From: malenovi@plains.NoDak.edu (Malenovic Nikola V.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: The Camp of Omarska Background ( VREME NDA 28 Aug 1992 )
Date: 28 Aug 92 20:45:27 GMT
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computing Network


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                     No. 47, August 17, 1992
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    The Camp of Omarska Background
    ------------------------------


                              MARKED BY DISGRACE


    The story  of Omarska, a  camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina,  is a conventional
    account of how peacetime tranquillity changes to wartime madness.

    Omarska,  which has  suddenly under   the spotlight  of world  media, is
    situated  between  Prijedor  and  Banjaluka.  Inhabited  nearly  hundred
    percent  by Serbs,  it accounts  for one  of the  biggest Serbian  local
    communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

    Before war came with its insanity,  most of the townspeople were workers
    or farmers employed  in Prijedor, Banjaluka but also  in Zagreb some 100
    miles  away. When  the war  broke out,  willing it  or not,  they became
    warriors.

    For the  developments to be understood  at least to some  extent (if one
    can understand  anything that belongs  to this madhouse),  certain facts
    may be helpful.

    The municipality of Prijedor, to which Omarska belongs, according to the
    latest Census figures,  had equal numbers of Serbs  and Moslems and some
    Croats.  But, unlike  the typical  and often  referred to  "Bosnian mix"
    (house-to-house),  the  constituent  local  communities  of the Prijedor
    municipality at the  same time were the ethnically  pure Serb and Moslem
    enclaves.  Even the  city of   Prijedor itself  had its  ethnically pure
    sections. This fact would be among those decisively to determine the war
    operations that were to come about.

    After  elections in  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  Prijedor  has become  the only
    municipality in  Bosnian Krajina that did  not have at least  a symbolic
    majority of deputies from the  Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). This fact
    was to  pose the big  problem in the  attempts to include  Prijedor into
    what  was  one  of  Karadzic's  earliest  inventions:  the  creation  of
    so-called Autonomous Region of Bosnian Krajina (SAO Bosanska Krajina).

    The next major fact in a  sequence of tragic developments is the flaring
    up  of  the  war  in  Croatia  last  summer.  The  then commander of the
    Banjaluka Corps,  General Uzelac, in  a manner of  a free-lance military
    leader,  proclaimed a  general mobilization   in the  zone of  his corps
    (Bosanska Krajina) in September, 1991. Krajina's Serbs, the offspring of
    World War Two Partisans, responded in large number to the call to "fight
    the  Ustashi".  having  crossed  the  Sava  river,  they entered the war
    slaughterhouse of Western Slavonija. In Prijedor, however, some problems
    were  cropping  up:  thanks  to  its  majority  deputies  elected to the
    municipal bodies, the (Moslem) Party of Democratic Action (SDA) began to
    undermine the mobilization by allowing its controlled municipal national
    defense secretariats  to file away  drafts summons for  both Moslems and
    peace-loving Serbs.

    Now entering  the stage were the  SDS committees, especially the  one in
    Omarska. They  began to issue  summons from their  local communities and
    almost  all  Serb  men,  and  even  women,  who  were  able to move, had
    "volunteered".

    The  Moslems responded  to the  mobilization only  in token numbers. And
    this would be another major fact  - in addition to the already mentioned
    relatively pure sections  of the municipality - decisive  in the battles
    of Prijedor.

    It was from the Slavonian battlefronts that the huge amounts of arms and
    ammunition  poured  into  Krajina.  This  is  how  the  earlier  started
    militarization  of its  region  had  taken on  unbelievable proportions.
    Then, as the initial formations of  the UNPROFOR began to be deployed in
    Croatia, from which the Yugoslav People's  Army (JNA) began to pull out,
    one of the locations for the JNA to settle was the Prijedor valley. As a
    result  of the  thus ended  Serb-Moslem arms  race, there  was the great
    supremacy on the Serbian side.

    Operations  in Sarajevo  and Herzegovina  had already  lasted a  month's
    time, when  the earliest skirmishes  took place in  Prijedor. having had
    bad  experience from  besieged barracks  and later  evacuations both  in
    Croatia  and Bosnia,  the JNA  (at that  time still  bearing this  name)
    performed a "blitz precaution" operation: first it cut off all telephone
    connections (the gag that was to  be applied several more times, for the
    general public "not  to be disturbed") and, without  firing a bullet, it
    captured all major sections and institutions in the city overnight. Then
    it imposed a  curfew on the city and posted  its guards, snipers, on all
    major  buildings. The  JAN, probably  needless to  say, comprised almost
    Serbs alone. Overnight, SDS senior officials took over all major offices
    in the municipality. A Putsch was performed.

    Amid unbearable  expectations, the powder  keg was kindled  when two JNA
    soldiers  were  killed  in  the  Moslem  village  of  Hambarine  outside
    Prijedor. The  JNA demanded the  assassins to be  handed over. When  its
    demand  was not  met, it  razed Hambarine  to the  ground. The avalanche
    touched off at Hambarine could no  longer be stopped: one Moslem village
    after another was demanded to surrender  arms and express loyalty to the
    newly proclaimed state (the  Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and
    its army  (this was the period  in which the JNA  was "withdrawing" from
    Bosnia).  Certain  smaller  Moslem  hamlets,  like  Kevljani where not a
    single  bullet was  fired, fulfilled  the JNA  demand, but  not to their
    rescue  because  such  localities  also  were  looted  and  burned down.
    Fighting was  fiercest around Kozarac,  the biggest Moslem  place in the
    municipality.  Serbs took  hold of  this place  at the  minimum loss and
    destroyed it altogether.

    The  reason  of   the  extra  amount  of  brutality   displayed  in  the
    "liberation" of  Kozarac partly lies in  the past too. During  the World
    War Two, Moslems from Kozarac were  loyal to the then puppet Independent
    state of  Croatia (NDH), and it  was here that at  least 500 young local
    Serbs were slaughtered in 1941.

    War  operation in  the Prijedor  municipality came  to their  terrifying
    epilogue:  hardly any  Moslem locality  remained unaffected.  During the
    fighting, a large number of mostly women and children escaped to central
    Bosnia and Croatia, while the majority of men - either having no arms or
    having had  no chance of joining  in the war -  were taken prisoner. And
    this is where the story of Camps opens.

    The biggest assembly points for Moslems were set up in the localities of
    Omarska and Trnopolje.

    In the  beginning (before internees  were moved in),  the elderly, women
    and children  were at Trnopolje, while  men who fit for  service were at
    Omarska (in the location of a  mining complex for the excavation of iron
    ore).

    Trnopolje,  probably because  of its  original population,  retained the
    status of "a fairly soft" camp to which "light cases" were taken.

    Those taken to Omarska were, however, all "suspicious" Moslem men.

    The criteria as  to who was and who was  not suspicious were, of course,
    arbitrary. Here, suspicious men were  checked and, not so seldom, beaten
    and tortured. In  addition to Moslems, some of the  Serbs were also held
    at Omarska.  They were mostly smugglers  of "extra arms" that,  to their
    misfortune, were sold to Moslems(!)  They were the "small smugglers fry"
    detained there by the "big fish".

    VREME, relying  on its own sources,  asserted that the camp  at Omarska,
    once  "spontaneously" organized"  has in  time become  a burden  for its
    organizers.  This was  how the   idea quickly  emerged that  the Omarska
    inmates  could be  exchanged for  the Serbs  held prisoners  at Odzak or
    somewhere else.  It is asserted that  this exchange had been  offered to
    Alija  Izetbegovic,  President  of  B-H,  who  allegedly  turned it down
    explaining that these were not his  Moslems, because his Moslems "do not
    surrender", which does not sound  unlikely. The same sources assert that
    it  was  at  this  point  that  the  biggest  problem arose. The natural
    question was what to do with as  so many people as this. To release them
    would mean creating a large number of avengers ready to take up arms. To
    keep them would mean the duty to feed them. And this was the time when a
    corridor  between Bosnian  Krajina and  Serbia had  not yet operated, so
    food was scarce for one's own population, to say nothing of the "enemy".
    In  this period,  one loaf  of bread  was shared  daily by eight inmates
    whose personal care boiled down to infrequent baths. people began to die
    of  infection and  exposure. After   the Krajina  - Serbia  corridor was
    opened,  the situation  began to  be somewhat  more bearable,  and then,
    luckily,  the  world  and  domestic  general  public  started  to  voice
    disapproval, on learning that such a camp does exist.

    The often referred to figure of  11,000 prisoners at Omarska is believed
    to be  exaggerated. The camp  might have had  6,000 - 7,000  people, but
    right ahead  of the media publicity,  the number fell to  some 2,500. At
    this moment  it is impossible  to say how  many people died  at the camp
    (some sources  spoke about periodic  executions of "extremists"  outside
    the camp grounds, about rigged escapes, about deaths due to beating...)

    The  most  terrible  of  possibilities  was  an unpermissible attempt to
    hushing, or, still worse, justifying it all.

    That  would  be  unjust  also  because  of  the  large number of Omarska
    population who wanted to rebel but could not rebel in their fascist-like
    surroundings,  then also  because of  all people  who smuggled bread and
    cigarettes into the  camp, because of those who  suffered at their homes
    knowing that  their friends until  yesterday were suffering  "behind the
    wire fence". However  ungrateful and incorrect this gradation  may be in
    the  situation like  this, the  sufferings of  these last mentioned were
    perhaps the  worst. Thorn between the  urge to cry out  and the crushing
    fact that they either could not or dared do not anything, they will feel
    being marked by disgrace to the end of their day.

                              Miroslav Dedic and the team of VREME reporters


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     "Vreme" News Digest Agency                     No. 47, August 17, 1992
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