Monumenting Our Pasts: Monuments, What Are They Now?

One will always question a past that is not remembered on plaques, in stone, on paper, in media. While wind and rain weather the sculptures that stand to remember our histories, it is the act of consistent re-construction, of those same stories of the past, that creates a space for surpassing any doubts of their truth value. Omarska, Kozarac, and Trnopolje are small villages in close proximity to the city of Prijedor. Prijedor is situated in the Serb Republic or Republika Srpska (the Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The region appeared in international media in 1992 when a group of journalists reported on the brutal concentration camps at various sites across the area. This essay focuses on the work of the organisation Most Mira and working group Four Faces of Omarska, in order to examine how alternative modes of memorialisation have developed in a region where denial and suppression of war crimes remains present in various layers of society.