Events are like blood for the existence of man and society! They flow and pulsate... When we talk about events, they are perceived as a mutually conditioned whole, as a chronological series of causes and consequences, or as something without which the future cannot be properly created. This attitude is shared by all those who want to point out the constant misuse of historical events in ideological and political debates and those who strive to leave a factual trace of what happened in the past for future generations.
The exhibition "Labyrinth of the Nineties", which opened these days at the Modern Gallery in Podgorica, represents a good example not only of properly documented facts, but also an open call that these facts, or rather these events, must be interpreted and must not be left to oblivion, although this is the intention of those who want to cover up their own responsibility and that of their ideological predecessors. But pass!
The current neo-fascist march in this region will not please the opening of the Museum of the Nineties in Belgrade, which has been announced for June 2nd this year, and which will also house the M90 Center as a place of gathering, education and future cooperation of experts, civic activists and partner organizations from the entire post-Yugoslav region.
The events of the 90s truly require an objective view and critical, sharp reflection. Remembering the 2001s is actually a confrontation with the reasons for the tensions that still persist today, as well as a reminder of a time when not only a bloody civil conflict occurred, but also a cultural breakdown whose zombie nature still poisons the public scene today. Zoran Ćirić, in an interview given on the occasion of receiving the NIN award for the best novel in XNUMX, points out that: “... the Serbian nineties are an absolutely unrepeatable historical period in terms of their outbursts of inhumanity, in terms of all kinds of tragedy, the form of which ranged from elitist operetta to pub striptease with shooting and firing, and in terms of their incredible amount of cynicism with which all these misfortunes were received as some kind of art-cool performance. Misfortunes that were immediately let down the drain like a never-buried corpse. You know, the Serbian nineties are not the years eaten by locusts, they are the years eaten by corpses that no one wanted to even register as Marvinian rot, let alone bury them and put some sign of a life that has passed, lived in that place. That is probably why zombism is becoming the leading 'reformist' trend”.
Of course, with every event comes awareness of it. Although awareness of a particular event should be its guardian of oblivion, it often is not, as societies become indifferent, forgetful, or, most dangerously, destructive towards the memory of a particular event. It is a paradoxical, but also a very tragic circumstance that individual and collective awareness are weakest when they are most needed!
And that is why today in Montenegro, after analyzing most of the available data on the deportation of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the persecution and murders of Bosniaks, i.e. Muslims in Bukovica, on the torture of Croatian prisoners in Morinje, on the mass murder of Albanian refugees in Kaluđerski laz, on the kidnapping and murders of non-Serb civilians in Štrpci, as well as the shameful attack on Dubrovnik and the murder of the Klapuh family - with full right, and with even greater regret, we can conclude that the effect of "forgetting the past" has prevailed over the process of "dealing with the past".
The tragic loss of lives during the bombing of Murin is perhaps the most striking reminder that war crimes should not be hidden behind political scenes and that it is necessary to establish not only the objective responsibility of the competent authorities, but also subjective (individual) responsibilities. In this event, as in some of the above, the eventual establishment of subjective responsibility would dispel many doubts and expose political abuses, some of which are still waiting for their new vampire chance today.
Because of this, it is not surprising why the future of Montenegro, from today's perspective, irresistibly resembles a dormant wilderness. Montenegro was and remains a prisoner of its tragic past, because it did not properly preserve its memory and strive to create a critical awareness.
The recently deceased Svetlana Broz, granddaughter of Josip Broz Tito, wanted to send a message to future generations with her book "Good People in Times of Evil" "that there is always a choice whether we will remain human or become inhuman in inhuman times."
The unstable or fragmented awareness of Montenegro's past is a favorite topic of our politicians. The daily chanting of this topic irresistibly reminds us of the constant straitjacket being put on our society and it simply blocks us from trying to see ourselves as we actually were and as we can become. And the current political government is repeating the mistake of its predecessors from the 90s because it lives the illusion that the political elite can manage both society and history!
The civil part of the government, if it still exists, must not turn a blind eye to identity hatred and must admit that we have intolerance in our society like that of the 1990s. Just as then, today, the alleged threat and false spirituality are advocated, while hegemonic conciliation (“accept or disappear”) is once again imposed. Back then, we had “illegally imposed international sanctions”, while today, in the Parliament of Montenegro, we have public denial of decisions of international legal instances under the pretext of imposing collective responsibility on them.
Of course, in the last decade of the last century, those who tried to “plant a terrible lie in someone’s mind” (Abdullah Sidran) used the negation of anti-fascism through the affirmation of Chetniks and other quisling movements as a starting point for their agenda, believed that they “had no right to use their own language and script, to organize themselves politically and culturally” and attacked nearby territories and neighboring cultures. The title of this text, which is part of the graffiti on the wall of the Sarajevo Main Post Office and was written in the early 90s, actually best illustrates how the wrong passions and delusions of that era were unmistakably described thanks to a healthy sense of humor. We know that tragedy was happening in those years and that we do not need their farce today.
Bonus video:
