Campaigners expressed frustration after Croatia said that three wartime missing persons about whom Serbia’s president recently handed over information had actually been found beforehand.
A prominent Croatian missing persons association claimed on Monday that Serbian institutions do not have the will to cooperate over finding the remaining missing persons from the 1990s war, after information handed over by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic this month turned out to be outdated.
During his meeting with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic in Zagreb in mid-February, Vucic brought information about three allegedly missing Croatian citizens from the war.
He also handed over birth certificate records and other information which could help to identify missing Croatian Serbs who disappeared during and after Croatia’s military operation ‘Storm’ in 1995.
However, the Croatian Commission for Imprisoned and Missing Persons – part of the War Veterans’ Ministry – said on Saturday that the information handed over by Vucic has turned out to be about people who have already been found.
The commission said that although the data “was given in good faith” by Vucic, it turned out to be about people who had been found but “whose personal information is very similar” to that of people who are still missing.
Ljiljana Alvir, the president of the Alliance of Associations of Families of Imprisoned and Missing Croatian War Veterans, told BIRN that handing over such outdated information was a sign of “a lack of cooperation by Serbian institutions”.
“This is the years-long policy of concealing information, and this situation [the meeting between the two presidents] was used by Serbian institutions to present once again their unwillingness to cooperate,” Alvir claimed.
She said she believed that the meeting between two presidents in Zagreb “was too serious and important” for information about the wrong people to have been brought by mistake.
But she did not blame Vucic for the error, arguing that he “wouldn’t allow himself” to hand over information he knew was wrong.
Along with other representatives of missing persons’ associations from Croatia, Alvir met Vucic in Belgrade last week.
She said that she would hold Vucic to his word after he said he “wants and can” help.
Croatia is still searching for 1,945 of its citizens from the 1990s war whose fate, or the location of whose remains, is unknown.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
