Missing memory- Bosnia

for Internazionale

Before 1992, the Bosnian administrative district of Prijedor, in the northwest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was a multiethnic area with a non-Serb population of over 50,000 from around 100,000 inhabitants. After Bosnian Serbs took control of the region in April 1992, the communities and houses of non-Serbs were destroyed, families were separated and thousands of people were incarcerated in concentration camps, where many were tortured and put to death. Tens of thousands of people were forcibly deported. The ethnic cleansing was particularly brutal in this part of Bosnia. Prijedor became infamous not only for the four concentration camps that rose up in its vicinity, but also because 20 years after the war, in the district village of Tomasica, the largest mass grave from the Bosnian conflict was uncovered. The Muslim population, who are often called Bosniaks, now stands at around 18,000, made up mostly of refugees who returned to Bosnia years after the war. The Bosniaks fight daily so that the memory of the genocide against the non-Serb population is not forgotten, but once again come up against opposition. Police and officials charged with protecting the public good in Prijedor are in many cases the same people who were accused by numerous witnesses of participation in war crimes, according to Human Rights Watch. So in Prijedor, erecting a monument to the civilian victims of the massacre at the Omarska concentration camp is not allowed. ArcelorMittal, which now owns the mining complex that hosted the camp, prevents even the installation of a plaque to the memory of those who were raped, tortured and killed there. The company continues to carry on work, even though the search for victims has not come to an end. Not even remembering the 102 children who were killed in the Prijedor district seems possible. Green hills and lakes, in deafening silence, are slowly swallowing the memory of what took place, once again with the indifference of the international community.