A memorial ceremony was held on Thursday at the Roma cemetery in Ustica, about 100 kilometres southeast of Zagreb, for 16,173 Roma killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.

The commemoration in Ustica, organised by the Roma organisation Kali Sari and the Council of the Roma Ethnic Minority in Croatia, is the largest annual gathering of the Roma in Croatia at the place where the largest genocide in this part of Europe took place.

Wreaths were laid by delegations of the parliament and government, local authorities, Roma organisations and the envoy of the Croatian president.

“Ustica was the site of mass killings of the Roma people, who were not killed by the occupiers, but by the Ustasha and the criminal regime of the so-called WWII Independent State of Croatia,” said Veljko Kajtazi, Roma community representative in the Croatian parliament.

August 2 marks International Roma Genocide Remembrance Day, in memory of August 2, 1944, when 2,987 Roma men, women and children were taken into gas chambers and murdered at Auschwitz.

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