Lovas killings

Coordinates: 45°13′33″N 19°10′08″E / 45.225821°N 19.168965°E / 45.225821; 19.168965
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Lovas killings
Croat civilians
Attack type
Mass murder, ethnic cleansing
Deaths
  • 70 (10–18 October 1991)
  • 90 killed in total between October and November 1991[1]
Injured32–33
Perpetrators
Dušan the Mighty Forces
.

The Lovas killings (

minefield
at gunpoint and then opened fire upon them.

After the Croatian Serb forces, the JNA and the paramilitaries established their control in the village, the Croat population was required to wear white armbands and mark their houses using white sheets. The church in Lovas was torched and 261 houses were looted and destroyed, while 1,341 civilians were forced to leave their homes. The bodies of the victims were retrieved from a mass grave and ten individual graves in 1997. Lovas was rebuilt after the war, but its population size shrunk by one third compared to its pre-war level.

The occupation of Lovas and the killing and expulsion of its civilian population was included in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indictments of the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, and Goran Hadžić, a high-ranking official of the Croatian Serb-declared wartime breakaway region of SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia. Both Milošević and Hadžić died before their trials could be completed. Serbian authorities tried and convicted a group of four for the killings, but a retrial was ordered following an appeal in 2014. Croatia indicted 17 persons in connection with the killings, although only two were available to the authorities. One of them was acquitted and the other declared unfit to stand trial.

Background

class=notpageimage|
Map of eastern Slavonia area between Osijek and Vukovar (Modern county lines provided for reference)
Main article: Croatian War of Independence

After the

Yugoslav Presidency's approval for a JNA operation to disarm Croatian security forces.[9]

After a bloodless skirmish between Serb insurgents and

Colonel General Blagoje Adžić.[14]

By the end of March, the conflict had escalated into the

Croatian police from intervening.[13] In early April, the leaders of the Croatian Serb revolt declared their intention to integrate the area under their control, known as SAO Krajina, with Serbia. The Government of Croatia viewed this declaration as an attempt to secede.[16]

In May, the Croatian government responded by forming the Croatian National Guard (Zbor narodne garde – ZNG),[17] but its development was hampered by a United Nations (UN) arms embargo introduced in September.[18] On 8 October, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia.[19] Late 1991 saw the fiercest fighting of the war, as the 1991 Yugoslav campaign in Croatia culminated in the Siege of Dubrovnik,[20] and the Battle of Vukovar.[21]

Timeline

Armed clashes in eastern Slavonia gradually intensified as the JNA committed significant new units to the Battle of Vukovar, including the 453rd Mechanised Brigade, the 1st Proletarian Guards Mechanised Division,

3rd Guards Brigade and the 109th Infantry Brigade.[25]

On 1 October, after the JNA took control of the

pocket centered on Lovas.[26] The JNA was supported by Dušan Silni Serbian paramilitaries under control of Dragoslav Bokan and the Serbian National Renewal party,[27] as well as Croatian Serb TO forces.[28]

Destroyed church in Lovas, October 1991

The JNA, supported by the paramilitaries and the TO, entered Lovas unopposed on the morning of 10 October.

war rape,[2] causing serious injuries to 18 civilians.[32]

On 17 October, all men aged 18 to 60 were ordered to report for a meeting, but were detained overnight instead on the pretext that someone had fired shots in the village the previous night. The detainees were beaten, and otherwise abused that night. Approximately 20 were released in the morning, and the rest were told that they were assigned to grape harvest duty. The civilians walked out of the village under a military escort.[33] One of the civilians was killed by the guards,[34] before the group reached a point within 1 to 2 kilometres (0.62 to 1.24 miles) of the Vukovar–Tovarnik road, where they were ordered into a cloverfield at gunpoint. The men were told to hold hands and sweep their feet in front of them across the ground.[33] The JNA had previously placed land mines in the field.[2] Several mines were set off, while the troops guarding the civilian detainees fired at the men in the field. The survivors were then forced to retrieve the dead and injured and clear the remaining mines.[33] Out of 50 civilians forced into the minefield, 21 were killed in the minefield itself.[34] The number of persons wounded by mine explosions or gunfire is variously reported as 14 or 15.[35][32] Between 17 October and 3 November, Serb forces killed an additional 28 civilians.[36] Three more civilians were killed in Lovas by the end of November.[29] Between October and November 1991, some 90 Croat and other non-Serb civilians had been killed by Serb forces, or had disappeared.[37]

Aftermath

Memorial service held at the site of the former minefield
Photos of victims of the Lovas killings

In the immediate aftermath of the takeover of the village by the JNA and the paramilitaries, 1,341 civilians were forced to leave Lovas. The local Roman Catholic church of St. Michael was torched and 261 houses destroyed.[38] In 1995, the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) and the gradual restoration of Croatian control in the region was agreed between Croatian authorities and Croatian Serbs in the region through the Erdut Agreement.[39] United Nations experts began exhuming victims from a mass grave in Lovas on 2 June 1997.[40] Sixty-eight bodies, including those of people killed in Lovas, were ultimately recovered from the mass grave, and ten more were recovered from nearby individual graves. The exhumed victims were reburied on 21 March 1998.[41] A monument to the civilian victims was erected at the site of the mass grave on 27 May 1999,[42] as was a cross to mark the location of the minefield.[35] Another mass grave containing the bodies of six individuals was discovered in nearby Jelaš Forest, along with three individual graves. Similar to the other burial sites, the victims buried there included those killed in Lovas, as well as others, killed elsewhere in the area.[43] Lovas was rebuilt after the war, but its population declined by one third compared to the pre-war level.[44]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) included war crimes against civilians and property committed in Lovas in October 1991 in its indictment of Milošević.[45] Milošević's trial commenced on 12 February 2002, but Milošević died in March 2006 before a verdict could be reached.[46]

In 1994 and 2004 Croatian authorities filed two separate cases against a total of 17 persons, including Devetak, and indicted them on charges of genocide and war crimes committed against the civilian population of Lovas. The group included fifteen who were tried in absentia. In 2009, the process was split for Milan Tepavac and Ilija Vorkapić who were available to Croatian authorities, and once more a year later when Tepavac was judged not fit to stand trial. Vorkapić was acquitted in 2012.[32]

Serbian authorities charged four persons associated with former Croatian Serb authorities in the eastern Slavonia with war crimes committed in Lovas, consisting of four JNA officers and six former members of the Dušan Silni paramilitaries. The trial started in 2008.[47] In 2012, the group was convicted of killing of 70 Croat civilians and sentenced to a total of 128 years in prison. Devetak received a prison term of 20 years, while the others received prison sentences ranging from four to fourteen years. However, in 2014, the court of appeals ordered a new trial.[3]

The ICTY also indicted Goran Hadžić, the Croatian Serb political leader in the eastern Slavonia region and head of the SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia government declared by the Croatian Serbs in the region at the time before it merged into the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The charges include war crimes of persecutions, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture, inhumane acts and cruel treatment, deportation, forcible transfer of population, wanton destruction and plunder of property.[48] Hadžić died in July 2016, before his trial could be completed.[49]

See also

  • List of massacres in Croatia

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Rekom mreža pomirjena:Lovas". Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Nacional 17 April 2008.
  3. ^ a b B92 9 January 2014.
  4. ^ Bax 2000, p. 190.
  5. ^ Hoare 2010, p. 117.
  6. ^ Hoare 2010, p. 118.
  7. ^ The New York Times 19 August 1990.
  8. ^ ICTY 12 June 2007.
  9. ^ Hoare 2010, pp. 118–119.
  10. ^ Ramet 2006, pp. 384–385.
  11. ^ a b Bieber 2008, p. 320.
  12. ^ Bieber 2008, pp. 318–319.
  13. ^ a b Hoare 2010, p. 119.
  14. ^ Armatta 2010, p. 160.
  15. ^ The New York Times 3 March 1991.
  16. ^ The New York Times 2 April 1991.
  17. ^ EECIS 1999, pp. 272–278.
  18. ^ The Independent 10 October 1992.
  19. ^ Narodne novine 8 October 1991.
  20. ^ Bjelajac & Žunec 2009, pp. 249–250.
  21. ^ The New York Times 18 November 1991.
  22. ^ Marijan 2002a, p. 369.
  23. ^ a b Marijan 2002a, p. 381.
  24. ^ CIA 2002, p. 213.
  25. ^ Marijan 2002a, p. 378.
  26. ^ Marijan 2002b, p. 57.
  27. ^ Thomas & Mikulan 2006, p. 43.
  28. ^ a b c Cencich 2013, p. 96.
  29. ^ a b c Jutarnji list 9 January 2014.
  30. ^ Rupić 2007, p. 439.
  31. ^ Armatta 2010, pp. 166–167.
  32. ^ a b c CFPNVHR 28 November 2013.
  33. ^ a b c Hedl 2006, pp. 2–3.
  34. ^ a b ICTY 23 October 2002, item 52.
  35. ^ a b Index.hr 18 October 2003.
  36. ^ "Rekom mreža pomirjena:Lovas". Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  37. ^ "Rekom mreža pomirjena:Lovas". Retrieved 17 May 2022.
  38. ^ Večernji list 10 October 2013.
  39. ^ Ramet & Matić 2007, p. 46.
  40. ^ RFE/RL 4 June 1997.
  41. ^ HR Vukovar 21 March 2013.
  42. ^ MVA.
  43. ^ MVA 14 October 2013.
  44. ^ DW 7 November 2013.
  45. ^ ICTY 23 October 2002, item 36.
  46. ^ ICTY 2006, pp. 7–8.
  47. ^ B92 17 April 2008.
  48. ^ ICTY 22 July 2011, pp. 8–16.
  49. ^ ICTY 2014, pp. 1–2.

References

Books
Scientific journal articles
News reports
Other sources
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lovas massacre.

45°13′33″N 19°10′08″E / 45.225821°N 19.168965°E / 45.225821; 19.168965

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lovas_killings&oldid=1224255785"