ZAGREB, 20 Nov, 2021 - A requiem mass was said and wreath-laying ceremonies were held on Saturday on the premises of the Velepromet storage facility, which was converted into a concentration camp by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Serbian paramilitaries and rebels during the siege of Vukovar in 1991.
An estimated 10,000 people were detained in the "Velepromet" buildings from late 1991 to March 1992 when this camp was closed, according to statistics kept by former detainees' association.
Of those 10,000 detainees, some 700 were killed, and the head of the association Danijel Rehak said today that this was the biggest execution site in Vukovar.
He said that the former detainees had lodged a plenty of reports against perpetrators of atrocities a Velepromet and in Vukovar, and he accused the Croatian prosecutorial authorities for insufficient efforts to prosecute those war crimes.
On Saturday afternoon, residents of Vukovar and families of the missing and fallen defenders and civilians will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the executions at former Ovčara farm.
Ovčara was another site of atrocities committed by the occupying forces on 20 and 21 November 1991. The exact number of the people killed at Ovčara, a former pig farm, is unknown, but 194 cases have been documented before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Of those, the youngest victim was 16 years old and the oldest 77. The majority of victims were patients transported from the Vukovar general hospital to that farm, several kilometres away from the town.
Vukovar was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia in January 1998. The peaceful reintegration began in January 1996 with the assistance of the UNTAES (UN Transitional Authority in Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Sirmium). Croatia's parliament decided in 1999 that Vukovar Remembrance Day would be observed on November 18, the day of the town's fall.
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