Zenica residents remember Prijedor victims and white ribbons: Ceremony at the Faculty of Law, followed by a march through the city

(Patria) - Zenica residents once again remembered the victims of Prijedor this year with a ceremony at the Faculty of Law in Zenica, followed by the traditional march through the city streets and a gathering in front of the central city memorial "Stone Sleeper", where students, high schoolers, and citizens marked May 31 – White Ribbon Day.

Estimates indicate that in the unadjudicated genocide, over 50,000 citizens of that city of Bosniak and Croat nationality were expelled, of whom 30,000 passed through or ended their lives in the Keraterm, Omarska, and Trnopolje camps, reports 072.info

'We commemorate all international crimes committed in the area of Prijedor, including the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes… Because, by all elements, looking at the legal qualifications of international crimes; mass executions, liquidations, the concentration of concentration camps – I mention Keraterm, Omarska, Trnopolje, and also Manjača; the concentration of mass graves in that area – primary, secondary, and tertiary, we can state, even on a scientific basis, that all elements of the crime of genocide have been met in that, the Prijedor area,' emphasized the Dean of the Faculty of Law in Zenica, Enis Omerović.

It must not be forgotten, he added, that the international prosecutors of the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in their first indictments, also filed charges for the crime of genocide in Prijedor, which was the area with the highest concentration of camps, where all possible crimes were committed.

'This is the day when we remember the victims, all the citizens of Prijedor, including the 102 murdered children in the area of Prijedor. May 31 is the day when systematic and mass segregation, oppression, marking, labeling, and exclusion of Bosniaks and Croats from the community in which they had lived until then began,' Omerović believes.

He reminded that at the Faculty of Law there is also a memorial, a stone on which they wrote: Prijedor – 102 murdered children. The stone, he added, is also painted with the imprints of children's hands in red. Because of this, the academic community must fight for human dignity.

The ordeal of the residents of Bosniak and Croat nationality of that city began with the order of the local Serbian authorities' headquarters, at the end of May 1992, when they were forced to hang white sheets on their houses and wear white ribbons on their arms – thus being additionally humiliated and deprived of any human rights, hence the symbolism of the "white ribbon," i.e., marking White Ribbon Day.

By a proclamation on Radio Prijedor, published on May 31, 1992, read by "journalist" Rade Mutić, citizens of that city of Serbian nationality were called to join "their army and police in the pursuit of these extremists."