Deputy Prime Minister for Social Activities and Human Rights Boris Milosevic on Wednesday regretted the Vukovar tragedy and expressed a deep respect for the eastern Croatian city and all innocent war victims.

In a Facebook post on the occasion of Vukovar and Skabrnja Victims Remembrance Day, he said that by coming to Vukovar today and yesterday, he wanted to honour all Vukovar victims and send a message of reconciliation and tolerance as well as to express a wish for establishing a dialogue at the local level,

Milosevic expressed a deep respect for Vukovar, its people and all innocent victims as well as regret at everything the 1990s war did to interethnic relations in the city.

He wrote that last summer he said that respect and empathy for all victims was a prerequisite for reconciliation and for hate to stop.

“As a Croatian citizen of Serb ethnicity and as a deputy prime minister, I can’t find sufficiently strong words to express regret at what happened in Vukovar, because all the Vukovar graves, known and unknown, and all the suffering of the people who lost their lives, their dear ones, their homes, speak louder than any word of mine.”

Milosevic wrote that louder than any of his words was also the painful silence he felt every time he visited the Ovcara mass grave where, he added, a crime was committed that was difficult for anyone to comprehend.

He also regretted that 30 years after the tragedy, many people of Vukovar could still not find their dear ones nor peace.

“I believe that Croatia today, as a modern republic, a democratic and European country, can and must find the strength to find a way to create the prerequisites for a successful healing of the wounds of all the residents of the city, citizens of every ethnicity, as a pledge for building a place of quality living and a prosperous future,” wrote Milosevic.