraterm. I walk through Omarska and everyone remembers Arifagić. We must talk about the camps, about Kazani, about Ovčara, about all the execution sites,” says Arifagić.

He established the largest farm of Norwegian cows in Bosanska Krupa and Bosanski Petrovac.

“I am the only person allowed to buy live cattle, today at my farm, Bosniaks, Catholics, Serbs, and the Ukrainian minority work together and eat together. I told the Norwegians that these cows will contribute to reconciliation. My workers are Serb returnees in Bosanski Petrovac who share the same fate as Jusuf. I could talk for days about the silence from Sarajevo towards Krajina. No one will come to solve the fate of Kozarac and us from Kozarac. I have never given up on Sarajevo, nor on my homeland. Because if I had, I would have stayed somewhere in Northern Europe. I certainly sacrificed the lives of my children and wife to sustain the lives of the people of Kozarac,” says Arifagić.

The last great plunder of Bosnia and Herzegovina is agricultural land, Arifagić states.

“63 percent, perhaps more, of the territory is registered to BiH. What will we do when we are left without land? Perhaps we will come to our senses in 2022. At this moment, food prices are rising so rapidly that I fear there will be hungry people very soon. What if people take to the streets? Whoever dominates agricultural land and water will dominate the world. We have a God-given gift, we have the BiH person, we have the genetic code in the person who will return and will return to Bosnia. I will not leave this land without a fight. I have a goal to leave a homeland for my children, not for them to be Bedouins. For years, they called me a refugee, I hate that word the most in the world. I want to walk proudly through the bazaar, to visit my father's grave. I want to meet people dear to me. I want to face the truth every day, not to lower my head. Only lasting peace can ensure the existence for survival,” says Arifagić.

Fikret Alić, who was a camp inmate in the Trnopolje camp in Prijedor, whose picture was published on the cover of Time magazine after the world media discovered the camp in the summer of 1992, lives in Kozarac today.

“I live well, only injustice eats at me. Injustice eats at me because even today, anyone who wants to spits on us. We have no rights, and criminals are rising. There were 30,000 of us who went through torture, some more, some less,” said Alić.

It is still unclear to the surviving camp inmates why a law prohibiting the denial of genocide has never been adopted.

Nevertheless, Alić concludes with a message of peace.

“Let's turn to the future, let's erect monuments to all civilian victims of the war. Let's turn to reconciliation,” said Alić.