'APEL' REPS AND WAR VETERANS PLACE WREATHS AT OVCARA

VUKOVAR, Nov 20 (Hina) - Paying tribute to 200 killed patients from Vukovar Hospital, delegations of the "Apel" centre for the protection of human rights of detained and missing Croatians and their families and of an association of Homeland War veterans (UHDDR), on Saturday laid wreaths in front of the Memorial Site on the spot of the mass grave in Ovcara, eastern Croatia. After the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar fell in hands of the then Yugoslav Army and Serb paramilitary units on November 18, 1991, aggressors took 261 wounded Croatian defenders and civilians from the town's hospital. Two days later they killed 200 patients near the agricultural farm "Ovcara" outside Vukovar. Remains of killed victims at Ovcara were exhumed 1996. To date, bodies of 145 victims have been identified. On Saturday, APEL and UHDDR representatives lit 200 white candles and 200 red candles, set in the form of cross. "By this act we want to point once again to a disgraceful role which the International Red Cross had in Vukovar in November 1991. This international organisation should bear victims at Ovcara as many other victims from Vukovar on its own conscience," the Apel President, Zdenka Farkas, said today. She expressed hope that a proposal of the Apel on supplementing the Human Rights Declaration would be endorsed. The Croatian association proposes that the Declaration include a new article under which each person will have the right to their grave with their signed names, upon their deaths and that families should have the right to know where their dearest have been buried. If we succeed in this, it would be in memory of victims at Ovcara, Farkas said. She reiterated that even eight years after the crime at Ovcara had been committed the international community still did not sanction that criminal act. (hina) ms ,