Book on Crimes Against Children of Vlasenica Presented, Authored by Husejin Omerović

(Patria) - Last night, a monograph titled "And They Were Only Children - Crimes Against Children of Vlasenica 1992-1995," authored by Vlasenica native Husejin Omerović, was presented at the Preporod premises in Vlasenica.

Alongside author Omerović, Dr. Sead Muratović and Prof. Hajrudin Mešić also spoke about the book, which was recently published.


Author Omerović (center) and promoters (Photo: Patria)

The book predominantly discusses crimes against Bosniak children of Vlasenica in the period 1992-1993 in the area of the pre-war municipality of Vlasenica, as well as during the occupation of the UN safe zone of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Omerović previously explained in an interview with Patria that his motivation for researching the truth and writing the book about these crimes was to establish the complete identity of each murdered child.

He wanted, he says, to investigate and describe the circumstances in which the children were killed, as well as the locations and methods of the murders, the mass graves where the remains of some children were found, and the places and dates of their burials.

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'A bili su samo djeca': Agresor je u Vlasenici ugasio djetinjstvo 261 bošnjačkog mališana

(Patria) -

His goal was also to determine the structure of the children, to rescue them from oblivion, and to place them in the history of an indelible time.

Through long and exhaustive research, Omerović established that 261 children from the area of the pre-war municipality of Vlasenica were killed in the aforementioned period. This, Omerović specifies, is 10 percent of the total number of victims from the Vlasenica area (2,637).

Of the total number of murdered children (261), Omerović found that 98 underage boys were killed after the occupation of the UN safe zone of Srebrenica in July 1995.


Great interest in the book (Photo: Patria)

- 197 male (75%) and 64 female children (25%) were killed. The remains of 55 children have still not been found - Omerović emphasized.

In his monograph, he published 185 photographs of murdered children, and 48 images of tombstones of murdered children for whom he was unable to obtain photographs.

And there are also 28 red roses for children for whom he could not obtain either photographs or images of tombstones, as these were young children and children whose belongings and photographs were destroyed.

The book's appendix includes a list with data on the murdered children of Vlasenica.

Among other things, the author incorporated into the book a comparative overview of crimes against children in other occupied or besieged places - Prijedor, Goražde, Višegrad, Sarajevo, the Central Podrinje region, Croatia, Kosovo, Ukraine, and Palestine (Gaza).

About the Author

Husejin Omerović was born on August 17, 1957, in the village of Skugrići, Vlasenica municipality. He completed elementary school in his birthplace, high school in Sarajevo, and the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Oriental Studies in Priština in 1982.

From the beginning of the aggression against our country, he was a member of the Armed Forces of our country, and he was demobilized in May 1996.

Among other things, he worked in the Federal Ministry of Defense, the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law at the University of Sarajevo, and was a professor at the American University in Sarajevo.

Omerović is also the author of another book - "Victims of Genocide in the Vlasenica Area 1992-1995" (2016).