While nothing can bring back the victims of the wartime ethnic cleansing in the northwestern town of Prijedor, the area with the second-highest rate of civilian killings after the Srebrenica Genocide during the 1992-1995 war, the families who gathered on Monday for a collective funeral for the six Bosniak victims buried this year said that they are finally glad their brothers, fathers and uncles were finally laid to rest.
The funeral was held at the Kamicani Memorial Center in Kozarac, near Prijedor.
RELATED NEWS
The town was the target of an ethnic cleansing campaign which started in 1992. Bosnian Serb forces rounded up and either killed or sent Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats living in the area to prison camps.
Among the victims was Nihad Memic, born in 1973, who was the little brother of eight sisters. Their mother passed away recently and did not live to put the remains of her son to rest.
According to one of the sisters, Hajra Memic, Garibovic, Memic was kept in two prison camps, Keraterm and Trnopolje, before being taken to the Koricani cliffs and killed there.
“He was only 18 years and two months old, he had just completed highschool,” she said.
“Our loved ones are gone, and even if the war criminals would receive thousand-year prison sentences, it could not bring our brother back,” she said, adding that “this can never be forgiven or forgotten.”
She stressed that, although the killings took place 28 years ago, “it seems as it happened yesterday.”
The sisters who came to lay Nihad to rest told N1 they are glad he has finally been found so that they can visit his grave.
Sanel Fazlic arrived from the United States to bury his father and two uncles.
“They were found at the Koricani cliffs where they were brutally killed that fateful year of 1992 in August,” he said.
Fazlic explained that he has “mixed feelings”.
“There are those 28 years of pain and sorrow, but I have to say there is some happiness there too. Why happiness? Well they (his late family members) arrived here in their Kozarac, to their land, and they will finally have their graves. We family members will come to pray for them from America at least once a year,” he said.
There are still about 600 people missing in Prijedor since the war and the latest area being excavated for remains is Gubinac.
“We don’t want to give the families false hope. We don’t want to hurt them, in case we don’t find the remains. We will continue the search throughout the week,” said Mujo Begic, from Bosnia’s Institute for Missing Persons.
