Exactly one month after the Resolution on the Srebrenica Genocide was adopted in the Parliament of Montenegro at the suggestion of the Bosniak Party, by a two-thirds majority, which forbids the denial of genocide, a new resolution proposed by the second strongest party of the ruling majority was included in the procedure.
Democratic Montenegro, headed by Parliament Speaker Aleksa Becic, submitted a motion for a resolution on the genocide in Piva and Velika to the Montenegrin parliament on July 17th. In the explanation, they stated that “according to irrefutable evidence, 1,290 civilians were killed in Piva in June 1943, including 550 children, and in Velika a year later, 550 civilians, including children and the elderly.”
According to historical data, crimes against the inhabitants of Piva and Velika were committed by members of the Volksdeutscher unit “Prince Eugene”, which included divisions of domestic associates of the occupiers from Bosnia, Croatia and Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, “Khanjar” and “Skenderbeg”.
“REPENTANCE” MOVE
Democrat MP Vladimir Martinovic, explaining the motion for a resolution at a press conference, said that these crimes “have an indisputable genocidal character” and that “by adopting this resolution, Montenegro as an anti-fascist state would confirm its strong will and determination to contribute to establishing the full truth about Nazi crimes.” He added that Montenegro and the Assembly have a chance to treat all victims in our area in a responsible manner and that there is no agreement.
Why did the Democrats, just a month after voting for the Srebrenica Genocide Resolution in parliament, decide on this move and how sincere is their intention to condemn these crimes, and how much is just another populist story aimed at a showdown with a coalition partner DF and collecting small daily political shit?
The Democratic Front, a coalition partner of the Democrats, who proposed a similar resolution a few years ago, believes that Becic's party's initiative contains elements of “repentance over the adoption of the Srebrenica Resolution.” In this alliance, they called the move an attempt to “redeem and abuse the suffering of the victims and their families for the sake of swimming in daily politics.”
Unlike the DF, which will not declare itself until the crisis of power is resolved, smaller parties of the ruling majority, PzP and Prava Crna Gora, have announced their support for the Democrats’ initiative. URA believes that one resolution should condemn all crimes. The Party of Justice and Reconciliation, which is in a coalition with URA, called on the Democrats to include crimes against Bosniaks in Montenegro in the proposal. According to their representatives, the other parties will decide on the resolution on the genocide in Velica and Piva when it is included in the agenda of the parliamentary session.
CONFUSING “DAMAGES”
For the political analyst, Ranko Đonović, “Bečić's resolution”, “given at this moment, is immoral and corrupt on these topics, not only on the political but also on the human level because it treats only one people and brings discord”.
“Becic's Democrats showed with the resolution on genocide in Velika and Piva that they want to” repair the damage caused by the vote from a month ago, as well as that they were only one step out of those 7 abstentions on the Resolution in Srebrenica. If the vote on Srebrenica had taken place only a couple of years earlier, it is not difficult to assume that Becic's deputies would have been ideologically like the 19 who voted against whom they cannot see with their eyes because their electorate matches,” Djonovic said.
In his opinion, the political and ideological DNA of the Democrats has not been determined yet. Their actions so far, he said, show that they can be found on either side, left and right and nationalist and civil, claiming the right equally well to their advantage.
“Such actions confuse the average voter from Montenegro. We used to call them “pigeon overturners”, and such a party KVD – as the wind blows. As the great Churchill would say, “in war one can die once, and in peace and politics more than once,” he believes.
According to Djonovic, the resolution submitted by Becic's Democrats does not exceed the level of populism and gaining new voters from the Democratic Front and the SNP.
“Their goal is to keep their predominantly pro-Serbian voters and members who may have hesitated because of the vote on the Srebrenica Resolution,” he said.
Unlike the Democratic Front, which secretly and publicly determines its political goal, Vučić's “Serbian world”, as Đonović emphasizes, Bečić's henchmen are allegedly not for the “Serbian world”, but for a democratic and sovereign Montenegro. Political parties and their leaders, says Djonovic, could pay a little more attention to the measure in front of what, or above which is not going.
“The truth cannot be absolutely ignored, although sometimes it can be kept silent. Deviation in the political activity of political parties always exists and it is part of their pragmatic policy. However, there must be no deviation from the state of Montenegro. When this is done, either directly or by uniting without an account, only the government works, with parties that are against their state, then it is not good. It is called betrayal, and when they unite with foreign parties, it is high treason”, he warns.
QUESTIONS FOR BEČIĆ
When he is already dealing with the resolutions of genocide, Djonovic points out, he should ask the leader of the Democrats and the president of the parliament, what are the resolutions on genocide committed by war criminals and associates of Adolf Hitler in the Second World War.
“And those are members of Draža Mihajlović's units, that is, Pavle Đurišić. He should also be asked what he thinks about the war criminals, the priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Milorad Vukojičić Maca and Slobodan Šiljak – newly-baked saints or Saint Nikolaj Velimirović, who was awarded the Order of Adolf Hitler. Or about the example of true and complete genocide against an entire state, its people, church, culture and name committed by the Serbian occupation troops in 1918. Even then, they abolished the name of Montenegro, which our state bore for several centuries”, says Đonović.
Gentlemen of the Democrats, Aleksa Bečić, he asked, will you celebrate those December days of 1918 this year as well, when our state was abolished and when the classical occupation was carried out over it, or will you at least stay at home on that day and remain silent this year.
“If these issues divide us – from Srebrenica to all our domestic divisions, such as anti-fascism or fascism, national chauvinism and democratic or civic orientation, patriotism and patriotism or betrayal and sale of one's homeland on the other hand, that should make a difference. with us, from each other. Those who represent the civil, who represent the sovereignists, who are for peace, must finally defeat this second idea,” Djonovic emphasizes.
Although this move by the Democrats is reminiscent of the 1990s, when pits and execution sites from World War II were opened with the aim of national homogenization and spreading hatred towards other nations, the end result of which was the bloody disintegration of the former SFRY and genocide in Srebrenica, Djonovic said convinced that this will not happen in Montenegro but that we need to be careful.
Glomazic: I ask for respect and reverence for the victims
One of the direct descendants of the victims in Piva, Zoran Glomazić, points out in a letter to Pobjeda that he was deeply shaken and touched by “the abuse of their shadows for daily political purposes”.
“Obviously there is no goal aimed at reverence and worship of the shadows of the dead. There is only a politically greedy, inhumane, antisocial goal to profit in a political sense as someone who cares equally for all victims! Nothing in life and in the world is the same! It is not the same context, it is not the same idea, and in the end it is not the same to accept the mistake and apologize”, points out Glomazić.
Young politicians, he believes, have realized that it is easier to write documents, resolutions, decisions, than to tackle the huge social, economic and other problems that should be solved.
“The beer tragedy and Golgotha happened during June 1943. So a full 78 years since then. In those days, Piva was the area where Operation Schwarz (Black), or better known as the Fifth Enemy Offensive, was carried out, by which Hitler wanted to destroy partisan units and turn to preventing the landing of Western forces and strengthening forces on the Eastern Front,” he recalls.
Specific crimes, as he pointed out, were committed by members of the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prince Eugene”, who were specialized in anti-partisan warfare. It consisted of volunteers, primarily Volksdeutscher (Germans who lived outside the borders of the German state, which in this case was from the Danubian Germans).
“This division is remembered for the most monstrous crimes that the world has never seen or experienced before. She surrendered to Yugoslav partisan units on May 11, 1945. That tragic epoch of civilization ended with the trial of criminals (the most important alive until then) in Nuremberg before the International Military Tribunal, which began on November 20, 1945, and is considered the birth and establishment of international law, which continued in some later cases,” said Glomazic.
He added that ignorance about these things is “a consequence of personal ignorance and that those who now say that this is not known and that they have not been tried have their personal responsibility due to the deficit of their own knowledge and education.”
“Why does any parliament have the right to make such important decisions and” judgments “without the facts and statements of international courts?” In the period in which crime and suffering happened, genocide as a concept, especially in legal terminology, was not defined”, emphasizes Glomazić.
These areas, he reminds, remember various sufferings and executions throughout history.
“If we go back to 1389 and declare genocide even then, maybe even to Tudjemili, I mean that the same must be done for 1912, 1913, 1914, 1918, of the last century, and of course all the suffering until then. There is going to be a resolution every day, because there have been so many battles and sufferings! “Until the young boys learn history,” he says.
One of the direct descendants of the victims in Piva, Zoran Glomazić, said that if we want to remain human in the true sense of the word, then Doli and Piva must not become a symbol, occasion or reason for Balkan quarrels and nationalist daily political subterfuges.
“If you want to pay tribute and respect to the victims of the suffering in Piva, try to provide funds to complete the monument in Doli, so that each victim gets his name in the area provided by the monument, as well as to mark all places of suffering. , and in my village there are 4 more besides Dol. Also, make sure that the celebration of that sad day is included in the calendar of celebrations of national importance. Everything else is a political manipulation of the lowest kind”, Glomazić points out in the end.