The Serbian parliament adopted new legislation to regulate the building of war memorials which says that monuments that are not in line with “the tradition of the liberation wars of Serbia” could be demolished.
The Serbian parliament adopted a Law on War Memorials on Thursday that envisages the establishment of a Council for the Cultivation of the Tradition of the Liberation Wars of Serbia, which will issue opinions on proposals for the construction of new memorials and the proposed demolition of existing ones.
Proposals for new memorials must explain how the monument commemorates an event that is “in line with the records of the liberation wars of Serbia”.
Monuments can also be removed if they do not “correspond historical or real facts”, if they “offend general and state interests, national and religious feelings or public morality”.
They can also be removed if they are dedicated to an “event that is incompatible with the tradition of the liberation wars of Serbia” or are symbols of Serbia losing sovereignty.
Milos Ciric, a Serbian political scientist and human rights activist, said the law is problematic in many ways – particularly as it assumes that Serbia only participated in so-called “liberation wars”.
“This is obviously false and – excluding the liberation wars in the 19th century and earlier – in modern times, Serbia has never led a ‘liberation war’,” Ciric told BIRN.
“Adopting a law now that allows the state to demolish any memorial that would address the legacy of the wars we led during the 1990s, which were anything but liberation wars, is actually aimed at stopping any meaningful attempts to build a culture of remembrance in Serbia about its involvement and responsibility for crimes committed during the 1990s,” he added.
The law would prevent attempts to create memorials to the victims of “those who killed mercilessly in Serbia’s name, the majority of whom were part of Serbia’s official institutions like the police forces and the military”, he said.
A proposed monument to commemorate ethnic Albanians civilians killed in Kosovo then buried in secret mass graves in the Belgrade neighbourhood of Batajnica would be illegal, he explained.
“In addition, any other similar memorial that would address Serbia’s crimes commissioned during the 1990s would be deemed unlawful and therefore demolished,” he added.
Ciric argued that the new legislation was another step backwards for “fragile processes of reconciliation” and for “Serbia’s transition to an open and democratic society”.
Under the new law, decisions on whether to install new memorials or remove existing ones will be made by the defence minister after taking into account the opinions of the Council and institutions in charge of the protection of cultural monuments.
In 2013, the last Serbian government decision to demolish a monument – one dedicated to ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighters – raised tensions in southern Serbia, which has a large ethnic Albanian population.
The monument dedicated to the veterans of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac had been erected in the southern Serbian town of Presevo.
The Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian guerrilla force which sought to unite part of southern Serbia with Kosovo, resulting in a brief armed conflict in 2000.
According to Tanjug news agency, there are about 6,000 Serbian war memorials inside and outside the country, with around 625 of them located abroad.
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