#weremember: Camps for Croats in Serbia

#weremember: Camps for Croats in Serbia

Saopstenje-Logori_za_Hrvate-enBetween September 1991 and August 1992, several camps and transit centers existed on the territory of Serbia for captured fighters and civilians from Croatia. In these facilities, detainees were subjected to daily psychological and physical abuse.

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) recalls that on this day 33 years ago, Croatian forces and civilians were detained and taken to the camp at the “Livade” farm in the village of Stajićevo near Zrenjanin (Serbia), which was established by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). This occurred after the JNA, the Serbian Territorial Defense (TO) of Vukovar, and paramilitary units from Serbia captured Vukovar on November 18, 1991. Besides Stajićevo, detainees were sent to camps in Sremska Mitrovica, Aleksinac, and Niš, as well as to the Military Investigative Prison in Belgrade and the camp in Begejci, which had been operational since September. All those camps except the one in Niš, which was under the responsibility of the JNA’s 3rd Military District, were under the jurisdiction of the 1st Military District. The camps were guarded by members of the JNA Military Police.

Approximately 7,000 people passed through these camps, staying for periods ranging from several days to nine months. Among them were elderly individuals, women, and minors, mostly from the Vukovar area. Detainees were subjected daily to psychological and physical abuse, violence, and torture by JNA officers and reservists, members of the Territorial Defense from the Vukovar area, and police from the Serbian Autonomous Region of Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Srem (SAO SBZS), who visited the camps. All detainees suffered humiliation and starvation and were regularly taken for interrogations accompanied by torture. Sexual abuse was also documented in the camps.

After the camp in Stajićevo was closed on December 22, 1991, most detainees were transferred to correctional institutions in Sremska Mitrovica or Niš, with some sent for prisoner exchange. The camp in Niš was closed in February 1992, while detainees in Sremska Mitrovica and the Military Investigative Prison in Belgrade remained incarcerated until mid-August 1992, when an all-for-all prisoner exchange took place.

At least 14 detainees died in the camps in Serbia due to abuse or lack of adequate medical care. They were: Mirko Tišma, Zlatko Brajer, Branko Koch, Ivan Kamerla, Josip Boldiš, Božo Kelava, Zlatko Cvitković, Damir Kiralj, Antun Plivelić, Đuro Tvorek, Ivan Švraka, Niko Šoljić, and Pero Mesić.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Slobodan Milošević with establishing camps for Croats in Serbia and the detention of civilians and prisoners of war. The ICTY also indicted Goran Hadžić for having unlawfully detained Croats and other non-Serbs in inhumane conditions in several detention facilities in Serbia. Both cases were closed because the indictees died before the trials could be completed.

In May 2008, the Association “Vukovar 1991” and the HLC filed a criminal complaint with the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, naming 54 commanders and guards in the camps in Serbia. Two years later, the Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor stated that a preliminary investigation was underway. However, to date, only one person in Serbia has been convicted for crimes committed in these camps. Territorial Defense member Marko Crevar was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, below the statutory minimum, after reaching a plea agreement with the prosecutor for the war crime against prisoners in the Correctional Institution in Sremska Mitrovica.

None of the detention sites in Serbia have memorials commemorating those events and the people who suffered there, despite repeated requests from former detainees. In July 2016, the incumbent President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, then Prime Minister, promised to erect a monument to the victims, but this has not happened. The adoption of the War Memorials Act in 2018 effectively prevented such memorialization, as the law restricts commemoration exclusively to events deemed “significant for nurturing the traditions of Serbia’s liberation wars.”

In 2020, the HLC published a dossier titled Camps for Croats on the Territory of Serbia detailing the establishment of the camps, detention conditions, human rights violations, and breaches of international humanitarian law, as well as identifying responsible individuals.

The HLC also produced a digital narrative titled Camps for Croats on the Territory of Serbiaand a 30-minute video.

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