A requiem mass was said and wreath-laying ceremonies were held on Sunday on the premises of the Velepromet storage facility, which had been 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, 724 were killed, which is why the Velepromet compound is considered the biggest execution site in Vukovar.

One of the wartime inmates in Vukovar, Dragutin Guzovski, said today that the gravest atrocities in the 1991-1995 Homeland War had been committed at Velepromet.

“Here, 724 detained people including defenders and civilians were killed. Only our association (the Croatian Society of Serb Concentration Camps’ Inmates) keeps mentioning them. I appeal for launching proceedings to hold the perpetrators and the masterminds of this crime to account,” said he.

He also said that the association possessed vide footage made by local inhabitants who had worn the JNA uniforms and had been at Velepromet, and that despite this evidence, nothing has been done to initiate the prosecution.

Another wartime inmate, Snjezana Maljak, said that out of 2,000 prewar residents of Vukovar’s suburb of Sajmište, 1,000 had been held captive at Velepromet. She testified about everyday tortures at the camp, and said that inmates had been forces to dig graves for themselves.

Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava, who attended today’s commemoration, said that it is incomprehensible that 31 years since the fall of Vukovar, none of the top officials in Belgrade, who ordered those crimes, have been brought to justice.

On Sunday afternoon, residents of Vukovar and families of the missing and fallen defenders and civilians commemorated the 31th anniversary of the executions at former Ovcara farm.

Ovcara was another site of atrocities committed by the occupying forces on 20 and 21 November 1991. The exact number of the people killed at Ovcara, 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.