Exactly 27 years ago, on May 31, 1992 the Bosnian Serb authorities in town of Prijedor issued a decree through local radio stations ordering to all non-Serbs to mark their houses with white flags or sheets and to wear a white armband if they were to leave their houses.

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image showing Exactly 27 years ago, on May 31, 1992 the Bosnian Serb authorities in town of Prijedor issued a decree through local radio stations ordering to all non-Serbs to mark their houses with white flags or sheets and to wear a white armband if they were to leave their houses.

King_For_Today on May 31st, 2019 at 07:09 UTC »

This was the first day of a campaign of extermination of the non-Serb population in Prijedor that resulted in executions, concentration camps in Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, mass rapes and the ethnic cleansing of 94% of the local Bosniak and Croat population.

This was the first time since 1939 – when the Nazi decree required the Polish Jews to wear white armbands with the Star of David on their sleeve – that members of an ethnic or religious group were marked for extermination in such a manner.

In Prijedor, 3,173 people were killed during the war. Almost 3,000 people were detained in prison camps, and 53000 were forced to flee. In 2013, ICMP uncovered one of the biggest mass graves at the Tomašica mines where over 600 bodies had lain encased in clay for 20 years.

The book "Ni krivi ni dužni" ("Not guilty") has listed the names of civilians killed by the army and the police of Republic of Srpska: 2980 Bosniaks, 159 Croats, 25 Albanians, 8 Roma, 1 Czech, 1 Pakistani, 1 Serb and 1 Ukrainian. According to accessible data, 102 children were killed Prijedor, and body remains of 54 of them are still not found. Also, it's been evidented that 258 were killed, with 107 of them still not found. The youngest victim was 3 months old baby - Velid Softić, while the oldest victim, Zlata Kekić, was killed when she was 95 years old.

To this day, local authorities in Prijedor have refused to permit the construction of a memorial for the innocent civilian victims killed in the notorious concentration camp at Omarska or a memorial to the children that were killed in the war.

Here is a video from the 2016 event "White Armband Day", which is comemorated every 31 May in multiple cities and towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Here is the Wikipedia article on ethnic cleansing in Prijedor.

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EDIT: Regarding the "Disputed tag"... The event from the post title has been confirmed to happen in 2003 and 2006 by the International Crime Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, founded by UN, in their trial chamber's and appeal chamber's judgement respectively in the case of Milomir Stakić, head of the Bosnian Serb proclaimed local government of Prijedor. Here is the link for the case.

Said case is also referenced in the previously linked Wikipedia article.

ACika011 on May 31st, 2019 at 11:15 UTC »

I had no idea this happened.

I was watching a documentary on Serbs that were killed by Bosniaks, and couldn't believe what kind of people could do something like that in the ways they did. After that i started to read wikipedia articles on the countless massacres conducted by Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks on eachother, and realized that people "on my side" were doing the exact same thing. When i was younger i kinda looked up to our "heroes" like Ratko Mladic and despised people on "other side" who looked up to their "heroes" of that war. Now looking at it from my current perspective being that i have matured, i couldn't believe that i was that dumb. War truly is hell and the monstrosities that were conducted during the civil war should be a warning for us and the whole of humanity, regular people when filled with hate and need for revenge can trully do preposterous things.

I just hope that in the future no such things will ever occur again.

mr_snuggels on May 31st, 2019 at 12:20 UTC »

I still can't believe shit like this happened so recently. I was 4 back then just being a kid with no worry in the world while a few hundred kilometers away people were being literally exterminated.