Štrpci, deportations and Morinj must enter the education system

Štrpci, deportation and Morinj must be part of the Montenegrin education system so that they do not happen again, and a board like the one in Morinj should be in Herceg Novi, Bukovica, Kaluđerski Laz and everywhere where the crimes of the 1990s began, it was said at the panel discussion "Facing the Past and the Culture of Memory" implemented by the NGO Juventus in partnership with Atak, which was held at the European House in Bijelo Polje.

The project is supported through the regional project "EU Support to Confidence Building in the Western Balkans", which is funded by the European Union and implemented by UNDP.

The program's moderator, journalist Nina Marković, said that the discussion brings together interlocutors from different fields - history, human rights, and activism of victims' families - in order to view the topic from multiple angles, without simplification or relativization.

"Today we are talking about topics that are still deeply sensitive, but also necessary for any society that wants to move forward - about war crimes, about responsibility, about institutional silence, but also about how we remember, who we remember and why the culture of remembrance is important not only for the past, but also for the future," said Marković.

Historians Edin Smailović and Miloš Vukanović, as well as civic activist Elizabeta Mrnjavčević, spoke about the topics of collective memory, social and institutional narratives about past conflicts, as well as the challenges of transitional justice.

Juventas Program Director Jovan Bojović emphasized that the project "Dealing with the Past through Art, Discussion and Education" is another way to draw attention to dealing with the past, the importance of conversation, discussion, and the exchange of true and verified information in order to work on building a culture of remembrance, recalling that within the framework of this project, in the first series of activities, the theater play "M Kao Morinj" was recently performed in Bijelo Polje.

"We have recognized a problem in Montenegro, in relation to the topic of dealing with the past. We do not have information that has been verified, and often various disinformation is placed among young people, and then we talk about various ethnic distances that arise from the fact that young people and others do not have information, or, if they do, do not want to face the past. We do not want anyone to align themselves with any other side and be a participant, but we just want to expand the need for conversation and the culture of remembrance in an educational way," said Bojović, adding that the focus of the project was placed on Morinj, which is the least talked about in Montenegro.

Bojović said that in addition to Morinj, it is important to emphasize the importance of speaking openly about Lora and other crimes of the 90s.

"Previous research we conducted showed that young people do not have enough knowledge about the conflicts of the 90s and that ethnic distance is indeed present among young people on various grounds, and when you ask them what war crimes they know about and how much they know, they mention the two that are most present in the public, then we believed that they are the population to whom we need to pass on such information, to educate them, but they are not the only target group, but the wider public," added Bojović.

Historian Miloš Vukanović pointed out that key political structures in Montenegro and the region have not separated themselves from the legacy of the 1990s, emphasizing that some of them are profiting from it, while our young people are fleeing the country.

"Young people today generally do not know much about the 1990s, which is not covered in the education system, which is why they are left to the streets and other organizations, but also to family heritage and opinion to form opinions about that period. All the traumas and extreme opinions from that period are spilling over onto them, and we are getting a new cycle of generational contamination that will never leave our areas. Therefore, we need new political elites who will be mature enough to understand what reconciliation means and what reaching a consensus on the 1990s means," said Vukanović.

The problem with Morinje, Vukanović pointed out, is that we still have no responsibility for the establishment of that camp, nor recognition that systematic crimes of torture were carried out in that camp.

"The board must be in Herceg Novi, Bukovica, Kaluđerski Laz and everywhere where the crimes of the 1990s began, but our duty will be to continuously ask our neighbors to say what happened to our citizens in the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, but that does not absolve us from our processes. We must first face our crimes, and then we will have an even greater right to ask the countries of the region what happened to the Montenegrin soldiers on their territory. The board must be in Herceg Novi, Bukovica, Kaluđerski Laz and everywhere where the crimes of the 1990s began. Štrpci, deportation and Morinj must be part of our educational system so that, above all, the younger generation can see how a society in a short period of time has slipped into such a state that Štrpci can happen," said Vukanović.

Mrnjačević: Dealing with the past is impossible without justice for the victims

Speaking about what "dealing with the past" means for a society from a human rights perspective if there is no full justice for the victims and whether a culture of remembrance can exist without institutional responsibility, the representative of the Human Rights Action (HRA), Elizabeta Mrnjačević, pointed out that war crimes trials were often shams, with selective indictments, poor investigations and acquittals that served to simulate justice.

"Dealing with the past without justice for victims remains superficial and declarative. It becomes real only through the application of transitional justice mechanisms - criminal responsibility for crimes, the right of victims to truth and reparations, and institutional recognition of suffering and the responsibility of the state. The culture of remembrance is part of that process: it speaks of how society remembers the past, which crimes it acknowledges and which it conceals. Institutional responsibility implies recognition that crimes were not committed in a vacuum, but within the framework of political decisions and government structures. The culture of remembrance can formally exist without institutional responsibility, but then it serves neither the victims nor society, but the state and its need to preserve the image of its own innocence. Without court rulings, institutional apologies and systemic reparations, the culture of remembrance cannot fulfill its basic purpose - to prevent the repetition of crimes and reaffirm the rule of law. Moreover, such an approach inevitably opens up space for the relativization of crimes, the glorification of war participants and the denial of the political responsibility of the elites of the time," said Mrnjačević.

When talking about transitional justice in Montenegro, she stated, it must be said that not a single case has been fully resolved.

"The state acted partially, selectively or symbolically. When a state does not have the real will to face its own role in the past, that past comes back to haunt it. Montenegro is today a good example of the consequences of such an approach. There was a historical moment in which the state could have seriously faced its own role in the wars of the 1990s, but that moment was missed. Instead, a narrative was built for years that Montenegro did not participate in those wars, but that the key responsibility lay elsewhere. This revised version of the past enabled the avoidance of institutional responsibility and was imposed as the only acceptable truth, with all those who questioned it often being labeled traitors or those who "destroy the state", emphasized Mrnjačević, adding that today this is coming back to us through the relativization of the Morinj camp or in the glorification of the participants in those events, with the messages of today's officials that such examples should educate new generations and officers of the Army of Montenegro.

"Instead of teaching young people how to recognize and reject warmongering rhetoric, we normalize and romanticize it," she said.

Mrnjačević also addressed how dangerous selective memory is - when some victims are remembered and others are silenced, and how to combat it in public space.

"Selective memory is one of the most dangerous phenomena in post-conflict societies because it creates a hierarchy of victims and normalizes the idea that human rights are not universal, but depend on ethnic, national or political affiliation. The consequences of such an approach are profound because it opens up space for historical revisionism, relativization, and even outright denial of crimes. War crimes then begin to be treated as "unfortunate episodes" or "necessary consequences of war", thus erasing the clear line of responsibility. When crimes are silenced or interpreted selectively, injustice is normalized: responsibility is diluted, and the message is sent to the public that justice depends on "who was on which side". Unfortunately, in our troubled region, verdicts are still interpreted selectively, crimes are partially acknowledged, and responsibility is shifted elsewhere or completely denied. Some victims are minimized and relativized, while others are glorified depending on the leading policies," said Mrnjačević.

Montenegro, she assessed, missed the opportunity to break that pattern. If we had seriously and institutionally confronted Morinje, today we might have a memorial plaque that clearly states what really happened there and who bears responsibility for it.

"Today, we have a situation where the highest officials are relativizing the Morinj camp. And that would give us credibility to react, for example, in 2016 when a monument was erected in Split to the unit whose members were convicted of crimes in Lora. If we had cleaned up our yard in time, we would have both moral and political credibility today and fight against selective memory in the region. The fight against selective memory in the public space must be consistent and long-term. The state must adopt a national policy of memory and take responsibility for its own crimes, including the obligation to mark all war crime sites. Unfortunately, today we are far from the state showing real readiness for such a step forward. It is up to us to persistently insist on judicially established facts, to publicly name the crimes and those responsible, and to oppose revisionism every time it appears in the public space," she said.

She added that our societies fear both the truth and the consequences it brings.

"Let me remind you, wartime sexual violence was a taboo topic in Montenegro until 2020. Now, when the public knows about it, we see that our fellow citizens – the so-called weekend warriors – voluntarily went to the battlefields in eastern Bosnia, looted, raped and killed, and then returned to their homes and continued their lives without any responsibility. To this day, we do not know who these individuals are. If, for example, Montenegrin society really accepted the full truth - that we are responsible for the destruction of Dubrovnik, for the crimes in the Morinj camp, for the deportation of refugees who came to Montenegro seeking salvation from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; that our fellow citizens committed these crimes, that the state leadership sent soldiers to wars and that the state provided logistical support to Radovan Karadžić - the question is not whether it is true, because we know it is true, but what consequences such an admission would have. Truth entails responsibility. Responsibility entails political, legal and moral consequences that many political elites are not ready to accept. Especially considering that "In most countries in the region, we still have the same or ideologically inherited elites who directly or indirectly participated in the war events of the 1990s. We saw this clearly in Montenegro. We see something similar in Croatia and Serbia. That is why the truth is fragmented, relativized, or the state is consciously stepping aside," Mrnjačević pointed out.

Although education and public space are important, the first real step towards a responsible culture of remembrance in Montenegro, said Mrnjačević, must come from institutions, without which everything else remains declarative and depends on the goodwill of individuals.

"This first step means several very concrete things. First, the state must take responsibility by prosecuting everyone who was in the chain of command – including the then state leadership of Montenegro. Not only the direct perpetrators, but also those who made decisions. Second, the state must clearly recognize and commemorate all victims. This includes erecting monuments to all civilian victims of the war – from deported refugees to the murder of the Klapuh family – and assuming state responsibility for the commemoration of these events. Third, it is necessary to compensate all civilian victims of the war. The government's decisions to date have not included all victims, which means that the state is making a distinction between them. Only when these institutional steps are taken can education and public space make sense," said Mrnjačević.

The project is supported through the regional project "EU Support to Confidence Building in the Western Balkans", funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).