Croatia is on Friday marking the 31st anniversary of the massacre committed in the village of Skabrnja by the former Yugoslav People's Army, Serb paramilitary forces and volunteers from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina under the command of the then Yugoslav National Army (JNA) officer Ratko Mladic. The country also remembers the most difficult day in recent history of the eastern town of Vukovar, when on 18 November 1991, after 87 days of heroic resistance, the city's defence collapsed and Vukovar was occupied by the former JNA forces and Serb paramilitary groups.

The massacre in Skabrnja, a village near the coastal Croatian town of Zadar, was committed on the same when the heroic defence of the town of Vukovar collapsed.

Forty-three civilians and 15 Croatian defenders were massacred. Skabrnja had 56 civilian victims and 25 fallen defenders during the 1991-95 war. After the war, another six locals were killed by leftover mines and explosives.

Until the liberation during the police and military operation Storm in 1995, the war took the lives of a total 86 victims in that area in the Zadar hinterland.

The attack on Skabrnja started on 18 November 1991 early in the morning from two directions. Civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, who had hidden in basements and other shelters, were forcibly dragged out and massacred. About a hundred civilians, mostly women and children, were taken captive and transported to the occupied town of Benkovac.

Only former nurse Zorana Banic has been convicted of the crimes in Škabrnja. She was charged with and then sentenced for violating international law, that is, participating in the attack on and killing of the citizens of Skabrnja on 18 November 1991.

First, she was sentenced in absentia to 20 years of prison, and after her arrest in Switzerland in 2001 and extradition to Croatia, she was sentenced in a retrial to 13 years of prison.

After the decision was overruled, she was sentenced in a new retrial to 10 years of prison, and the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to six years. She was released from prison in October 2007.

On the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the massacre, the State Attorney’s Office (DORH) last week released new data on the prosecution of war crimes in the areas of Skabrnja and Nadin in November 1991.

On 15 July, the County Court in Split confirmed the indictment against Zoran Tadic, a 63-year-old national of Serbia and Australia, who is considered responsible for the death of 30 civilians and 13 defenders in Ambar.

Tadic was at the helm of local Serb paramilitaries in the area of Benkovac and one of the commanders of the attacks on Skabrnja.

The trial is scheduled to start on 4 July 2023 at the County Court in Split, where he will most likely be tried in absentia.

At the same court, a hearing is scheduled for 3 July 2023 for six citizens of Serbia and one citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a charge of their units killing 44 civilians in Skabrnja on 18 November 1991 and another 21 civilians by 12 March 1992, during the temporary occupation of Skabrnja, all mostly elderly persons.

18 November is a public holiday in Croatia, observed as Remembrance Day for the Victims of the War and the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja.

City of Vukovar remembers most difficult day in its history

Numerous crimes were committed against civilians and defenders in the war-ravaged town. During nearly three months of aggression by former JNA and Serb paramilitary groups against Vukovar in 1991, at least 2,717 Croatian defenders and civilians were killed, more than 22,000 residents were expelled from the city, and several thousands of defenders and civilians were taken to the Serb-run concentration camps in occupied areas and in Serbia.

The names of 383 persons are still on the list of persons detained or gone missing in the war, after they disappeared without a trace in wartime Vukovar.

Although the fighting in Vukovar and its environs had started even before that, the date usually cited as the day when the battle for the city began is 25 August 1991, when the JNA and Serb paramilitary groups launched an all-out artillery and infantry attack with the intention of overrunning the city in a week at most.

However, the Croatian defenders, although ten times weaker in terms of numbers and weaponry, managed to resist the attack for nearly three months. The residents were without electricity and regular water and food supply while hundreds of shells fell on the city every day, in addition to tank and air attacks.

The occupation of Vukovar lasted until 15 January 1998 and the peaceful reintegration of the Croatian Danube region, after which the people of Vukovar finally returned to their homes.

Commemorative events

A commemorative programme titled “Vukovar – a place of special homeland piety” starts at 10 a.m. at the National Memorial Hospital Dr Juraj Njavro.

In addition to war veterans and representatives of associations, the programme will be attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic.

A column of remembrance will be led by Croatian defenders of Vukovar together with family members of the fallen, disappeared, killed, forcibly taken, and deceased Croatian defenders, as well as those who went through the wartime destruction of Vukovar as children.

At the Homeland War Victims Memorial Cemetery, respects will be paid to Vukovar victims by laying wreaths and lighting candles.

A mass will be held for all the war victims.

Prime Minister Plenkovic and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic will also lay wreaths at the Ovcara mass grave site.

At 5 p.m. lanterns will be floated down the river Danube in memory of the killed and missing defenders of Vukovar.

President and Supreme Commander of the Croatian Armed Forces Zoran Milanovic paid tribute to the sacrifice of Vukovar on Thursday by laying a wreath and lighting a candle at the Memorial Cemetery and the Ovcara mass grave site.