prijava
SARAJEVO, August 10 (FENA) - Professor of philosophy and studies of the Holocaust and genocide at the State University of Southern Connecticut, David Pettigrew, appealed to the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina to advocate the proclamation of "national monuments of suffering" throughout Republika Srpska.
The call was made to do so within the notorious Omarska camp, in Trnopolje, Foča and Višegrad, and the concentration camp near Kalinovik, where more than 122 people were killed and the remains of 40 victims who were taken to execution sites in the area have not yet been found or identified.
“National monuments of suffering need to be established in places that are maybe less known, in places where denial and revisionism have been more successful. It is necessary to mark Pionirska and Bikavac, and also to establish a memorial in Foča,” he added.
The site of the Barutni Magacin concentration camp is quite isolated and in deteriorating condition. Survivors want the site to be protected and restored as a memorial museum, similar to what was done in Srebrenica.
This concentration camp is located near the entrance to Kalinovik, where visitors and returnees are "welcomed" by a monument to war criminal Ratko Mladić, which, according to Pettigrew, should be challenged by a new law banning genocide denial.
In a recent address in Omarska, Pettigrew recalled that representatives of Arcelor Mittal had agreed in 2005 to erect a memorial at the site of the notorious camp and agreed that access to it would be granted, but this has not yet been done and access to the site is restricted.
“The ban on the construction of memorials in Omarska is discriminatory since there are memorials to perpetrators of crimes in Republika Srpska. Prohibiting or suppressing the commemoration of suffering is a violation of the human right to truth and the right to remembrance,” he warned at the time.
The establishment of the memorial is important, Pettigrew added, for the sake of the future, in order to resist the denial of the crime and prevent its recurrence.
(FENA) A. B.
