Vukovar trial: Can civilians be targeted?

The town of Vukovar is synonymous with two paradoxical ideas now: death and freedom. On the one hand the Croatian Baroque settlement on the Danube bordering Serbia is recognised as one of the biggest war crimes Europe has ever seen, the town being razed to the ground and surviving civilians being massacred by Serbian paramilitary criminals. Conversely, Vukovar is also a symbol of Croatian freedom since it still exists, the ruinous water-tower looming from the top of the hill over the town as a reminder of the blood spilled by the Croats as they victoriously won their independence and maintained their territorial integrity against the odds. The trial of one of those responsible for this barbarous act has begun in a court house in Vukovar as Bogdan Kuzmic, a Serb who was working at the fateful town hospital, is accused of playing God, selecting five innocent civilians and sending them to their deaths. The remains of these victims who had sought refuge in the hospital have never been found.

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Surrounded by the Serbian lead Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and Serbian paramilitary groups aligned with the notorious warlord-gangster Arkan and politician Vojislav Seselj, 2,000 brave defenders attempted retain control of Vukovar. Eventually, and unsurprisingly, they were overrun, the vast majority of these defenders being killed either during the siege or in its immediate aftermath. Fingers have been pointed at Croatian President Franjo Tudman who some allege willingly sacrificed Vukovar in the hope of garnering international support, although this view seems ill founded since the Croatian army in general was week and ill equipped in 1991. As Serb forces, comprised of regular soldiers, drunkards and released convicts entered the town. Under the skilled leadership of Blago Zadro, Branko Borkovic and Mile Dedakovic the Croatian Stalingrad had fallen, but not without inflicting heavy casualties against the Serbs. As frightened civilians emerged from weeks living underground in cellars they were greeted with a horrendous sight. Their town had been turned to rubble and was now home to hordes of drunken Cetniks, celebrating their perverse victory.

Many civilians were rounded up and taken to a prisoner camp in the nearby outpost of Ovcara, several kilometres outside the city. In warehouses that had previously been used to raise cattle the survivors of the siege were tormented further, suffering regular beatings. The victims of this Serbian justice were not just men of fighting age but also women, children and the elderly. The events became even darker as around 200 of those interred were executed. To this day the verdicts passed against those who perpetrated the massacre have been negligible at best. Given the vast number who were involved in the crime it is hard to understand how so few have been prosecuted. After convictions were gained against some of the perpetrators in Serbian courts the Serbian Supreme Court decided to intervene and ordered a retrial, saying that there were irregularities in proceedings. For this one might instead read that the Serbian Supreme Court did not like the precedent being set of Serbs being found guilty and thus offering legitimacy to similar trials being held in Croatia and The Hague. The ICTY has gained convictions against two of the men involved, Mile Mrksic, in charge of the JNA Vukovar mission, being sent down for 20 years for a litany of the most vicious crimes and Veselin Sljivancanin, another lead figure, getting just five years. A third man, Slavko Dokmanovic, the mayor of Vukovar during the siege, would surely have also been punished but decided to escape judgement by hanging himself in his cell in The Hague.

The Serbian attitude to what happened in Vukovar that believes it was a proud victory for their forces devoid of any wrongdoing is summed up in their attitude to those who carried out the crimes. Aside from the Serbian Supreme Court ordering retrials for those convicted this can be seen in the way that both Mrksic and Sljivancanin were promoted to high positions in the army following the conclusion of the siege of Vukovar. Mrksic was made a JNA General and then Commander-in-Chief of the army of the illegal pseudo-state Republika Srpska Krajina. Sljivancanin rose to the rank of Colonel before being transferred to Belgrade where he took up a cushy job at the Military Academy. Sljivancanin was given this position in October 2001 and it should be remembered that the crimes which were committed by his men were well known to the world as far back as September 1996 when exhumation of the Ovcara massacre site took place. To place the Serbian contempt for Croatian life in context, following the Second World War all Germans with links to the Nazi regime’s crimes were shunned socially and received firm punishments. In Serbia these men are celebrated.

The Vukovar massacre has reminded the international community one more time that pure evil still exists. Whilst this may sound poetic and abstract it should be remembered that after the First World War, the Second World War and the Vietnam War politicians stood up and told us that what had taken place was a watershed and that nothing similar could ever happen again and that if war was necessary then it would be clinical and avoid civilian casualties. Vukovar, as well as other conflicts have proved that this is not true. In a post-Holocaust and post-Vietnam age when the civilian is sacred it is shocking to see the civilian deaths recent conflicts: Congo 5,400,000, Sudan 1,900,000, Somalia 400,000, Chechnya 150,000, Bosnia 38,000… the list does not end here. If the Vukovar court respects the plight of civilians in its own city and across the world then Bogdan Kuzmic must receive the strongest sentence possible when the trial reaches its conclusion.

SEE Times article

Official UN ICTY indictment against Vojislav Seselj listing crimes and victims

Website of the town of Vukovar