Following the disintegration of the SFRY, and particularly over the past four years, the Montenegrin public has encountered revisionist and distorted portrayals of World War II events, according to the Civic Initiative “21 May”.

They assert that “local Greater Serbian parties and their affiliates, notably the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church,” are diligently attempting to misleadingly depict the collaborationist and criminal Chetnik movement from World War II as “patriotic and liberating.”

Their aim is to remind the public of the atrocities committed by the Montenegrin Chetniks during January and February 1943. This was a genocidal military campaign orchestrated at the headquarters of Draža Mihailović and executed by Chetnik units led by Pavle Đurišić. The horrifying objective of this operation was the annihilation of the Muslim population in the Bijelo Polje region and surrounding areas, including Pljevlja, Priboj, Čajniče, and Foča. Approximately 400 men and around a thousand women and children were killed in the Lim valley alone. By mid-February 1943, taking into account the suffering in other mentioned regions, over a thousand men and around eight thousand women and children lost their lives. Furthermore, the National Commission of Montenegro investigating the crimes of the occupiers and their collaborators against the Muslim community in the Pljevlja District reported in February 1943 that 245 adult men and 1,107 women and children were murdered,” states their press release.

These crimes, they emphasize, underscore the chauvinistic nature of the Chetnik movement in Montenegro, which has been extensively documented and explained in Montenegrin, Yugoslav, and international historiography.

“This is why it is essential to educate people about this in schools and for the wider public to understand that a civil, multiethnic, and humane Montenegro cannot allow the rehabilitation of the criminal and treacherous Chetnik movement,” assert the GI “21 May”.

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