Commemorations held to mark the 34th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar

A commemoration was held in Vukovar on Saturday to mark the 34th anniversary of the Battle of Vukovar and the formation of the 204th Brigade of the Croatian Army. The central ceremony was held at Eltz Manor with a procession of the Military flags of each unit of the Croatian Armed Forces and a flyover conducted by Croatian Air Force Rafale jets. The commemoration ended at the Memorial Cemetery with a wreath laying ceremony.

The Battle of Vukovar took place in two phases. From August to September of 1991, Serb and Yugoslav People's Army forces encircled the city, and from early October to mid-November, when 1 800 Croatian defenders held off the combined Serb and JNA forces numbering 36 000 strong for 87 days, before being overrun on November 18th. In the wake of the siege several hundred soldiers and civilians were massacred by Serb forces and at least twenty thousand Croats and other non-Serb inhabitants were expelled as the city was ethnically cleansed. Later Serb President Slobodan Milošević and several of his political and military leaders were found guilty of being part of a joint criminal enterprise which committed war-crimes in a bid to ethnically cleanse Croatians and Bosnian Muslims from large parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

However, Vukovar veteran and retired Brigadier Branko Borković noted that the capture of Vukovar by Serb and JNA forces was a pyrrhic victory: “It took us six months to create the Croatian State, that is an incredible achievement for a nation that was completely unarmed and written off by everyone. The defense of Vukovar concentrated fifty percent of the forces attacking Croatia on the city, and in large part we managed to defeat that force with next to nothing in the way of arms. This is proof that we have nothing to fear, we simply need to be united. And that is a message for future generations. Croatia is worth fighting for and living for.”

For his part Deputy Prime Minister and Veterans' Affairs Minister Tomo Medved, himself a veteran of the Homeland War, emphasized that the Battle of Vukovar was not just a military battle: “Today, when we are a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance, when we are safe and internationally recognized, we must not forget that none of that would have been possible without Vukovar, and the Battle of Vukovar.”

Minister Medved went on to say that Croatia's priority is to find all of the 1 744 people still listed as missing from the Serbian aggression.

Source: HRT