Lawsuit against Serbia over Vojvodina camps

Lawsuit against Serbia over Vojvodina camps

The Humanitarian law Center explains that after the fall of Vukovar on November 20, 1991, over 5,000 residents of Borovo Selo, Borovo Naselje, and Vukovar surrendered to the JNA, in order to be evacuated to the Croat controlled territories. The largest gathering points of captured civilians and members of Croatian armed formations were in the storage facilities of the “Velepromet” and “Borovo Commerc” companies and on the “Ovčara” farm.

On November 18 and 19 negotiations were underway on the conditions of the takeover of civilians between the representatives of the JNA, the International Red Cross Committee (MKCK), and the National Guard Assembly of Croatia (ZNG). It was agreed that all members of Croatian armed forces would surrender to the JNA and that the civilian population would be enabled to leave Vukovar and go to Croat controlled territories.

Contrary to the agreement, JNA units captured the civilians as if they were prisoners of war, and transferred them by buses and trucks, with military escort, to the territory of Serbia where the JNA had previously, at the end of September 1991, formed several camps for the prisoners from Croatia.

According to the HLC data, over 5,000 Croatian civilians from the Croatian part of the Danube river region were interned in the KPZ “Sremska Mitrovica”, “Stajićevo”, and “Begejci” camps in the period from September 1991 to August 1992. “Stajićevo”, and “Begejci” camps are in the city of Zrenjanin municipality.

The statement says that in those camps the captured civilians were insulted and humiliated by the guards, “who called them Ustashas and made them sing Chetnik songs, walk around with lowered heads and with their hands on their back.”

HLC says that the prisoners were not allowed to communicate with each other. During regular night inspections the guards beat the prisoners with their night sticks on the back and several times the prisoners were ordered to put blankets over their heads so they would not see the person hitting them. Brothers Darko and Zvonko Ragač (prisoners in the Mitrovica camp) and Igor Stalmajer (prisoner of the “Begejci” camp), who were at the time under the age of 18, were beaten almost every day during interrogation, and on the first day, when they first entered the camp, they were forced to run a gauntlet.

In the “Begejci” camp, the civilians spent time in a cattle barn, which was not heated and too small to take all the prisoners. They slept on wet concrete covered with a little bit of o straw, and it was only after the MKCK visit that they received several blankets.

In the largest camp, KPZ “Sremska Mitrovica” the conditions were a little better, because the rooms where prisoners spent time were heated. But the prisoners still had to sleep on the floor and even on the floor there was not enough room for everybody to lie at the same time.

The prisoners in both camps only received enough food to survive. A meal usually consisted of a piece of bread and a can of fish to be shared between several prisoners. All civilians were noticeably thinner when they were freed. While in captivity, they had no medical care or adequate hygiene which led to contagious diseases.

HLC reminds the public that the imprisonment of Croatian civilians in the Sremska Mitrovica”, “Stajićevo”, and “Begejci” camps in the fall of 1991 was included in the indictment brought up by the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor against the former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (paragraph 64), which was considered to be a war crime due to the violation of the IV Geneva Convention, the statement concludes.