"This meeting is proof that we are not alone and that the search for our dearest ones will be stepped up and that next year Croatia will no longer have lists with missing and imprisoned Croatian soldiers and civilians," the leader of the Federation of Missing and Imprisoned People, Ivan Psenica, said at the rally.
The truth about the fate of those people must be established as soon as possible with the help of state institutions and the search must be fully depoliticised, Psenica said.
The Zagreb meeting was held on the regional level, Psenica said, adding that representatives of similar associations from Serbia had been invited, but they turned down the invitation.
Addressing the rally, President Stjepan Mesic said that every person considered missing must be found, which he said was a job for state institutions. He recalled that around 18,000 people had been registered as imprisoned or missing during the Homeland War.
Croatia has established constitutional mechanisms and is developing its own model of search for the disappeared, which is one of the 17 priority issues in the protection and promotion of human rights, Mesic said.
Deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, who is also Minister of Family and War Veterans Affairs and Inter-generational Solidarity, addressed the rally, stating that a lot had been done regarding the issue of the disappeared during the term of the incumbent government.
During this government's term, 161 people were exhumed and 164 were identified. Six mass graves and some 60 individual graves were discovered and more than 260 test exhumations were carried out, Kosor said.
The rally was also addressed by Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic and representatives of many domestic and foreign associations.
The rally was organised by the Federation of Missing and Imprisoned Croatian Soldiers, the Federation of Civilian Homeland War Victims, and the Zagreb city department for health, labour, social welfare and war veterans, and it was sponsored by the War Veterans Ministry.
The International Day of the Disappeared, August 30, is also marked on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, where between 20,000 and 40,000 people, mostly civilians, went missing during the 1990s wars, the Sarajevo-based International Commission on Missing Persons has estimated.