Collective funeral for 86 Bosniak victims from the northern Bosnian towns of Prijedor and Kotor Varos was held on Saturday at Vedro Polje site in presence of families, friends and fellow citizens.
“It is a mourning day in Prijedor and Kozarac today, and we should behave that way, to laid to rest our beloved ones in a dignified way,” Ervin Blazevic, an activist and journalist told N1.
Most of the victims were killed in the Koricani cliffs massacre – one of the gravest atrocities committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
On May 31, 1992, the Bosnian Serb local government ordered all non-Serbs in the Prijedor area to mark their houses with white sheets and to wear white ribbons on their arms.
About 50,000 people were exiled from Prijedor, while about 30,000 non-Serb men, women and children ended up in prison camps such as Keraterm, Trnopolje, Omarska and another 54 similar places.
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Following the religious ceremony, the victims’ remains will be buried at different family cemeteries.
“After the Koricani cliffs and all mass graves, nobody has the right to think, speak or behave as if nothing happened. Bosniaks are not people who hate but they are the people who remember and they will surely preserve the memory of everything that had happened in the 1992-1995 period,” said Husein Velic, a local imam.
Zijad Becic, one of the survivors, called his fellow citizens to unveil the locations of the remaining mass graves.
“My mother, two brothers and a sister were killed. We convey the messages of peace every year. We do have coexistence in Prijedor but to verify it our fellow citizens should tell us where are the remains of our beloved ones,” he said,
The youngest victims to be buried on Saturday are two young men who were aged 19 at the time of death.
