Manjača camp
Coordinates: 44 ° 39 ′ 21 ″ N , 17 ° 1 ′ 37 ″ E
The Manjača camp was located near the town of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian War in 1992 and 1995 .
location
It was located about 15 kilometers (as the crow flies) southwest of Banja Luka, on the edge of the Manjača Nature Park , in a sparsely populated region. In the immediate vicinity of the camp, which was housed on the site of a farm, there is a military firing range.
determination
The camp was set up by the leadership of the Republika Srpska to forcibly detain captured Bosniaks and Croats . According to the International Committee of the Red Cross , 3,737 people were held in the Manjača camp. The exact number of prisoners is difficult to determine.
According to the indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the camp was a place of horror, where the prisoners were systematically mistreated and murdered.
Under pressure from the international community, the camp was initially closed at the end of 1992, but rebuilt in October 1995. It is estimated that between 4,500 and 6,000 Bosniaks and Croats from Sanski Most , Ključ and Banja Luka were held prisoner. When the camp was liberated by the Bosnian government troops as part of the Maestral military operation in autumn 1995 , 85 bodies were discovered in the camp itself. However, several thousand people from the Sanski Most area who were brought to Manjača have been missing since then.
background
The Manjača camp was established in 1991 during the war in Croatia . At that time, numerous Croatians captured by the Serbian paramilitaries and the Yugoslav People's Army were brought to the camp.
At the beginning of the Bosnian War in the spring of 1992, mainly Bosniak civilians were deported to the camp.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Report, the administration consisted of members of the political leadership of the Republika Srpska and its military structures. The Serbian leadership in Bosnia labeled the prisoners as prisoners of war, but other observers concluded that most of the prisoners were civilians. The only reason they were brought to the camp was because they were Bosniaks or Croatians. From the point of view of the Bosnian Serb leadership, their ethnicity made them potential war opponents.
Current developments
Some of those responsible in the Republika Srpska have been charged by the ICTY . Among them are Milomir Stakic and Stojan Župljanin .
Individual evidence
- ↑ report of Amnesty International , December 1, 1998
- ↑ Amended Indictment Case number IT-97-24-PT
- ↑ Dario Sito Sucic: Bosnian Serbs reopened Concentration Camps . University at Buffalo, The State University of New York , October 16, 1995
- ↑ Report of the United Nations of April 27, 1993