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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.
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