The Commemoration of the Victims of Vukovar Has Begun

The commemoration of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Vukovar 1991 and the 21st anniversary of the suffering of that city in the Homeland War has begun.

This year, citizens from all over Croatia will join the people of Vukovar in the Memory Column, and the President of the Republic, Ivo Josipović, will arrive this afternoon. He will first pay tribute to the victims from the mass grave at Ovčara.

At the Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of the Homeland War in Vukovar today, organized by the Association of Parents and Families of Captured and Forcibly Taken Croatian Defenders ‘Vukovar Mothers’, flowers and candles were placed on each grave of a Vukovar defender. The president of the ‘Vukovar Mothers’ Association, Manda Patko, reminded that many members of this association have still not found their loved ones and have nowhere to light their candles. In memory of them, candles were also lit at the cemetery by the Mayor of Vukovar, Željko Sabo.

The remembrance of the victims of Vukovar will be marked tomorrow with a walk in the Memory Column along a five and a half kilometer long route from the Vukovar hospital to the Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of the Homeland War, with the laying of wreaths and lighting of candles by state and other delegations, as well as a memorial mass. Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač have also been invited to Vukovar.

The Battle of Vukovar began on August 25 and ended on November 18, 1991, with the collapse of the defense of the city, which was defended by about 1,800 members of the National Guard and police, as well as volunteers from HOS organized into the 204th Vukovar Brigade. By the time the defense of the city collapsed, 1,624 people had been killed, and more than 2,500 were injured. About five thousand captured defenders and civilians were taken to Serbian concentration camps, and around 22,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from the city.

On the list of detained and missing persons in the Homeland War from the Vukovar-Srijem County, there are still 436 Croatian defenders and civilians, most of whom disappeared in Vukovar in 1991. To date, 1,232 victims of aggression have been exhumed in the wider area of Vukovar, of which 938 are from the mass grave at the Vukovar New Cemetery, 200 at Ovčara, and others in different parts of Vukovar and surrounding areas.