Dredging history to justify the present

Friends at the Helsinki Commission in Belgrade have sent out this:

HELSINŠKI ODBOR ZA LJUDSKA PRAVA U SRBIJI

HELSINKI COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN SERBIA

Belgrade, 11 October, 2023

Rehabilitation of Draža Mihajlović morally unacceptable

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights strongly condemns the renewed campaign geared towards the rehabilitation and glorification of Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, a convicted war criminal and collaborator of the occupier. The opening of a private museum and the construction of a monument in Belgrade dedicated to the leader of collaboration with fascism and commander of the movement that committed genocide against the Muslim population during World War Two represents a kind of shrine, and we consider this to be another step towards accelerated fascismization of society. Many factors are responsible for these negative trends – primarily the current Government and the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and parts of the academic and cultural elite.

We must also point out that glorifying Draža Mihailović further provokes our neighbors in the region, it will inevitably increase the level of insecurity of all non-Serb nationalities in Serbia, and will have a particularly negative effect on the fragile region of Sandžak. In this context, the revisionist film about the rescuing of US pilots in World War Two – even though it, unfortunately, received the undivided support of the American Embassy – is a step backwards both in the stabilization of the region and in the democratization of Serbia.

One must not forget that troops that followed the command of Mihailović – who is being rehabilitated and turned into a hero without hindrance and with the consent of the entire society – were also responsible for serious war crimes against civilians in occupied Serbia. The Chetniks killed hundreds of civilians and peasants, and the biggest killing sites were the villages of Vranić near Belgrade and Drugovac near Valjevo. Serbia’s authorities need to explain these trends of rehabilitating fascism and glorifying war criminals and quislings to the descendants and survivors of those massacres.

It is also concerning that the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović and an uncritical attitude towards fascism deviate from the liberal values on which modern Europe allegedly rests, values that Serbia is allegedly striving towards.