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Vukovar
- ten years of impunity for massive human rights violations
Subject: Direct Action >> AI on Vukovar
Date: Mon,
19 Nov 2001 20:25:19 -0500
From: Miroslav Visic <visic@pipeline.com>
Organization: New World Disorder
16 November 2001 EUR 05/002/2001 203/01
Croatia/FRY:
* News Release by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
For
Fairly Use:
Vukovar - ten years of impunity for massive human rights
violations
On
the tenth anniversary of the fall of Vukovar (18th November),
Amnesty International
expressed its great disappointment at the continuing
failure of the authorities of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia (FRY) to arrest those indicted for war crimes
and crimes against humanity in Vukovar by the International
Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (Tribunal).
The
Tribunal's Prosecutor has indicted three former officers
of the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) for war crimes
and crimes against humanity committed in Vukovar, in
particular the killings of over 200 unarmed men taken
from the Vukovar hospital on 20 November 1991.
"Despite
several requests by the Prosecutor to surrender these
men to the Tribunal's custody, the FRY authorities have
not done so," Amnesty International said. The organization
recognizes the internal problems that the FRY has to
confront in order to ensure cooperation with the Tribunal,
but stresses that as a UN member state the FRY must
respect its obligations to cooperate fully as set out
by the Security Council resolution which established
the Tribunal.
"The
need for justice for the victims and their relatives
in Vukovar is overwhelming," Amnesty International
said, stressing that impunity for the massive human
rights violations committed in Vukovar and other parts
of eastern Slavonia must be brought to an end. The organization
believes that establishing individual responsibility
for these crimes would significantly
assist the process of reconciliation, and reintegration
of those returning to Vukovar after years of displacement.
Background
On
18 November 1991 the eastern Slavonian town of Vukovar
fell to the JNA after a three month siege. JNA forces,
aided by Serb paramilitaries, are reported to have committed
a large number of grave human rights violations during
the armed conflict in 1991 in this region, including
deliberate and arbitrary killings, torture, including
rape and the forceful expulsion of large parts of the
non-Serb population. Over 600 people are still listed
as missing in the Vukovar-Srijem region, many of them
having "disappeared" during or after the fighting.
Mile
Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin were
publicly indicted for war crimes and crimes against
humanity in 1995 in one of the first indictments issued
by the Prosecutor. They are all charged with the command
and supervision of the transfer of at least 200 Croatian
and other non-Serb individuals from Vukovar hospital
to a nearby farm in Ovcara. At the farm they were beaten
and tortured for hours, before being executed.
In
October 2001, former FRY President Slobodan Milosevic
-- currently awaiting trial before the Tribunal for
war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo --
was in addition charged with crimes against humanity
and war crimes committed in Croatia in 1991 and 1992.
The charges include individual and command responsibility
for large-scale crimes committed in eastern Slavonia
in late 1991.
Three
other indicted suspects have been arrested in the FRY
and surrendered to the custody of the Tribunal during
2001; three others have voluntarily surrendered. The
most recent arrest, on 8 November, of Bosnian Serbs
Predrag and Nenad Banovic, indicted for war crimes at
the Keraterm detention camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina, triggered
protests by the
Serbian
State Security Police. This has precipitated another
political crisis around the legislation which the FRY
claims it needs in order to fully cooperate with the
Tribunal.
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