The crime in Štrpci did not happen suddenly. It was not a break in order, but its end. It was a moment in which the disintegration of a state, the destruction of institutions, and the poisoning of public discourse reached a point where violence against unarmed people became possible without surprise, without resistance, and almost without witnesses.
In February 1993, Yugoslavia no longer existed as a political idea or a moral framework. All that remained was a geographical illusion of unity, intersected by borders that moved faster than train schedules. In that space, which still bore the name of the state but not its essence, passengers could be pulled from the carriages because of the name they bore and the religion their superiors considered theirs.
Nationalism at that time was no longer an ideology - it became an environment. It was breathed in, spoken about, and kept silent about. It entered the administrative language, television news programs, police reports, and unasked questions. It ceased to be extreme and became the norm.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia did not take place only through international negotiations and war lines, but through a silent reeducation of society. Citizens were taught to recognize “their own”, to fear “the others”, and to accept that justice was no longer a universal category, but an ethnically conditioned privilege. In such a value system, the kidnapping of civilians was not a shock - it was a consequence.
Serbia was living in a state of political schizophrenia at that moment. Officially - peace. Essentially - war. The state claimed not to participate in the conflicts, while at the same time the borders were porous, weapons were available, and paramilitary formations were logistically dependent on state structures.
Institutions existed formally, but they were emptied in content. The law was selective, justice conditional, and responsibility shifted forward - always to someone else. In such a system,7 no one had to explicitly order the crime in Štrpci - it was enough for no one to prevent it.
Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 was a laboratory of ethnic violence. Policies were being implemented there, without any cover-up, that meant the disappearance of entire communities. Civilians lost their protection at birth, and their lives depended on who controlled the road, the bridge, the station.
Štrpci was located precisely in this space of liminality - between the front and the rear, between war and “normal life.” The train passing through the war zone carried the illusion of continuity, but it was completely unprotected. When it was stopped, the war entered the carriage.
At the time of the crime, Montenegro was part of a state that pretended not to be waging war. This position enabled a long-lasting illusion of distance and innocence. However, the railway, the train, the passengers and the silence of the institutions were part of the same system.
It is precisely this lack of a clear reaction - before, during and after the crime - that shows that Štrpci was not an incident on someone else's territory, but an event in which complicity took the form of passivity. Inaction became a political decision and geographical innocence, a moral responsibility.
The media of that time did not only spread hatred - they produced indifference. Violence was relativized, fragmented, relegated to the footnotes of diaries. Victims were left without faces, without biographies, without a voice.
In such a discourse, the twenty kidnapped passengers were not a tragedy, but an “event.” Language was the first stage of the crime—it enabled human fate to be reduced to statistics or erased altogether.
The crime in Štrpci was administratively possible. The train had to stop. The ID had to be allowed. The kidnapping had to be ignored. Each of these steps involved people in uniforms, offices, hierarchies.
The most horrific dimension of this crime is not the brutality of the kidnappers, but the calmness of the system that continued to function. The train continued its journey, the State continued to remain silent. Justice was postponed for some future, abstract normality.
Štrpci is no exception - it is a mirror. It reflects a society that has accepted that ethnic identity can be a verdict, that institutions can be neutral towards crime, and that silence can last for decades.
That's why the crime in Štrpci is more than the murder of twenty people. It is a diagnosis of the times. And the process that followed - slow, indecisive and often dishonest - shows how much that time is still present.
(From the manuscript of the book Štrpci - Crime and Process)
The author is a lawyer and executive director of the Montenegrin Committee of Lawyers for the Protection of Human Rights
Bonus video:
