The members of this group, although of various ethnicities, were colloquially
called ‘the Bosnians’: this referred to them being arrestees of UDB Bosnia and
Herzegovina rather than their nationality. Damir Pavić, aged nineteen at
the time of his arrest, was on the construction site when the ship arrived:
'On the day when they came, I was working … breaking off a rock. And then,
we heard the Punat ship approaching, the flags, the five-pointed stars, the
songs. And some terrible noise was heard, as if the Flying Dutchman arrived,
singing, shouts of some well-known slogans and chants crystallised through
the air ... ‘Tito – Party – People – Army’ … and then the ‘Bosnians’ disembarked,
the stout ones. They started beating us, immediately and heavily.'
The strange, instantly violent new cohabitants did indeed differ from the
island’s existing inmates: they seemed well fed, strong and clean, and did
not undergo the naked sea-bathing ritual. According to Novičić, they were
greeted by the guards ‘with visible relief and even triumphant attitude, as if
they boasted with the ace they were hiding up their sleeve’. The detail that
indicated that they were no ordinary Cominformist prisoners was that they
wore ‘dandy’ sturdy yellow leather shoes.
Recalling the disturbing changes this group brought to the inmate population,
Novičić defined it as consisting of ‘various agitators, criminals, convicted
members of Ustaše’s Youth, arrested sympathizers of the Četnik movement’
who had been promised by the UDB ‘to be exonerated of their wrongdoings’
or who ‘revised their stances under physical and moral violence’ and agreed
to ‘re-educate’ the Cominformists in turn.
The new hierarchy among the prisoners was immediately established.
Those greeted by the guards, who were allowed and encouraged to beat
the inmates, who came onto the island fully clothed, their feet unhurt by
Goli otok’s stone, were obviously the authorities. They immediately started
demanding spoken revisions of political stances of the men on the island,
alongside reports of ‘enemy activity’ on the mainland – the ‘enemy’ often
being inmates’ friends, parents, siblings or spouses. They also demanded
that the inmates report on each other’s political stances, and ‘take an
active part’ in each other’s ‘re-education’.
Those who refused were repeatedly and brutally beaten. Yet, in the beginning,
almost everyone refused: there were many friends among those who shared
the first days and moments on the island. They even physically resisted the new
authorities and the newly imposed system.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/jj.12638983.17.pdf 
