VUKOVAR REMEMBRANCE DAY MARKED IN EASTERN CROATIAN TOWN

VUKOVAR, Nov 18 (Hina) - A memorial plaque was placed at the main entrance of a hospital in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar on Thursday to mark 18 November, Vukovar Remembrance Day. On 18 November 1991, units of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), backed by Serb paramilitary formations, entered Vukovar after three months of siege and constant shelling. Immediately upon entering the demolished town, they took from the general hospital's basement, a frequent shelling target, 261 wounded soldiers and civilians, killing 200. The memorial plaque reminds of the horrendous crime.#L# After unveiling the plaque, the participants in the marking of Vukovar Remembrance Day, headed by town mayor Vladimir Stengl, headed towards the building of Velepromet, which after the fall of Vukovar the JNA used as a concentration centre, whence prisoners were brought for interrogation, tortured, killed, and taken to execution grounds. On the way to the Velepromet building, Vukovar residents lit lanterns in memory of Vukovar victims. State and county delegations, a delegation of the Town of Vukovar and victims' associations will lay wreaths by a monument at Ovcara, a site near Vukovar where the hospital patients were killed and buried in a mass grave. The delegations will also lay a wreath by the central cross at Vukovar's Croatian Homeland War Soldiers Cemetery, and by a cross on the mouth of the Vuka into the Danube river erected for all victims who died for Croatia's freedom. A mass will later be served at St. Philip and Jacob's Church for all Croatian Homeland War victims. According to some sources, about 1,000 Croatian soldiers died while defending Vukovar, and as many were killed in battles around Vinkovci and Osijek, nearby towns which sent assistance when Vukovar was under siege. After breaking Vukovar's poorly armed defence, the captures and mass murders, the JNA and Serb paramilitary units deported the remaining non-Serb population from Vukovar. There are almost no surviving residents whose family members or relatives have not been either killed or gone missing in the Serb aggression. Regardless of the peace-time surrounding in and outside Croatia, Vukovar will remain some kind of dungeon of its own suffering in which peace is not the same as elsewhere. (hina) ha jn