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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ZAGREB, 18 Sept, 2021 - Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava said after a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar on Saturday that the incumbent and all previous Croatian governments should be ashamed of the fact that nobody had answered for the city's destruction in 1991 and the thousands of people killed there.

"If we disregard the rulings of the international tribunal in The Hague and for the Ovčara atrocity, nobody has yet been brought to account for Vukovar and that is a big disgrace for this government and all previous governments," said Penava.

Asked by reporters if today was an appropriate day to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar, Penava said that everyone would have their own opinion on the matter but that he welcomed it as a day honouring Vukovar's defenders and the 204th Brigade.

He said that he had listened to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's speech today, in which, he said, Plenković spoke about positive examples of the government's care for Vukovar but failed to mention problems, such as those regarding the local economy and suspended investments in the local wood-processing sector and hotel industry, which, he said, the government led by Plenković was responsible for.

"What saddens one the most, and what the government led by Plenković has inherited from the previous governments, is the shameful fact that nobody has been brought to account for the fact that Vukovar was razed to the ground in 1991, while the parliamentary majority regularly votes confidence in both the Supreme Court and the Chief State Prosecutor, thus supporting the policy that has turned its back on the Vukovar victims," said Penava.

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