A national memorial ceremony was held in the eastern town of Slavonski Brod on Saturday to commemorate 402 boys and girls killed in the 1991-1995 Homeland War.

The ceremony, organised for the 19th year in a row by the union of associations of civilian casualties of the Homeland War, was attended by President Zoran Milanovic and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Tomo Medved.

Medved said that this year’s commemoration coincided with the preparation of a new bill on civilian casualties of the Homeland War, which has been sent to Parliament for adoption.

The first law on this matter was passed in 1992 and has been amended 12 times since then, but it never fully covered the rights of civilian casualties and their families, the minister noted.

“The law is a mark of gratitude to families who lost their children and their members as civilian casualties. I should also mention the families of civilian casualties listed as missing who were not able to exercise their rights before declaring their loved ones dead,” Medved said, calling on lawmakers to back the bill so that the injustice towards civilian casualties of the Homeland War could be rectified.

During the Serb military aggression on Croatia in the early 1990s, 402 children were killed, including 28 in Slavonski Brod, the town where the single largest number of children were killed during the war.

No one has been brought to justice for those crimes.

President Milanovic declined to speak to the press on this occasion.