White Armband Day and the events in #Prijedor, Bosnia

1. White Armband Day
by
Dr Eman AlTahawy, 2023

2. Painting:
Robert McNeil MBE, FAAPT
To Remember
The White Armband Day
And The Events In Prijedor,
Bosnia,1992.
robertmcneil.co.uk

3. Every year “White Armband Day” takes place
on 31 May, to remember the campaign of ethnic
cleansing which took place in the town of
Prijedor, northern Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992.

4. • Over Radio Prijedor, the Serbs demanded
that the Muslims and Croats living in areas
with mixed ethnic populations of Serbs and
non-Serbs should mark their housing by
hanging out a white flag, and identify
themselves by wearing white armbands
when they moved outdoors as a sign of
surrender.

5. “
”
On 30 May 1992 at 04:30 hours, it was raining and
one could hear machine gun fire from Stari Grad
and from up along the river in an easterly direction.
Radio Prijedor announced that an attack on
Prijedor was imminent.
Witness recounts

6. “
”
On the other side of the Sana River, in the suburb
Tukovi, the armed men were Serbs. All were in
uniforms, some in the uniform of the army, others in
camouflage uniforms, some having the Red Star
emblem some the Cetnik insignia - some were
known locally, others were new faces.
Witness recounts

7. • Members of the European Commission
Monitoring Mission (ECMM) testified that while
visiting a mixed Serb/Muslim village as late as
August 1992 they saw that the Muslim houses
were marked with white flags on the roof in order
to distinguish them from the Serb houses.
• Witness of both Charles McLeod, with Barnabas
Mayhew (ECMM), 1992.

8. • What our investigation showed was that the Serbian
democratic party (SDS) had a definite plan to take
control of all municipalities that were dominated by the
Muslims, Croats or non-Serbs as early as September
1991.
Bridging the gap between the ICTY and communities in
Bosnia and Herzegovina conference series Prijedor 25
June 2005

9. • In addition to the crimes committed in the camps,
killings of Muslims went on in many villages in the
municipality, among them Hambarine, Biščani,
Ljubija, Kozarac.

10. • In Prijedor, 3,173 people were killed during the war.
Almost 31,000 people were detained in prison camps,
and 53,000 were forced to flee.

11. WHERE IS THE WORLD?
• Neither the International Red Cross nor the
United Nations - nor any press - had visited it
before we arrived on Wednesday, although the
international agencies have expressed acute
concern about the Bosnian-Muslim allegations.
Guardian Friday 7 August 1992

12. August 1992
• On 6th of August 1992, British journalists from ITN
and Guardian unveiled to the world the existence of
camps for non-Serb civilians in the area of Prijedor
in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian. Roy Gutman
of Newsday. Penny Marshall & cameraman Jeremy
Irvin (ITN). Ian Williams (Channel 4).

13. • Thousands of deaths at the Omarska iron mining complex
and at a separate camp in Brcko in northeast Bosnia.
• “Guards returned the next day to select a team of young
men to bury the dead. Some of them had been shot
through the mouth, while others had had their throats slit,
….. said. He saw 8 corpses covered with blankets. On
other days, members of the burial crew told him what they
had seen.”
• Serbian Guards Executed Prisoners, Survivor Says. Roy
Gutman. Aug. 5, 1992. LAT.

14. Daily Mirror: 7 August,1992
Cover of Time:17 Aug.,1992

15. • “After you left me behind, the guards started to
beat some of those you’d spoken to straight away.
They came back for me later, once the photo had
been published. They wanted to kill me.”
-Fikret Alic told former ITN journalist Penny
Marshall in a 2011 interview in the London Times

16. Photographs of a detainee taken by one of the
doctors working at the Trnopolje camp clinic.

17. Bosnian Genocide (1992), Bosniak and Croat prisoners
in Manjaca concentration camp.

18. Picture of emaciated prisoners of war behind the
barbed wire of Omarska and Trnopolje camps.

19. A detainee at the Trnopolje camp. Image taken by one of the doctors
working in the camp clinic and smuggled out by an ITN TV crew.

20. A detainee at the Trnopolje camp. The photograph was taken by
one of the doctors working in the camp clinic and smuggled out
by an ITN TV crew.

21. The White House at the Omarska camp, which was
used to detain so-called political prisoners.

22. This sketch was drawn by Prosecution Witness Jusuf Arifagić,
who was detained at the Keraterm Camp in Prijedor, 1992.

23. “
”
We were able to establish that the Omarska
camp was one of the most brutal and cruel
camps that had been established during the
wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Bob Reid
Deputy Chief of Investigations,
ICTY Office of the Prosecutor

24. Trnopolje was transferred into the hands of the
International Red Cross (IRC) in mid-August, and closed
in November 1992.
After the war, the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted several Bosnian
Serb officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity
for their roles in the camp.

25. “
”
Omarska was a monstrosity: an inferno of
murder, torture and rape.
It was a stain upon our century.
Ed Vulliamy
The 2006 Omarska camp
commemoration

26. RAPE
• Crimes against humanity refer to inhumane acts of a very
serious nature, such as willful killing, torture or rape, committed
as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian
population on national, political, ethnic, racial or religious
grounds.
• For a woman, rape is by far the ultimate offense, sometimes
even worse than death because it brings shame on her.

27. • Rape became a serious problem for many women who
were left alone as their husbands had been detained.
• At the Trnopolje camp an unknown number of women and
girls were raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers, police officers
and the camp guards.
• The war strategy includes the raping of women and girls,
some as young as 10 years old.
• Eric Beauchemin Broadcast: December 10, 1992

28. •And according to Mirjana Trupic of the
feminist organization “Women Aid Now”,
who herself has interviewed many victims,
these multiple rapes are no coincidence.
They are part of an organized, military
strategy by the Serbs, often carried out in
what she calls “rape death camps”.
War rape in the former Yugoslavia. 10th December 1992

29. • Many women who were detained at the Trnopolje camp were
taken out of the camp at night by Serb soldiers and raped or
sexually assaulted. - ICTY.
• Witness H was raped at Omarska every night usually by three
or four men. Witness H later learned that one of the men who
raped her was called Pavli} or Pavi}. Due to the frequent rapes,
Witness H experienced severe blood loss and fell into a coma.
Dr. Kosuran was summoned and he told the guard that she was
weak and in danger as a result of low blood pressure. Witness
H had constant painful bleeding from the rapes. ICTY,2003

30. • One incident of sexual abuse occurred in the “White House” on
26 June 1992. The guards tried to force Mehmedalija Sarajlic
to rape a girl. He begged: "Don't make me do it. She could be
my daughter. I am a man in advanced age." The soldiers
replied: "Well, try to use the finger." There was a scream and
beatings, and then everything was silent. A minute or two later,
a guard came into the room and asked for two strong men who
went to fetch the body of Mehmedalija Sarajlic.
• His dead body was later seen near the “White House”. -ICTY
Witness

31. • Night after night, drunken soldiers came by in groups after her
village near Prijedor was encircled in May and systematically
emptied of all men over the age of 14. Women and children
remained until Serbian rebels herded them away en masse in
September, adding thousands more victims to their signature
practice of “Ethnic Cleansing.” The ordeals of many of the rape
victims range to the unspeakable.
• “We could hear their cries all day and all night,” a woman named
….. said of the rape victims. “The Chetniks (Serbs) kept their
truck motors running, but it wasn’t enough to drown out their
screams.” Balkan War Rape Victims: Traumatized and Ignored.
LAT: Carol J. Williams. Nov. 30, 1992.

32. Witness
• Witness Q also attached the details of the first rape to the
successive ones. Her testimony is credible and the Trial Chamber
considers it proved beyond reasonable doubt that she was
repeatedly raped in the Trnopolje camp.
• The Trial Chamber is convinced that rape based on discriminatory
intent was committed also in the Trnopolje camp.
• The Trial Chamber has already established the commission of
other cases of rape and sexual assaults in the Keraterm and
Omarska camps.

33. EVIDENCE?
• The bodies of the murdered citizens of Prijedor
were found in 98 mass graves, 102 children
were killed in Prijedor. (INO),2019.

34. In 2013, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP)
uncovered one of the biggest mass graves in the Prijedor municipality at
the Tomasica mines where over 600 bodies had lain encased in clay for
20 years.

35. November, 2013 -Reuters

36. WHY?
• It started with hate, then words.
• Yes, Speech leads to acts.
• Then, It was an organized
process.

37. • People don’t commit violence against other
groups - or even condone it - spontaneously.
• First they must be taught to see other people
as pests, vermin, aliens, or threats. Malicious
leaders often use the same types of rhetoric
to do this, in myriad cultures, languages,
countries, and historical periods.
- The Dangerous Speech Project

38. “
”
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
German theologian & Lutheran pastor

39. • Photo summary: A woman ethnically
cleansed by the Serbs from the Prijedor
area, protective of her children clutches
a smashed photo of her once happy
family, her only possession after being
forced to sign over her home to the
soldiers. They were ordered to wear
white armbands. Her husband is
missing, likely taken to Omarska Camp.
The camp is shown in the background
and features the infamous ‘White House’.
• Robert McNeil, MBE worked gathering
evidence from many of the victims found
in mass graves from this hellish place in
Bosnia. The painting is based on a true
tragedy of a friend Elvira Mujkanovic.

40. • Crimes before the ICTY: Prijedor | International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia.
• Tomasica – Mass Graves Database (balkaninsight.com).
• Shame of camp Omarska | Special reports | guardian.co.uk
(theguardian.com)
• Balkan War Rape Victims: Traumatized and Ignored - Los Angeles
Times (latimes.com).
• War rape in the former Yugoslavia – Radio Netherlands Archives.
• Final judgement.doc (icty.org)
• Najveća masovna grobnica u BiH razotkrila mračne tajne (klix.ba)
• Mujo Begić. Senadin Ramić. Zlatan Ališićtomašica – Mass Grave.
Sarajevo, 2015.
• www.icty.org
• www.un.org
Further readings:

41. Thank you
Know More To Act Effectively