Death camp: Anniversary of the closure of Manjača, through which more than 5,000 victims passed

(Patria) - Survivors and families of the killed marked the 31st anniversary of the beginning of the dissolution of the Manjača camp near Banja Luka, through which over 5,000 prisoners, mostly of Bosniak and Croatian, and partly of Serbian nationality, passed.

The President of the Association of Camp Prisoners in BiH, Seid Omerović, stated that today a particular problem for the camp prisoner population is the lack of a law on the protection of victims of war torture in the Federation of BiH, although certain progress has been made during this year.

Omerović emphasized that institutional support has been absent in the last few years and expressed hope that it will soon become more concrete.

After marking the anniversary in Manjača, members of the Association of Camp Prisoners also visited mass graves in Ključ, the Bunarevi pit, where in August 2000, following a report by local resident Borka Ožegović, who was later killed, the remains of 23 killed camp prisoners from the area of the village of Humići near Ključ were found and assembled.

A later investigation by Jasmin Odobašić, a member of the Institute for Missing Persons of BiH, confirmed that this number of victims is not final and that a more thorough exhumation of the victims of Bunarevi is needed, which was prevented by his death in March of this year, 2023.

For proven war crimes in the Manjača camp, only some of the main perpetrators were sentenced to 130 years in prison, while the crime at the Bunarevi pit, as well as the murder of witness Borka Ožegović, remains unsolved to this day.

Omerović said that due to these and all other reasons, and because of the struggle for building a quality society and strong state institutions, the Association of Camp Prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with its members, will remember and remind of the sacrifice of camp prisoners throughout the country, and continuously contribute to the fight for that truth and justice, and finally for adequate treatment.

More than 5,000 camp prisoners, mostly of Bosniak and Croatian, and partly of Serbian nationality, passed through the tortures in the Manjača camp, enclosed with barbed wire and minefields, in whose immediate vicinity mass graves were also found.

Formed on a military training ground above Banja Luka for detaining captured persons from the battlefield in the neighboring Republic of Croatia as early as 1991, it was subsequently used for imprisoning camp prisoners from Ključ, Sanski Most, Prijedor, Kotor Varoš, Doboj, Mrkonjić Grad, Šipovo, and Banja Luka.

The then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic, Bernard Kouchner, visited this camp in August 1992 and informed the world about the tortures in the Manjača camp, and he is one of the most deserving for that first dissolution and closure of this camp.

Shortly after that first dissolution, the camp was reopened, but then for camp prisoners from areas throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.