VUKOVAR, May 15 (Hina) - About 8,000 Croatian soldiers and civilians were held in Serb-run concentration camps during the war in 1991 and 1992, and 13 years after the Serb aggression there are fewer than 5,000 surviving camp inmates
registered with the Croatian Association of Prisoners of Serb Concentration Camps. The total number of prisoners held in short-term or long-term custody is estimated at 22,000.
VUKOVAR, May 15 (Hina) - About 8,000 Croatian soldiers and civilians
were held in Serb-run concentration camps during the war in 1991 and
1992, and 13 years after the Serb aggression there are fewer than
5,000 surviving camp inmates registered with the Croatian Association
of Prisoners of Serb Concentration Camps. The total number of
prisoners held in short-term or long-term custody is estimated at
22,000.#L#
According to information provided by the association, about 3,000
Croatian prisoners died as the result of maltreatment in Serb camps in
occupied areas of Croatia as well as in Serbia-Montenegro and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The youngest person was only six months old, while
the oldest was 104.
Earlier this month the Centre for War Crimes Investigation was
established in Vukovar to collect testimonies and documents about
victims and their torturers in concentration camps.
Danijel Rehak, director of the centre and head of the camp prisoners'
association, has said there is a desire for the centre to become an
institution such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
In 2002, the association filed a criminal report with the Office of
the Public Prosecutor against several hundred persons for crimes
committed against camp inmates. "Nothing has been done since, no
charges have been pressed," Rehak said.
He went on to say that with the help of a Belgrade law firm his
4,948-member association planned to take legal action before a
Belgrade court to seek damages for the deaths of camp prisoners and
the physical and mental suffering they had been subjected to.
"First we intend to initiate legal proceedings for the imprisonment of
women and children, and then for all the prisoners who were held in
camps," Rehak said, adding that according to the United Nations as
many as 420 detention camps had been set up during the wars in the
former Yugoslavia. Croatian soldiers and civilians were held in about
70 of them.
Rehak said that war crimes trials gave the surviving camp prisoners
hope that justice could be served "although its wheels grind slowly",
but that more substantial care by the Croatian government would be
more beneficial. Former camp inmates still have not managed to resolve
their status in a way many war veterans have.
"Prisoners of Serb concentration camps do not have any real support
from the Croatian state. None of the state institutions care for us,"
Rehak said, adding that former camp inmates were only entitled to 20
per cent disability status.
"Those of our members whose towns or villages were the first to fall
into enemy hands and who were used as forced labour for the duration
of the occupation, fared worst, and today no one gives them any credit
for it. They cannot even get a status of defender, because obviously
they could not be defenders because they were in confinement," he
said.
Rehak said that between 50 and 100 former prisoners died every year
from the after-effects of imprisonment.
"None of the former camp inmates has ever received any form of
compensation," Rehak said, adding that his association had to use its
own funds and donations from Zagreb and Vinkovci to set up the Vukovar
war crimes investigation centre.
"We have sent a request to state authorities that the centre be funded
from the national budget, so we will see what happens," he said,
noting that there were numerous testimonies that needed to be put
together and processed by computer.
"The Defence Ministry archives alone contain about 3,000 statements
given by prisoners upon release from camps, and there are also such
statements in the Interior Ministry archives. They should all be
sorted and processed by computer," he said.
Rehak said that the opening of the war crimes investigation centre was
"one of the first steps towards establishing the full truth about
atrocious crimes committed in Serb concentration camps" and "towards
exercising the right to compensation for the suffering".
(Hina) vm