Serbian Activists Commemorate Vukovar Anniversary in Belgrade

Activists from the NGO Women in Black and the Humanitarian Law Centre staged an event on Monday evening in Belgrade's central Republic Square to mark the anniversary of the date when Vukovar fell after a devastating three-month siege in 1991.

The activists held up three banners - one with the slogan "Responsibility", another stating that "We will never forget crimes in Vukovar", and a third with details of Vukovar's siege and fall and the crimes committed afterwards.

One activist wrote "Vukovar 1991-2019" on the ground with salt and others lit candles.

The Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian paramilitaries besieged and shelled the town intensively between late August and mid-November 1991.

Over 3,000 soldiers and civilians died during the siege and its aftermath, 86 of them children. Over 300 residents of Vukovar are still listed as missing persons.

Stasa Zajovic from Women in Black said that the activists wanted to send a message that they will never the forget crimes committed in Vukovar and will never stop supporting the victims and their families in their fight for justice.

"We also think that, instead of the shameful unveiling of plaques [to a Yugoslav general who participated in the 1991 siege] and the glorification and rehabilitation of war criminals, Serbia has the obligation - today and not only today - to establish who is responsible for killing off a city that became a synonym for the barbaric destruction of cities in war," Zajovic said.

Zajovic said that people who were responsible for establishing and running detention camps for Croats in Serbia in the 1990s should be prosecuted, and that the sites of camps in Begejci and Stajicevo in northern Serbia should be marked with memorial plaques.

Activists...