Polovina said that on 20 November 1991, the accused Major Veselin Sljivancanin failed to honour an agreement on the evacuation of the Vukovar Hospital which was reached by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), the Croatian government, European observers and the International Red Cross. Instead, he separated women from men who were later taken from the hospital to the Ovcara farm where they were executed near prepared pits for their burial.
The witness also spoke about extremely difficult conditions in which reporters and technical staff of Radio Vukovar were broadcasting programmes and reports on JNA attacks against Vukovar, fighting "with their voice against cannons" until the fall of the town into the JNA's hands on 18 November 1991.
According to the witness, during the three-month siege of the town, the offices of Croatian Radio Vukovar were shelled and the staff had to move into a space below the staircase. After 15 October they broadcast programmes from the cellar of the building.
She and other reporters regularly went to the hospital to get information about casualties. She said they cooperated very well all the time.
She also said that with the situation becoming increasingly bleak and hopeless, reports were more and more critical of the conduct of the Croatian government in Zagreb from where no assistance was forthcoming, although it had been promised.
That was why reports from Vukovar Radio were censored and re-edited by the Croatian broadcasting corporation (HRT), Polovina said speaking about the situation in Vukovar in October and November 1991.
"For some time we broadcast news only in Vukovar at 08.00 am, 02.00 and 08.00 pm and we sent reports only to the Radio 101 station in Zagreb," she said.
During cross-examination, the witness was asked by defence teams whether the war in Vukovar was provoked by the discrimination against local Serbs.
The witness said the situation was quite the opposite. She said that she had been flabbergasted when she saw that some LPs owned by the radio were labelled before 1991 as "not allowed to be played" because they featured songs by famous Croatian singers such as Vice Vukov and Vera Svoboda.