Vukovar massacre

The Vukovar massacre, also known as the Vukovar hospital massacre or the Ovčara massacre, was the killing of Croatian prisoners of war and civilians by Serb paramilitaries, to whom they had been turned over by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), at the Ovčara farm southeast of Vukovar on 20 November 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. The massacre occurred shortly after Vukovar's capture by the JNA, Territorial Defence (TO), and paramilitaries from neighbouring Serbia. It was the largest massacre of the Croatian War of Independence.

In the final days of the battle, the evacuation of the Vukovar hospital was negotiated between Croatian authorities, the JNA and the European Community Monitor Mission in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The JNA subsequently refused the ICRC access to the hospital despite the agreement and removed approximately 300 people from its premises. The group, largely consisting of Croats but also including Serbs, Hungarians, Muslims and two foreign nationals who fought on the side of the Croatian National Guard, was initially transported to the JNA barracks in Vukovar. Several prisoners were identified as hospital staff and removed from the group to be returned to the hospital while the rest of them were transported to the Ovčara farm south of Vukovar. Once at the farm, the prisoners were beaten for several hours before the JNA pulled its troops from the site, leaving the prisoners in the custody of the Croatian Serb TO and Serbian paramilitaries. The prisoners were then taken to a prepared site, shot in groups of ten to twenty and buried in a mass grave.

The mass grave was discovered in October 1992 and guarded by the United Nations Protection Force which had deployed to the area earlier that year. In 1996, 200 sets of remains were exhumed from the grave by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) investigators. Croatia believes 61 others were buried in a different grave on the site, while ICTY prosecutors believe that figure stands at 60. The ICTY convicted two JNA officers in connection with the massacre, and also tried former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević for a number of war crimes, including those committed at Vukovar. Milošević died in prison before his trial could be completed. Several former members of the Croatian Serb TO and Serbian paramilitary units have been tried by the Serbian judiciary and convicted for their involvement in the massacre. In February 2015, the International Court of Justice ruled that the siege, massacre and simultaneous atrocities committed elsewhere in Croatia did not constitute genocide.

The site of the mass grave is marked by a monument and the storage building used at Ovčara farm to hold the prisoners in captivity before their execution was rebuilt as a memorial centre in 2006. By July 2014, the centre had been visited by about 500,000 tourists.

Background

In 1990, ethnic tensions between Serbs and Croats worsened after the electoral defeat of the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia by the Croatian Democratic Union ( sh, Hrvatska demokratska zajednica – HDZ). The Yugoslav People's Army ( sh, Jugoslovenska narodna armija, links=no – JNA) confiscated Croatia's Territorial Defence ( sh, Teritorijalna obrana, links=no – TO) weapons to minimize resistance. On 17 August, the tensions escalated into an open revolt of the Croatian Serbs. The rebellion was centred on the predominantly Serb-populated areas of the Dalmatian hinterland around Knin, approximately north-east of Split, as well as parts of Lika, Kordun, Banovina and eastern Slavonia. In January 1991, Serbia, supported by Montenegro and Serbia's provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, unsuccessfully tried to obtain the Yugoslav Presidency's approval for a JNA operation to disarm Croatia's security forces. The request was denied, and a bloodless skirmish between Serb insurgents and the Croatian special police occurred that March. This prompted the JNA itself to ask the Federal Presidency to grant it wartime authority and declare a state of emergency. Even though the request was backed by Serbia and its allies, on 15 March, the Federal Presidency declined. Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, preferring a campaign to expand Serbia rather than to preserve Yugoslavia with Croatia as a federal unit, publicly threatened to replace the JNA with a Serbian army and declared that he no longer recognized the authority of the Federal Presidency. As the JNA came under Milošević's control, the JNA abandoned its plans to preserve Yugoslavia in favour of expanding Serbia. The first casualties of the conflict occurred by the end of March. In early April, the leaders of the Serb revolt in Croatia declared their intention to unite the areas under their control with Serbia. These areas came to be viewed as breakaway regions by the Government of Croatia.

At the beginning of 1991, Croatia had no regular army. To bolster its defence, Croatia doubled its police numbers to about 20,000. The most effective part of the Croatian police force was a 3,000-strong special police comprising twelve battalions organised along military lines. There were also 9,000–10,000 regionally organised reserve police in 16 battalions and 10 companies, but they lacked weapons. In response to the deteriorating situation, the Croatian government established the Croatian National Guard ( sh, Zbor narodne garde, links=no – ZNG) in May by expanding the special police battalions into four all-professional guards brigades. Under the control of the Croatian Ministry of Defence and commanded by retired JNA General Martin Špegelj, the four guards brigades comprised approximately 8,000 troops. The reserve police, also expanded to 40,000, was attached to the ZNG and reorganised into 19 brigades and 14 independent battalions. The guards brigades were the only units of the ZNG that were fully equipped with small arms; throughout the ZNG there was a lack of heavier weapons and there was poor command and control structure above the brigade level. The shortage of heavy weapons was so severe that the ZNG resorted to using World War II-era arms taken from museums and film studios. At the time, the Croatian weapon stockpile consisted of 30,000 small arms purchased abroad and 15,000 previously owned by the police. To replace the personnel lost to the guards brigades, a new 10,000-strong special police was established.

Prelude

After Croatia launched the Battle of the Barracks on 14–15 September to capture the JNA's facilities in Croatia, the JNA launched a small-scale operation against Vukovar to relieve the city garrison. At the same time, it began large-scale mobilisation in preparation for its campaign in Croatia. It was met with widespread refusal of mobilised personnel to report to their designated units, desertions and an overall lack of enthusiasm for the campaign. The response rate was particularly poor in Central Serbia, where only 26 percent of those called up reported for service. This resulted in low troop availability, forcing the JNA to deploy fewer infantry units.

The JNA's offensive operations, directly associated with the campaign in the east Croatian region of Slavonia, were launched on 20 September. The assault on Vukovar gradually became the main effort of the campaign as the JNA was repeatedly unable to capture the city. The fighting in and around Vukovar lasted months and eventually drew in the JNA's main armoured force, which had previously been slated to advance west towards Serb-held areas in western Slavonia. In addition to relieving its Vukovar garrison, the JNA wished to dissipate the Croatian forces in the city so that they would not pose any threat to its rear in the event that the campaign progressed west of Vinkovci.

The JNA was reinforced by local Serb-manned TO units and Serbian paramilitary volunteers who were meant to replace those reservists that had failed to respond to their call-up. The volunteers were often motivated by ethnic hatred, looted countless homes and committed numerous atrocities against civilians. After more than two months of fighting, the Croatian forces surrendered on 18 November. Vukovar sustained significant damage due to the JNA's artillery and rocket barrages. By the end of the battle, over 700,000 shells and other missiles had been fired at the city, at a rate of up to 12,000 per day.

Timeline

Evacuation arrangements

On 17 November, Major General Andrija Rašeta, the commander of the JNA 5th (Zagreb) Military District, notified the European Community Monitor Mission (ECMM) that the JNA accepted in principle the quick evacuation of vulnerable persons from Vukovar. At the time, it was estimated that there were about 400 people trapped in the city's hospital, but the actual number was later discovered to be about 450. This included about 40 patients receiving treatment for severe injuries sustained over the preceding few days and about 360 patients recovering from wounds suffered earlier on. In addition to these individuals, some civilians had taken shelter in the hospital in the final days of the battle. They moved there expecting to be evacuated from the city, even though the hospital itself was subjected to daily artillery attack. Furthermore, a number of Croatian troops took refuge in the hospital posing as patients or staff.

On 18 November, the Tripartite Commission, consisting of representatives of Croatia, the JNA and the ECMM, discussed methods of evacuation with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Médecins Sans Frontières and the Malteser International. On the night of 18/19 November, Rašeta and Croatian Health Minister Andrija Hebrang signed an agreement on the evacuation. The agreement guaranteed that the evacuees would travel via the route Lužac suburb–Bogdanovci– Marinci–Zidine junction–Nuštar–Vinkovci. They were to be handed over to international authorities at the Zidine junction, the hospital was to be placed under the control of the ICRC and the ECMM was to oversee the entire operation. Hebrang notified the hospital director Vesna Bosanac of the agreement and told her that ICRC teams would arrive. That evening Siniša Glavašević, a radio reporter who had covered the entire course of the siege from within the city, broadcast his final report from the hospital. Glavašević himself hoped to leave the city with the ICRC, fearing for his life should the Serb paramilitaries capture him.

Takeover of the hospital

On the morning of 19 November, the ECMM became aware that organised resistance had ceased in Vukovar, but it did not receive any information on the fate of the hospital patients. Consequently, the head of the ECMM, ambassador Dirk Jan van Houten, contacted Rašeta asking him to intervene on the ECMM's behalf. That day, a JNA unit arrived at the hospital and Bosanac was taken to meet JNA Colonel Mile Mrkšić. According to Bosanac, Mrkšić told her that he was not obligated by the evacuation agreement. Even though the ICRC was not granted access to Vukovar by JNA officers at the scene, in the early evening of 19 November, ICRC representative Nicolas Borsinger managed to reach the hospital claiming he had an appointment with "a general". Once there, Borsinger found a JNA captain in charge of the facility who agreed to grant the ICRC access. Borsinger then rejoined the ICRC convoy that was moving towards the hospital to evacuate it. The hospital was also toured by French reporter Agnès Vahramian that day, and there she recorded an interview with Jean-Michel Nicolier, a wounded Frenchman who fought alongside Croatian forces in Vukovar. Vahramian offered Nicolier a press pass to try to get him out of the city, but he refused.

On the morning of 20 November, the ICRC convoy reached Vukovar, only to be stopped at a bridge near the hospital. An armoured vehicle blocked access to the bridge leading to the hospital, and a JNA officer at the scene, Major Veselin Šljivančanin, refused to let the ICRC pass. In order to facilitate negotiations with the ICRC at the scene, BBC
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