“CONCEALED MASS GRAVES: AN OFFICIAL TABOO”
Aleksandar Sasa Zekovic, Zorana Bacovic and Zoran Celebic
Council for Civic Control of the Police & Lawyers Association of Montenegro, 2024
The book explores a humanistic approach and attitude towards innocent civilian victims of the World War II and the post-war period in Montenegro. It presents and analyses activities of the police and prosecution related to the allegations that there was a concealed mass grave (from the World War II) in the Municipality of Nikšić (Montenegro). In socialism, they were silent about the concealed and unmarked graves. Due to the limited political and civic rights, it was impossible to undertake any concrete activities and initiatives in the de facto (soft) totalitarian system. Those victims are still officially unrecognized. The book offers a consideration of this issue from a new perspective that coherently includes other connected facts and data with a view to ensuring better understanding of this part of Montenegrin past and the overall context. The format of the book is simple and easily read, so it provides an integrated and synthetised overview of information aimed at releasing readers of any ideological tension. The results of the research show that Montenegro is not ready on the institutional level to deal with the violations of human rights in that period of its history. The systemic confusion and the identified weaknesses show that a new approach is needed and that it does not necessarily have to remain only within the prosecutorial and police realms. Experience of other countries and international organizations should be considered, so that this issue is not treated (solely) as a criminal-law matter (due to the clear limitations and challenges), but as an administrative matter too. That would accelerate the research of archive materials about the war and post-war period, as well as the procedures of exhumation and burial of the remains. The responsibility and practical action of the state related to the respect for human rights never stop, not even in the situations where it is impossible, due to some objective reasons, to finalize (pre)investigative actions. All the dead have the right to rest in peace. This narrative is prevailing in the entire democratic world. Although publishing of this book seeks for significantly healthier and more humane political circumstances and relations in Montenegro, the author advocates for a rational approach to the dead with a decisive opposition to the attempts of development of any kind of substitute revisionist narrative.
Key words: Human Rights; Truth-seeking; Human Remains; Deathwork; Socialism; Facing the past; Understanding the Past; Humanism.