page_title: Battle of Vukovar
section_title: War crimes
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Vukovar / War crimes
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ovčara – Hinrichtungsort für 200 Kranke aus dem Krankenhaus Vukovar
context_page_description: The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of Vukovar in eastern Croatia by the Yugoslav People's Army, supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia, between August and November 1991. Before the Croatian War of Independence the Baroque town was a prosperous, mixed community of Croats, Serbs and other ethnic groups. As Yugoslavia began to break up, Serbia's President Slobodan Milošević and Croatia's President Franjo Tuđman began pursuing nationalist politics. In 1990, an armed insurrection was started by Croatian Serb militias, supported by the Serbian government and paramilitary groups, who seized control of Serb-populated areas of Croatia. The JNA began to intervene in favour of the rebellion, and conflict broke out in the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia in May 1991. In August, the JNA launched a full-scale attack against Croatian-held territory in eastern Slavonia, including Vukovar.
  Vukovar was defended by around 1,800 lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard and civilian volunteers, against as many as 36,000 JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery.
context_section_description: Many captured Croatian soldiers and civilians were summarily executed after the battle. Journalists witnessed one such killing in Vukovar's main street. They also reported seeing the streets strewn with bodies in civilian attire. BBC television reporters recorded Serbian paramilitaries chanting: "Slobodane, Slobodane, šalji nam salate, biće mesa, biće mesa, klaćemo Hrvate!" ("Slobodan [Milošević], Slobodan, send us some salad, [for] there will be meat, there will be meat, we will slaughter Croats"). A Serbian journalist embedded with the JNA reserve forces in Vukovar later reported:
  After Vukovar fell, people were lined up and made to walk to detention areas. As the prisoners walked by, local Serbian paramilitaries pulled people out of the lines at random, claiming that they had to be executed because they were "war criminals." Most of these people were Croats who had spent the duration of the fighting in basements, particularly in the Vukovar hospital. The selection of those who were to be executed also was done as these people were leaving the shelters. They were removed from lines under the supervision, and with the apparent permission, of Major Veselin Šljivančanin, the JNA officer in charge of security after Vukovar's fall.
  Around 400 people from Vukovar's hospital – non-Serb patients, medical personnel, local political figures and others who had taken refuge there – were taken by the JNA. Although some were subsequently released, around 200 were transported to the nearby Ovčara farm and executed in what became known as the Vukovar massacre. At least 50 others were taken elsewhere and never seen again. Thousands more were transferred to prison camps in Serbia and rebel-controlled Croatia. Further mass killings followed. At Dalj, north of Vukovar, where many inhabitants were previously massacred, numerous prisoners from Vukovar were subjected to harsh interrogations, beatings and torture, and at least 35 were killed. The JNA imprisoned 2,000 people at the Velepromet industrial facility in Vukovar, 800 of whom were classified by the JNA as prisoners of war. Many were brutally interrogated, several were shot on the spot by TO members and paramilitaries, and others were sent to Ovčara, where they were killed in the massacre. The remaining prisoners were transferred to a JNA-run prison camp in Sremska Mitrovica. They were stripped naked on arrival, beaten and interrogated, and forced to sleep for weeks on bare wooden floors. Most were released in January 1992 under an agreement brokered by UN envoy Cyrus Vance. Others were kept prisoner until mid-1992. Serbs who fought on the Croatian side were regarded as traitors by their captors and treated particularly harshly, enduring savage beatings.
  Detainees who were not suspected of involvement in military activities were evacuated from Vukovar to other locations in Serbia and Croatia. The non-Serb population of the town and the surrounding region was systematically ethnically cleansed, and at least 20,000 of Vukovar's inhabitants were forced to leave, adding to the tens of thousands already expelled from across eastern Slavonia. About 2,600 people went missing as a result of the battle. As of November 2017, the whereabouts of more than 440 of these individuals are unknown. There were also incidents of war rape, for which two soldiers were later convicted.
  Serb forces singled out a number of prominent individuals. Among them was Dr. Vesna Bosanac, the director of the town's hospital, who was regarded as a heroine in Croatia but demonised by the Serbian media. She and her husband were taken to Sremska Mitrovica prison, where she was locked up in a single room with more than 60 other women for several weeks. Her husband was subjected to repeated beatings. After appeals from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the couple were eventually released in a prisoner exchange. The journalist Siniša Glavašević was taken to Ovčara, severely beaten and shot along with the other victims of the massacre.
  Vukovar was systematically looted after its capture. A JNA soldier who fought at
caption: The pig farm at Ovčara where around 260 people were massacred after the battle.
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