page_title: Saborsko massacre
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Saborsko massacre / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of front lines and military offensives in Lika, Kordun and Banovina in Croatia in October-December 1991 period of the during Croatian War of Independence. Balkan Battlegrounds Map 5.
context_page_description: The Saborsko massacre was the killing of 29 Croat residents of the village of Saborsko on 12 November 1991, following the seizure of the village in a Yugoslav People's Army and Croatian Serb offensive during the Croatian War of Independence. The fall of the town occurred as part of a JNA and Croatian Serb operation to capture a Croatian-held pocket centered on the town of Slunj, southeast of Karlovac. While the bulk of the civilian population fled with the surviving Croatian forces, those who remained in Saborsko were rounded up and either killed or expelled. The bodies of the victims were retrieved from two mass graves and several individual graves in 1995.
  The capture of Saborsko and the killing and expulsion of its civilian population was included in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indictments of Milan Babić and Milan Martić, high-ranking officials of the Croatian Serb-declared wartime breakaway region of SAO Krajina. Following the war, the ICTY convicted Babić and Martić for their role in the events. Saborsko was subsequently rebuilt.
context_section_description: In 1990, following the electoral defeat of the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs worsened. The Yugoslav People's Army (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija – JNA) confiscated Croatia's Territorial Defence (Teritorijalna obrana - TO) weapons to minimize resistance. On 17 August, the tensions escalated into an open revolt by Croatian Serbs, centred on the predominantly Serb-populated areas of the Dalmatian hinterland around Knin, parts of the Lika, Kordun, Banovina and eastern Croatia. This was followed by two unsuccessful attempts by Serbia, supported by Montenegro and Serbia's provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo to obtain the Yugoslav Presidency's approval for a JNA operation to disarm Croatian security forces in January 1991.
  After a bloodless skirmish between Serb insurgents and Croatian special police in March, the JNA itself, supported by Serbia and its allies, asked the Federal Presidency to give it wartime authority and declare a state of emergency. The request was denied on 15 March, and the JNA came under the control of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Milošević publicly threatened to replace the JNA with a Serbian army and declared that he no longer recognized the authority of the Federal Presidency. By the end of the month, the conflict had escalated into the Croatian War of Independence. The JNA stepped in, increasingly supporting the Croatian Serb insurgents, and preventing Croatian police from intervening. In early April, the leaders of the Croatian Serb revolt declared their intention to integrate the area under their control, known as SAO Krajina, with Serbia. The Government of Croatia viewed this declaration as an attempt to secede.
  In May, the Croatian government responded by forming the Croatian National Guard (Zbor narodne garde - ZNG), but its development was hampered by a United Nations (UN) arms embargo introduced in September. On 8 October, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, and a month later the ZNG was renamed the Croatian Army (Hrvatska vojska - HV). Late 1991 saw the fiercest fighting of the war, as the Yugoslav campaign in Croatia culminated in the Siege of Dubrovnik, and the Battle of Vukovar.
caption: Map showing the fighting in the Banovina, Kordun and Lika regions, October 1991–January 1992; Slunj pocket is shown in the centre of the map
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