Anniversary of the closure of the notorious "Sušica" concentration camp marked

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - With the "Vlasenica – Sušica 2020" path of salvation march, members of the Association "Witnesses of Their Time" marked the 28th anniversary of the closure of the Vlasenica camp "Sušica", and paid tribute to the innocent victims and tortured Bosniaks from Vlasenica and surrounding areas.

The notorious concentration camp "Sušica" was a camp for the detention, torture, rape, and killing of the Bosniak population from the municipality of Vlasenica, as well as other Podrinje municipalities, from May to the end of September 1992.

More than 8,000 people passed through and were detained in this camp – men, women, children, and the elderly, who were held in extremely inhumane conditions. Detainees were subjected to torture, physical abuse, psychological torment, various forms of sexual abuse, rape, and ultimately killed on a daily basis, as evidenced by several mass graves: Ogradice, Debelo Brdo, Jelovačka česma, Tugovo…

The president of the Association Witnesses of Their Time, Muhamed Papić, stated that the message of marking the closure of Sušica is clear: that what happened to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina should never happen again to anyone.

"We want to send a clear message that we will never and must not forget any victim," Papić emphasized.

The Vice-President of the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ramiz Salkić, attended the marking of the 28th anniversary of the closure of the Sušica camp near Vlasenica. Addressing the attendees, he said that it is very important to mark every place where serious crimes were committed.

"Sušica and Vlasenica are places of great suffering, persecution, and major crimes for which, unfortunately, only a small number of people have been held accountable. Today, we have only a few convicted war criminals for everything that happened here in Vlasenica; this is unacceptable, it is inadmissible, and the greatest responsibility for this lies with the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has clearly not done its job," said Salkić.

Participants of the March gathered in the Turalići Local Community, after which they visited the secondary and mass graves of Ogradice, Debelo Brdo, and several secondary graves where the remains of former detainees and residents of Vlasenica were found.

The march concluded at the Sušica Camp site with the laying of flowers, reciting of the Fatiha, and a history lesson.

After visiting the Sušica Camp, the convoy paid tribute at the Rakita Vlasenica Memorial Complex to those buried who were killed during the period 1992-95.