On the 6th of August 1992, Bosnian Serb authorities in the Bosnian town of Prijedor started closing down the notorious detention camp “Omarska”. According to the information gathered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and associations of families of missing persons from Prijedor, more than 700 people were killed and over 5000 imprisoned, tortured and held in inhuman conditions from May to August 1992.
Omarska camp and adjacent camps of “Trnopolje” and “Keraterm” were closed following reports of the horrific conditions there by a group of international journalists, including Penny Marshall of ITN, Ed Vulliamy and Ian Williams of the Guardian and Roy Gutman of Newsweek. The images of emaciated prisoners from Omarska and Trnopolje shocked the international public and catalyzed the action of the UN Security Council, which eventually led to the establishment of the ICTY.
Every year on this date, the survivors of Prijedor camps and the families of the killed visit Omarska—now an iron ore mine owned by the multi-national corporation Arcelor Mittal—in an act of remembrance. For the last three years, a group of young activists gather on the night of the 5th of August at the site of Trnopolje camp, out in the open, to reenact the way prisoners spent their night and through dialogue explore alternative ways of dealing with the past.
“The idea is to challenge the ways we look at the dealing with the past now. This is not an event that focuses on the ceremonial, but the idea is for the young people from all ethnic groups and the local people here who survived the camp to talk in a symbolic but safe space,” says Goran Zoric from the Prijedor youth group KVART.
This year two panels were held, one which discussed the progress and results of the transitional justice process in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the other which focused on the role of media in preventing massive human rights violations.
One panel featured Ed Vulliamy, the veteran Guardian journalist who discovered Omarska and Trnopolje; Florence Hartmann of Le Monde, author of several books on the former Yugoslavia and former spokewomen of the ICTY office of the Prosecutor; Hrvoje Polan, an award-winning photo journalist; and Refik Hodzic, ICTJ’s Communications Director.
“If somebody told me 20 years ago that I would be here tonight, speaking to you about this issue here, at this exact spot where the heart of the concentration camp was, I would think they were crazy,” said Vulliamy. In the ensuing discussion, panelists delved into the positive contribution media can make in bringing the truth about atrocities into the open, but also the negative impact of media incitement committed in the service of genocidal efforts, like those in Bosnia and Rwanda.
The current situation in Bosnia and the surrounding region was of particular focus, as the media discourse these days strongly reflects the recurring rise of nationalism. “Today in Bosnia we seem to have gone full circle and the language we can hear in the media is again one of incitement and hate-mongering. Now is the time to talk about prevention and how to clean the media discourse of the language of de-humanization, which is a key ingredient of a poisonous mix of conflict,” said ICTJ’s Refik Hodzic.
A lively discussion went deep into the night, followed by a screening of the documentary film “A Letter to My Father.” As it dawned over Trnopolje, the young activists from across Bosnia gathered their few possessions, much like prisoners did 23 years ago, and slowly made their way to the Omarska commemoration.
