White Ribbon Day: Remembering the Killed Residents of Prijedor, Including 102 Children

(Patria) - Today marks White Ribbon Day, in memory of more than 3,000 people killed in the Prijedor municipality from 1992 to 1995.

Survivors from Prijedor will mark this May 31st with a central event at the Town Square, where they will lay 102 roses bearing the names of the killed children.

On May 31, 1992, the Serbian authorities in Prijedor issued an order via local radio, instructing the non-Serb population to mark their houses with white flags or sheets, and to wear white ribbons around their sleeves when leaving their homes.

“Citizens of Serbian nationality, join your army and police in the pursuit of these extremists. Other citizens, of Muslim and Croatian nationality, must hang white flags on their houses and apartments and put white ribbons on their arms. Otherwise, they will face severe consequences,” the order stated.

According to official information from victims' associations, 3,176 civilians were killed in Prijedor, while 31,000 people were detained in camps in the vicinity of Prijedor.

The Research and Documentation Center from Sarajevo states that from 1991 to 1995, 5,209 citizens of Prijedor were killed or went missing in direct military actions, of which 4,093 were Bosniaks, 898 Serbs, and 182 Croats.

For crimes committed in the Prijedor municipality, more than 50 verdicts have been handed down so far, and over 400 mass graves have been discovered, including Tomašica, the largest mass grave in the Balkans, discovered in 2013.