The shelling stopped on December 6th, in the afternoon, however - the whole city was burning, recalls a Dubrovnik resident. Goran Žuvela the fiercest attack by the then JNA in 1991, during the months-long siege of the ancient city under UNESCO protection.
Žuvela also testifies to the humanity that, as he claims, saved Dubrovnik.
"Now, let's not be negative, there are so many positive people. For example, 38 shells were found unexploded in the city of Dubrovnik, they did not activate the phosphorus on them. Otherwise, Dubrovnik would have burned down. Someone had the nerve to deceive their commander, the commander. They came to Dubrovnik and that phosphorus did not ignite. If another 38 shells had hit the heart of the city and the phosphorus, which is burning, had hit Dubrovnik, it would have burned down."
His original testimony about the destruction and siege of Dubrovnik was published in the anti-war book "Memories of War - The Siege of Dubrovnik 1991-1992", which also includes raw excerpts from the testimonies of 13 war participants, as they recalled one of the most shameful episodes in Montenegrin history.
The Human Rights Action has published an anti-war book with the aim of preventing the repetition of tragic historical mistakes. The book records the memories of thirteen war participants from Montenegro: Veseljka Koprivice, Marjan Šantić, Zorana Episode, Predrag Nikolić, Radomir Goranović, Aca Pejović, Borko Blažević, Rade Kosović, Radovan Zlajić, Buda Minica, The Vracar's Child, Miša Drašković i Petar Vučeljić and five of them from Dubrovnik and Konavle: Luke Braila, Zlatko Bagoje, Gorana Zuvele, Pava Urbana i Mirjana Urban.
The book also includes excerpts from a war diary and photographs of the shelling, taken by a young artist, 22-year-old Pavo Urban from Dubrovnik, who died on that very day, December 6, 1991, during the relentless, hours-long shelling of the Old Town, whose destruction was not stopped even by the fact that it had been protected as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site since 1979.
"Buići, Makoše, Postranje, 10. 10. 1991. For the first time after ten days, the days of war, I feel that the ability to write a word has returned to me. Not the desire, it was there all the time and suffocated me, suppressing the word that was stuck in my throat. Only the ability was missing, the ability of thought to travel the difficult path from the soul through the brain and hand to the paper. With the most difficult political-war crisis that has passed, my inability also passes. Thoughts and emotions have harmonized, the hand has started working - this is a war diary. Pavo Urban reports," writes the young photographer.
"Until a month ago I was so normal. Until two months ago I was completely normal. And the most normal thing for me was lying with Mara in the entrance hall. Under the big baroque mirror," Urban wrote in his war diary.
Former Montenegrin President Momir Bulatović called for a national war against the 'crazy Ustasha'. Prime Minister Milo Đukanović said that he hated chess because of the chessboard and that we would forever separate ourselves from Croatia. Svetozar Marović, then a high-ranking official of the Democratic Party of Socialists, said: 'This is a war for peace,'" says journalist Veseljko Koprivica
In his first months as a defender of the city, Mladić was on an observation post, and then returned to the Old Town, where he used his camera to capture photographs of the destruction of Dubrovnik, Stradun, on the very day he was killed by a shell.
"I drank coffee with Pavo Urban in Talir. That shell that killed him, that shell destroyed me too. I know exactly who took him to the hospital. The late Zlatko Celjan with a white 'stand'. I know everything by heart, I was there. On this day alone, December 6, 1991, 684 direct hits were made on the Old Town, on the walls. On the walls and inside," Žuvela recalled in his book.
Someone else's war
The book also publishes testimonies of reservists and young soldiers from Montenegro, who were taken to the battlefield in the fall of 1991 from military service, from military service, or who succumbed to propaganda that Yugoslavia was being defended in Dubrovnik.
Reservist Borko Blažević from Mojkovac was a truck driver during the siege, and during his testimony he recalled that after crossing the border there was no Croatian army.
"They certainly weren't shooting, they didn't have anything. At least that part. That was our territorial defense, the fact that they had weapons in charge. They didn't have anything else, because some locals immediately came there, reported those weapons and handed them over to the army, i.e. us - some automatic rifles and something. That was their territorial defense. It was just the locals, the ones who were a little more powerful - they fled, and these old people all stayed," Blažević recalled.
He was wounded in Kupari on October 22, 1991.
"We missed the road, we went straight. I was the third truck in line. At the entrance to Kupari, they hit the truck. A grenade, bullets and shooting. Four people died. There was an ambush. For 60 hours I was cut off, wounded, immobile in the bushes, without food or water, I only had cigarettes. First I prayed to God that the Croats wouldn't find me, and then I prayed that they would find me, just so that I wouldn't be in pain. Then it didn't matter to me, and when I ran out of cigarettes, I just wanted to die. Srđa and Ljubo, the deceased, found me. They were younger than us. Only the chassis remained of that exploded truck," Blažević testified.
Journalist Veseljko Koprivica spoke in his book about the warmongering campaign of the media at the time, explaining that the days of August 1991 in Montenegro were marked by the mobilization of reservists.
"Among those who wore the JNA uniforms, many wondered which country they were supposed to defend and against whom they were supposed to fight. Former Montenegrin President Momir Bulatović called for a national war against the 'crazy Ustasha'. Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic He said that he hated chess because of the chessboard and that we would forever separate ourselves from Croatia. Svetozar Marovic, then a high-ranking official of the Democratic Party of Socialists, said: 'This is a war for peace'," Koprivica explained.
He emphasized that even then, before Dubrovnik was attacked, it was clear to peacemakers and analysts that this was a project of Greater Serbia and the destruction of Yugoslavia.
He emphasized that despite this, there was a strong anti-war movement in Montenegro, and that the most active was the Liberal Alliance, which organized a protest rally in Cetinje on February 1, 1992, when thousands of voices chanted: "From Lovćen, the fairy cries, forgive us, Dubrovnik."
Despite his anti-war stance, Koprivica tried to avoid going to the battlefield, but after being called and having three visits from the military police to arrest him, as he explained, in order to protect his family, he nevertheless went into the reserves.
"They put us on buses one evening and told us to go to the border towards Bileća, and we woke up in Dubravka! Many of us wanted to go home," he recalled.
The journalist, as the book states, was an eyewitness to the helicopter crash in Konavle, when Rear Admiral was killed. Krsto Đurović, who was against the war and the siege of Dubrovnik.
"Rear Admiral Krsto Đurović was the commander of the garrison in Kumbor and opposed the aggression on Dubrovnik. The official version of that tragic event, published by the then Federal Secretariat for National Defense, was that the aircraft was shot down by the enemy Croatian side. There were at least a hundred of us, we were resting on a hill, when a helicopter appeared. We thought it was Croatian. It fell next to a large vineyard. A reservist from Podgorica ran to see what had happened, but he was mistakenly killed by reservists from our platoon, thinking he was a Croatian soldier," is part of the testimony of a journalist from Koprivica.
Tied with wire by their own because of the five-pointed star
The book also published the testimony of a reservist, a liberal from Cetinje, Zoran Kapisoda, who was in the town of Čepikuće, Slano, wearing a JNA uniform...
He remembered the chaos of Kapisod, the paramilitary units...
"Suddenly, some masked soldiers and tanks appeared and then they tied up eight of us because we didn't look like them. We didn't have beards, hair, we wore five-pointed stars, they all had other markings. Who are you, they asked. In vain we told them who we were, what we were... They tied me up with some kind of wire. An army, but an army with a beard, which has its own command, I think it was the people from Nikšić, Šavnica, Nikšić, the Plužine group, which later perished. We walked in front of the tanks, they brought us there, tied up, and when they saw these, the commander of our brigade... What are these, people, he said, these are our people, look at what they look like. Untie those people. It's a good thing they didn't hit us. We were suspicious of them," Kapisoda said.
The Hague Tribunal has convicted a JNA colonel general for crimes committed during the shelling of Dubrovnik. Pavle Strugar at seven and a half, admiral Miodrag Jokić to seven years in prison, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced on the basis of command responsibility.
Apart from the shelling of Dubrovnik on December 6, 1991, the Prosecutor's Office in The Hague did not investigate other crimes committed by members of the JNA during the six months of conquering the wider Dubrovnik area.
The HRA publication states that during that period, 116 civilians were killed, 194 Croatian fighters and 165 members of the JNA from Montenegro were killed, 443 people were detained in the Morinj and Bileća camps in inhumane conditions, 33.000 people were expelled, 2.071 residential buildings were destroyed, and private and public property was systematically looted.
The city of Dubrovnik was without electricity and water for 138 days, in a naval and air blockade.
Montenegro has so far prosecuted and punished four people who participated in the abuse of prisoners at the Morinj camp, and the case surrounding that camp was reopened by the Special State Prosecutor's Office in February 2025, opening the possibility of examining command responsibility.
At the end of June 2024, the SDT also opened an investigation against the former chief special prosecutor. Milivoj Katnić due to suspicion that he committed a war crime against the civilian population during the conflict in the area of Cavtat, Konavle Municipality in Croatia during the 1991-1992 war. He is suspected of inhumanely treating individual civilians of Croatian nationality by attacking, torturing, physically harming them, and insulting human dignity...
He pruned the vines of his host in Čepikuće.
Zoran Kapisoda from Cetinje, along with images of war horrors, scenes of destruction, sleeping in a dry coffin, also recalled the kindness of a JNA soldier from the Rijeka district, who pruned a grapevine for his host in Čepikuće in January 1992.
"The man, I won't mention his name because he's deceased, but his gesture is worth noting. I would give him a position in Cetinje or ask someone to give him a street in Čepikuće. He was older than I am now, maybe about 60 years. His sons were on the other side, in the same unit, but a little further away from us... In addition to arguing with us and doing miracles, one morning, in January... he took and pruned 3.000 grapevines. He's from the Rijeka district and he knew all about it. One of these people says: 'You deserve a bullet'. And he says, I did what I liked."
Bonus video:
