Serb paramilitary forces, backed by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) gained control of Vukovar on November 18, 1991 after months of siege. Eastern Croatia was reintegrated into Croatia's constitutional and legal system in 1998 through peaceful reintegration.
According to figures from the association of former inmates of Serb-run detention camps (HDLSKL), about 10,000 Croatian soldiers and civilians passed through the camp which the Serb rebels opened in September 1991 in the storage halls of the Velepromet wholesaling company when they occupied the Sajmiste residential area.
From November 18 to 20, 1991, at least 100 prisoners were killed in Velepromet. Some 700 of the prisoners who had been held there went missing and many of them are still unaccounted-for.
The Velepromet camp was dismantled in March 1992 with the deployment of UN peacekeepers in eastern Croatia.
Addressing today's commemoration, Natasa Kandic, the director of the Serbian nongovernmental organisation "The Humanitarian Law Center" said that the recent meeting of Croatian and Serbian Presidents Ivo Josipovic and Boris Tadic in Vukovar had a positive impact on the post-war reconciliation.
"It can be seen how much that visit (by Tadic) makes it easers for people in Serbia to raise questions about and admit that something happened here," she said.
"This is the beginning of one road which is necessary to everybody. It is necessary to the victims and their families to see that the others admit. It is necessary to Serbia to admit to what was done in its name," the Serbian human rights activist said today.