The laying of wreaths in front of the former Tobacco Monopoly building today marked the 80th anniversary of the "Bar massacre" in which hundreds of Kosovars, predominantly of Albanian and Bosniak origin, were killed.
In front of the organizers, flowers were laid by the President of the Bosniak Council in Montenegro, Suljo Mustafić, the President of the Albanian National Council in Montenegro, Faik Nika, and the President of the Municipality of Ulcinj, Genci Nimanbegu.
This symbolic event was also attended by the Ambassador of Kosovo to Montenegro, Ariana Zherka Hoxha, and the families of the victims.
Mustafić said that marking the 80th anniversary represents the beginning of shedding light on a very dark page of Bar's past.
"This is a memorial to a horrific crime in which hundreds of innocent people were killed, shot without guilt, without trial, and most of them buried without names or markings," he said.
This event, also called the Bar massacre, is known from several documented historical sources, eyewitness and survivor testimonies, as well as a small number of publications and scientific papers, he said.
"Namely, in the first days of April, 1945, there was a group of several hundred unarmed young men here, recruits from Kosovo, from several towns there. Most of them were Albanian and a number of Bosniaks and some other nationalities. They were forcibly mobilized and brought, supposedly to continue with the final operations to liberate some areas where armed fighting was still taking place," he recounted.
Exhausted, hungry and quite mistreated, as he said, they were housed in the area under Volujica.
After an incident, in which, according to some sources, Mustafić continues, one of the guards was killed, their indiscriminate shooting began, after which a significant number of them broke through the fence and began to flee.
He states that some armed individuals from Bar joined the People's Liberation Army of the Yugoslav Army in response to a general call to go on a manhunt.
"So, here at the Tobacco Monopoly, across Pristane, then in Novi Bar, Barsko Polje, Zaljevo, Stari Bar and other locations, and in the surrounding hills, unarmed and bare-handed young men were shot without trial. The largest number of those killed were buried in unknown locations, and their remains were never found and identified," he said.
A small number survived, and, as Mustafić points out, mostly thanks to the kindness and humanity of some locals who hid them for days, risking their own lives.
These people, he said, were shining examples of humanity and philanthropy, they preserved and saved the face of the entire Bar. He thanked them for that.
He also said that the dark stain of the massacre of innocent Kosovo youths was covered by a veil of silence, "because the post-war communist order was based on the idyll of brotherhood and unity, so it was undesirable and forbidden to talk about these topics."
He believes that the most silence about this has been in Bar, which is unacceptable. Therefore, he stressed, they have a duty to break the decades-long silence and pay tribute and maintain the memory of these victims.
The full and scientific truth about the massacre, about how innocent people were killed, about the causes, circumstances and actors, is needed by all of us, he argues, so that there is less speculation, guessing and arbitrarily constructing.
"This truth should become part of school curricula and textbooks. We also believe that it is necessary to create a memorial, and all of this together will remind and admonish our collective conscience, so that such events never happen again to anyone. We owe it to ourselves, but also to our descendants, the next generations, who, we believe, will preserve the common life of different cultures, faiths and nations in modern Bar, which are truly the dominant feature of this city," said Mustafić.
This event and the full truth about it, where responsibility for the massacre, its orderers and perpetrators will be clearly personalized, is important in order to wash away the stigma and remove decades of collective feelings of shame and guilt, and to further appreciate the values of living together in harmony with diversity, he concluded.
Faik Nika also addressed the gathering, paying tribute to the victims, as did a representative of their families.
Representatives of the Municipality of Bar did not attend the commemoration. As "Vijesti" has learned, the organizers invited them and the president of the Bar administration, Dušan Raičević, informed them that he was not in the country today, but there was no explanation as to why none of the other local government officials responded to the invitation.
Bonus video:
