FATE OF 1,495 SERBS IN CROATIA, 71 PERCENT OF WHOM ARE CIVILIANS, REMAINS UNRESOLVED

BELGRADE, AUGUST 29 /SRNA/ - On the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, August 30, the Veritas Documentation and Information Center said that among the 8,619 verified Serbian victims from the territory of Croatia and the former Republic of Serbian Krajina, including members of the Yugoslav People's Army /JNA/ and volunteers from the wars of the 1990s, 1,495 individuals remain unaccounted for to this day, 71% of whom are civilians.

Among the missing, 1,066 /71 percent/ are civilians, and 424 or 28 percent are women. However, more than a third of those on this list are not recorded in the Book of Missing Persons for the territory of Croatia, and more than a quarter are not included in the Database of Active Cases of Missing Persons from the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. "If all exhumed individuals from the wars of the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia were identified, the number of missing persons would be nearly halved," Veritas says. A press release cites reliable sources, according to which more than 4,000 exhumed remains from the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia have yet to be identified. Among these, around 3,000 are in BiH, around 900 in Croatia, and around 300 in Kosovo and Metohija. When it comes to Croatia, Veritas currently has data on several dozen known and potential burial sites containing more than 200 remains in the territory of Croatia, mostly buried under the label "unknown". Even 29 years after the end of the war, these remains are still awaiting exhumation due to the obstruction by the Croatian side. "The families of the missing have the right to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones, and society has a legal and moral obligation to help them in their search. This is only possible through the active cooperation between the families of the missing and relevant organizations and institutions," Veritas said. Veritas says that the International Day of the Disappeared is an opportunity to remind the public of the suffering and pain of the families of the missing, but is also a call to these families to fulfill their responsibility by filing a request for search and providing blood samples for DNA analysis, without which a successful search is not possible. The press release recalls data indicating that there are still between 9,567 missing persons from the wars of the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, according to the list of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and 11,323 persons currently in the Database of Active Cases, managed by the Group for Missing Persons for Regional Cooperation within the Berlin Process for the Balkans. "The number of missing persons varies depending on the criteria used to place someone on the list of missing persons, as well as the positions of political elites in the countries of the region," says the press release. On the website of the Office for Detained and Missing Persons, which operates under the Croatian Ministry for Veterans, it is stated that Croatia is still searching for 1,792 missing persons from the "Homeland War," which includes the territory of the former Republic of Serbian Krajina. Veritas points out that the Croatian side relies on the data listed in the latest Book of Missing Persons in the territory of Croatia, published by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2015, which recorded 2,138 unresolved cases in Croatia on May 1, 2015. In the Database of Active Cases of Missing Persons from Conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia, at the time it was published in 2022, there were about 2,200 entries for the territory of Croatia and the Republic of Serbian Krajina, half of which matched Veritas' records. Veritas points out that, since the year 2000, a total of 1,696 remains of Serbs from the territory of Croatia and the former Republic of Serbian Krajina have been exhumed from common, mass, and individual graves, including exhumations organized by the families themselves. That number includes those who lived and fought on their side, with 1,347 remains identified so far and 349 still awaiting identification.