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Films Stir Memories of Montenegro’s Wartime Guilt

28 05 2007  Montenegro’s leaders may have forgotten their craven support for Serbia’s wars in Croatia and Bosnia but some filmmakers won’t let them off the hook.

By Paul Hockenos and Jenni Winterhagen in Podgorica

One year after declaring independence, a controversial film is forcing a visibly reluctant Montenegro to wrestle with the legacy of its role in the bloody conflicts of the early 1990s.

In 1991, as part of Serbia’s war against Croatia, Yugoslav Army units led by Montenegrin officers and full of Montenegrin reservists ravaged many of the villages in the southernmost tip of Croatian Dalmatia and shelled the historic port city of Dubrovnik, causing millions of euros in damage and hundreds of civilian deaths. Throughout the duration of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Montenegro remained in a federal state with Serbia until 2003 when the two countries formed a loose state union.

In 1997, Montenegro expressed regret for its part in the wars and the consequent atrocities. However, the process of coming to terms with the past has been selective and superficial, say opposition critics.

“Rat za mir”, which in Serbian means “war for peace”, was the cynical slogan under which Montenegrin politicians backed the Yugoslav Army’s campaign in southern Croatia.

It is also the name of Montenegrin filmmaker Koca Pavlovic’s controversial film about those events, which is only today, four years after its production, showing in state – administered locations, such as universities, in the country.

Formally, the Montenegrin government, which is led by the same party that ran the republic in the 1990s, has taken important steps to right the wrongs committed during the period.

As well as expressing regret for its role in 1997, it has – in stark contrast to Serbia - co-operated fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in The Hague.

In 2004-05, the court found former Montenegrin admiral Miodrag Jokic and General Pavle Sturgar guilty of war crimes and sentenced each of them to eight years’ imprisonment.

Pavlovic, who is an opposition politician as well as a filmmaker, says Montenegro’s gestures have not addressed the fundamental issue of responsibility for the war and the atrocities.

“Now everything is fine and wonderful between Zagreb and Podgorica but things between the people of Herceg Novi and Niksic [Montenegrin border towns] and Dubrovnik aren’t fine,” he says. “A real process of reconciliation hasn’t even started. The politicians are just saying that it’s happened.”

Pavlovic added: “Our politicians, like [former president and prime minister Milo] Djukanovic still haven’t visited Dubrovnik. They don’t have the courage to try to walk down the streets in Dubrovnik because they can’t, yet.”

In a surprise move, shortly after the independence referendum last year, Djukanovic stepped down as prime minister, a post he had held almost uninterrupted since 1991. From 1998-2002 he served as President. He remains head of the ruling Party of Democratic Socialists.

There was much speculation at the time of his resignation from the government that the international community had put pressure on him to quit because of his involvement in the conflicts of the 1990s and in various blackmarket activities.

In Pavlovic’s film, Djukanovic admits his actions and statements at the time were wrong but maintains he acted in good faith, as he had been under the impression that Montenegro was threatened.

Montenegrins freely admit that they are reluctant to travel to southern Croatia in cars with Montenegrin license plates, especially if they are from the pro-Serbian bastion of Niksic, the hometown of many of the reservists. “You can almost count on a broken window or at least scratches on the car’s paint job,” says Darko Mandic, a student in Niksic.

Official reaction to Pavlovic’s 2003 film is testament to the difficulty Montenegrin society has experienced in coming to terms with the past. When exploring archives to make the film, Pavlovic found that all of the newspapers from the period 1991 and 1992 had been removed from the main public library. When they were finally returned, he says the pages containing compromising speeches or statements from high-ranking Montenegro officials at the time, such as Djukanovic, were missing.

Since its release, the documentary has shown in Berlin, Paris, New York, and in Canada to high acclaim. It was shown in some private venues in Montenegro but never on the state television nor, until this year, in a public location.

“We wanted to finally show it in an ‘official’ place and to discuss it openly with our colleagues,” says Maja Simonovic from the Association of Political Science Students, which organized a May showing of the film at Podgorica University.

The 120-minute film is a scathing examination of the army assault on southern Croatia and the propaganda employed by the Montenegrin leadership, which was then working hand in glove with Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

Using original footage shown on Montenegrin state television, “Rat za Mir” follows leading politicians, including Djukanovic, and the military top brass as they advance their claim that Croatia has 40,000 troops on its border, poised to storm into Montenegro.

In fact, the hard-pressed Croats were in no position to attack Montenegro. They had only a lightly armed militia on the southern border that offered the Montenegrin troops next to no resistance as they overran and plundered village after village, interned civilians, and shelled Dubrovnik.

As it became clear there was no Croatian military build-up, the Montenegrin authorities resorted to ever more absurd explanations for their own offensive: they claimed hordes of Croatian fighters had only melted away in order to regroup elsewhere; had in some cases escaped through secret tunnels and that ostensible civilians were “Ustashe” – a World War II term for Croatian Nazis.

The film shows Djukanovic justifying the offensive and pledging never again to play chess (the Croatian flag is a red-and-white checkerboard.) The film is an indictment not only of the government and military leadership but of the Montenegrin media, which actively took part in fomenting the propaganda.

After the showing at Podgorica University, a heated discussion followed in which many students accused Pavlovic of failing to examine Croatia’s nationalist government in as critical a light as he did the Montenegrin administration.

Pavlovic was unrepentant. “We’re still not ready to talk honestly about our own responsibility,” he said. “This kind of argumentation is an implicit justification for what happened, from young people too young to even remember it.”

However, his is not the only film to cast a harsh new perspective on Montenegro’s recent past. Another documentary film about the early 1990s has recently been released in Montenegro. The country’s largest daily, Vijesti, distributed a free DVD of Alen Drljevic’s film “Karneval,” which documents the May 1992 deportation from Montenegro of Bosnian refugees to Serbian detention camps in Serb-held eastern Herzegovina. Of the more than 80 men who were deported, only a handful survived.

“Karneval is about a traumatic event in our past,” says Vijesti editor Vladan Micunovic, explaining the film’s free distribution, “and people need to know about it.” So far, members of 13 families of the deceased have received compensation to the tune of 15,000 to 30,000 euros. “This is shamefully little compensation,” a political scientist, Milan Popovic, says. “But at least these civil cases are being slowly adjudicated.”

That claim is questionable. Montenegro’s courts have made few moves against suspected war criminals. Today, six former police officers involved in the 1992 deportation, including the former police chief of Herceg Novi, are on trial. But the trial has seen numerous delays and the chief witness, a former police officer, has received repeated death threats. So far, only one person convicted in Montenegro for war-related crimes is serving a sentence.

“We have to face our past so that nothing like it can ever happen again,” says Popovic. “Persons convicted of war crimes and human rights violations should be forbidden to hold an official post.”

The small opposition Liberal Party agrees. It recently drafted a lustration law that would require active politicians involved in the events of the 1990s to step down. This would have clear implications for Djukanovic, who remains president of the country’s ruling political party. Critics say that there is little chance that a bill of this kind will pass as long Djukanovic and others hold important positions in Montenegro.

Paul Hockenos is the author of Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars. Jenni Winterhagen is with the Lectorship Program of the Robert Bosch Foundation in Montenegro. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.