Montenegro – Croatia, the War, and the Future

“The world knows what Serbian government is”

March 13, 2022 by inavukic 4 Comments

Conversation with former deacon of the Serbian Orthodox Church Bojan Jovanovic

_{Bojan Jovanovic}, _{PHOTO: Screenshot Project Velebit}

Serbia is shamelessly standing close to Russia at this time of the brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine and as I said in one of my previous blogs such a support would, in their eyes, feed well into Serbia’s own denials of its brutal aggression in 1990’s against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the one hand Serbia holds its arm extended to the EU for membership and with the other hand it reaches out to Russia, which reeks of opposition to EU and NATO! Well, Serbian government and the Serbian Orthodox Church have always been like peas in a pod, working in unison on matters of politics and political operations so I decided to look for credible texts and opinions regarding this and found this interview with Bojan Jovanovic. I trust you will learn much from this interview.

Interviewer: Davor Dijanović

Interview in the Croatian language first published on March 11, 2022, on the Croatian Cultural Council portal

Translation of the interview into English: Ina Vukic

“It seems that the citizens of Serbia, no matter how intimately they want to become part of the European Union, every day they are one step further away from that desire and, that idea. The biggest obstacle are the choices they constantly make of people in whose hands they place their destiny. The choices are about the elite that despises human dignity, and that contempt seems to be a patriotic obligation” – says the former deacon of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bojan Jovanovic, with whom we spoke briefly.

What class or layer of Serbian society governs Serbia?

Serbia is run by disguised UDBA agencies (TN: Former Communist Yugoslavia State Security Services), guided solely by their own interests. They have introduced a kind of soft dictatorship with which they affirm content that sounds nice to the ears, but in this way they lead citizens to the acceptance of seemingly simple solutions, when, in fact, it is about accepting sheer despotism. With this despotism, individuals create a compromise to their own detriment only to later wonder why things are the way they are for them.

The (TN: self-proclaimed) “heavenly people” seem to be in a kind of collective paranoia, and everything described leads that people into a vicious circle from which it is difficult to get out. In it, it is increasingly more difficult to present arguments of formed opinions, and it is especially difficult to fight against something that you consider already defeated. There is no way forward in Serbia until we realise that we are waging the wrong war. The war we should be waging should be a war of liberation from various people who are opportunely patriotic, but who are well trained in waging a profiteering battle against their own people.

What is the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in such a gloomy state of Serbian society that you describe?

If you look at the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which lives a legacy of a kind of peasant piety, you will realise that this is the biggest opposition to the Serbian Orthodox Church’s positive changes. The clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church largely live a life that does not suit them, and therefore the key question is: is the Serbian Orthodox Church at all what it should be. That is, is it the church that its pious believers want. The Serbian Orthodox Church ignores the fact that, like all of us, it has its ups and downs and that all members of its clergy know how to make mistakes. It would be Christian to admit it and repent. God is merciful. But it is not Christian to continue living in sin. Unfortunately, many members of the SOC hierarchy do what is diabolical, disgusting and carries with it the stench of abuse of power and status. The assessment mark for such (in) humanity and “Christianity” is “sit down, fail!”

With its behaviour, the Serbian Orthodox Church allows people beyond God’s and human laws to be role models for children and participates in creating chaos by combining psychosis and false hopes for a better life. The Serbian Orthodox Church is flying on the wings of the world to which it should have said “goodbye” a long time ago. It, as such, cannot be a messenger in the fields of the Lord.

Does the Serbian Orthodox Church have a role in the so-called Serbian world project?

The group of “adventurers” has been ravaging Serbia for decades and does not understand the time in which it lives. They did not even remotely dream that they would land in the Belgrade pashadom and that they would fall from their hard stance to begging for crumbs. From all that they could show, they only demonstrated that their fear is eternal. Because of this petty fear, fear for their own positions, they had to put the sword back in its sheath, that is, stop sending other people’s children to their deaths, and now they are silent like bugs. Despite this, they sometimes scream, especially when kneeling with their bare knees on corn. The world knows that the Serbian government is a dog that would like to bite even when you feed it.

Through several decades of compromising the clergy linked to pedophilia scandals and other criminal activities, the Serbian Orthodox Church has fallen into the hands of political adventurers who can return the church to the margins of society with the help of a pen. In addition to becoming the main beacon of the political project of the so-called Serbian world, the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its destructive activities, is causing problems for the entire region by abusing God’s mission. Its connections with criminal groups should also be examined in detail, and more and more people are writing and talking about it.

Now the Serbian Orthodox Church is a destructive element, a kind of paramilitary political institution whose main goal is to deny the statehood, ethnic and cultural heritage of other peoples, as well as to deny and humiliate every feature of others.

I don’t think there is a place in the world where one religious community does not respect the other and rejects the worldly government in the country in which it operates. This was first of all felt by Montenegro, partly by Bosnia and Herzegovina, and almost by Croatia. Fortunately, the Serbian Orthodox Church is recognised as the infrastructure of the criminal Greater Serbia project of the Serbian world, and very soon its work will find itself under an attack by the public and relevant institutions in those countries.

Porphyry in Zagreb, Porphyry in Belgrade. The same person or?

Serbia is constantly going downhill, there is no stabilisation. With the “Porphyry” project, the Serbian Orthodox Church is even further from spiritual catharsis and renewal because, like some disaster, it brought in a huge amount of sediment in a very short time.

Porphyry’s message to both Zagreb and Belgrade is that we can agree on everything in Christian love, but only if it suits him and his family. The choosing of Porphyry had as its goal the rehabilitation of the defeated movements and the denying their crimes. Porphyry is not a dove of peace. He is a mini project of Aleksandar Vucic. A black stain in the black history of the SOC. The only fortune for both Serbia and the entire region is that he will soon be the former patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Political and other winds that are now blowing in the direction of Serbia from the West promise rapid changes, especially in the Serbian Orthodox Church.

What is the attitude of the Serbian Orthodox Church towards the Russian Orthodox Church and its activities?

The Russians and the Russian Orthodox Church in fact despise the traitors of the betrayed state and treat Serbia, the Serbian government, and the Serbian Orthodox Church accordingly. They use our shame to destabilise the Balkans and achieve their goals.

On the other hand, the Serbian Orthodox Church is trying to be better in its profession, and its profession is subservience to the corruption of the Serbian government. This subservience is an attempt to justify all the shame and socially immature situations. Fraternal hand licking, especially the Russian one, is an attempt to survive for as long as possible and so on until a new opportune moment and a new legal and political framework. In a word, we give you submissiveness and cowardice, you give us the “wisdom” with which you can always mobilise us for some new hell.

What is the Serbian Orthodox Church attitude towards the Russian aggression against Ukraine?

Instead of seeking justice for the victims, all of whom are victims of the war started by Russia, the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its hypocritical silence and other actions, has stood by its powerful protector from whom it evidently receives its glaze. A large part of the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church is driven by a desire for power, a desire for domination over man. This borders on psychological disorder.

A few days ago, Porphyry stated that the Serbian Orthodox Church is collecting aid for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and in fact that aid will end up in the hands of the Russian Metropolitan in Kyiv. The Serbian Orthodox Church does not recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which became the Autocephalous Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarch, it only recognises the part that is under the Russian paw.

In conclusion, I can say that the Serbian Orthodox Church is an organisation that works against the interests of its people and state. It is terrible that this sick ideology is being legalised within state bodies. Numerous documents testify to the grave manipulations and atrocities of part of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In a civilised society, such atrocities would be promptly sanctioned. Considering that this will not happen in Serbia for political and other reasons, the Serbian Orthodox Church will have to go through a kind of pedagogical awareness due to the pressure of the surrounding world. The world knows what the Serbian government is.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bojan JOvanovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Communist YUgoslavia State Security UDBA, Croatia, Croatian Cultural Council, Davor Dijanovic, Greater Serbia politics, HKV, Montenegro, Russian aggression, Russian Orthodox Church, Serbia, Serbian Orthodox Curch, Ukraine, UKranian Orthdox Curch

Communist Yugoslavia Leprosy Resurrected In Move For Regional Nationality

April 2, 2017 by inavukic 33 Comments

An initiative, by nature and intent profoundly ominous for peace and freedom to develop and enjoy the relatively newly created states that broke away from communist Yugoslavia in 1990’s as prosperous sovereign entities, was launched in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) on March 30th by notables and NGOs, however notorious or not, marked a major effort to bolster a politically disquieting consensus that Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Montenegrins all speak the same language, thus erode each of the existing major four distinct (regardless of any commonalities) languages used – Croat, Serb, Bosniak, Montenegrin. All who in desperation for freedom and democracy have often argued into deaf ears that the Balkan region is riddled with political barbarians that huddle together with the view to keeping the decrepit and failed Yugoslav region alive as unified in one form another, including fusing all the different national groups into one, have, regretfully, on March 30th tucked another feather in their told-you-so cap.

Last time I checked the Declaration’s website, “Languages and Nationalisms” project some 228 people (a crew from former Yugoslav states evidently joined at the hip by the distinctly destructive and freakish streaks of “my nationality is Yugoslav” surging demeanour) have signed the Declaration. The Declaration seeks, among other demands, the abolishing of all linguistic segregation and discrimination in the educational and public institutions; the stopping of repressive, unnecessary and damaging practice of separating the languages; cessation of rigid definitions of standard variations (among languages); the avoidance of unnecessary, senseless and expensive ‘translations’ in court and administrative practices as well as in means of public information…

The Declaration claims that most of the former Yugoslav nations speak different variations of the same language and it stands to good reason and justice that it has been met with official outrage across the region. Opponents of the Declaration, rightly, see the initiative as reviving the ghost of the former Yugoslavia, one of whose official languages was at points in time and as form of Yugoslav communist oppression Serbo-Croatian. The signatories of the Declaration did not openly promote a “Serbo-Croatian” language and say they are comfortable with different versions of the same language having different names: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin. The problem here is that they do appear promote Serb linguistic forms immersed thorough single words in the very text explaining the Languages and Nationalisms Project on their website and that in itself is unshakeably indicative of the underlying political bias and underhanded attempts to keep the “Serb language forms” at a superior level to the other three, just as it used to be in the days of communist Yugoslavia.

When it comes to its implications for Croatia the Declaration could well represent an attempt to undermine the Croatian language as the only official language of the nation and install the Serbian language as another official language in the country not just in pockets of the country where the Serb ethnic minority population is or exceeds the 34% as stipulated in the constitutional law. The threads that keep Greater-Serbia expansion in the region are foully intricate indeed. To beef up this conclusion one only needs to ponder upon and weigh-up politically the sickening fact where Croatia’s Minister for Culture, Nina Obuljen, had last week sent two signatories of the Sarajevo Declaration from Croatia – writers Slobodan Snajder and Damir Karakas – as Croatia’s representatives at the Leipzig book fair! It goes without saying that this move of hers suggests that she too rides the train that transports those who would have the world believe that the Croatian language does not really exist in its own right. Given that Croatia has hundreds of writers, language professionals and academics who have toiled for decades even within the communist Yugoslavia to retain the Croatian language as a pure and distinct language of the Croatian nation, Minister Obuljen’s move can truly be considered perverse and insulting – politically and otherwise.

When asked about the Declaration a day before it was made public, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic responded with questions about the need for such an initiative: “How could I support that [declaration]? Who in Croatia can support it?” What else can one expect from the PM who, faced with the outrage against the Declaration among the Croatian people, just does not act as if he possesses the fight necessary for Croatian interests.
Plenkovic added – feebly: “The Croatian language is defined in our constitution. Croatian is one of the official languages of the EU. That’s the only thing that matters to me. There is no need to waste words on sundry informal initiatives.” Well, how about defending the Croatian language when attacked, Prime Minister!

The former Croatian culture minister and current Member of Croatian Parliament, Zlatko Hasanbegovic, used strong language to denounce the Sarajevo Declaration as “a wolf howl of Yugoslav nationalists for their lost country.” On the ball – Hasanbegovic!

To illustrate the political depravity among signatories of the Sarajevo Declaration among Croats one only needs to visit the words of the largely mistrusted and seemingly dangerously anti-Croatian independence politically biased Croatian journalist Ante Tomic, when he asked rhetorically in his regular column in Jutarnji List whether “we are so stupid that we cannot memorise more than one word for a certain thing.” Tomic added that through a language policy based on “pure Croatian,” the state is not only controlling its subjects but also creating confusion and stoking animosity against ethnic Serbs. “I signed [the Sarajevo Declaration] because it is a measure of reconciliation and it recognises and includes everyone. It affirms differences, and allows for the fact that one thing can be called by many names, and that we all speak the same language, which is variously named Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, or Montenegrin,” Tomic said.

How a Declaration such as the Sarajevo one, claiming that distinctly different languages are one single language, can be a measure of reconciliation is only clear (albeit wickedly to my taste) to Tomic and other signatories of the Declaration. Successful reconciliation unconditionally depends on the truth and there is no underlying truth in this Declaration except the one that points to the worn-out mantra “tell lies often enough and they become the truth”. This is a cause worth fighting against. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Communist Yugoslavia, Croatia, Greater Serbia, Languages and Nationalisms Project, Montenegro, Sarajevo Declaration on language commonality, Serbia

Finally But Poor Justice For Croatian Civilians Horrendously Tortured By Yugoslav Army In Morinj, Montenegro, 1991-1992

August 1, 2013 by inavukic 29 Comments

Morinj concentration camp 1991/1992 Photo: ddrrh.com

For the people of Dubrovnik (Croatia), Morinj is a symbol of horrendous sufferings endured by the Dubrovnik’s residents who ended up in Morinj (near Kotor, Montenegro) concentration camp. From the total of 440 Croats from Dubrovnik who suffered torture at the hands of Serb and Montenegrin camps 300 of them endured the horrors of Morinj camp; some 200 of these suffered abuse of unimaginably cruel proportions. In Morinj camp most were tortured in the most horrible and insufferable ways, many are to this day suffering chronic Post Traumatic Disorder as one of the nightmarish consequences of utterly horrific tortures and trauma.
Pobjeda news portal (Montenegro) reports that four out of six men originally indicted and now retried on charges of war crimes (against Croatian civilian population between October 1991 and August 1992) and relating to concentration camp Morinj have been convicted Wednesday 31 July to a total of 12 years imprisonment. They are Ivo Menzalin (4 years), Boro Gligic and Spiro Lucic (3 years) and Ivo Gojnic (2 years). While the defence for these four men has announced that it will appeal the judgment, the special prosecutor Lidija Vukcevic said in the Podgorica supreme court that their guilt for the war crimes had been proven beyond any doubt.

The summary of the horror story behind these horrible crimes perpetrated in Morinj concentration camp against Croats from Dubrovnik goes like this:

In 1991, as part of Serbia’s war against Croatia, Yugoslav Army units led by Montenegrin officers and full of Montenegrin reservists ravaged many of the villages in the southernmost tip of Croatian Dalmatia and shelled the historic port and World Heritage city of Dubrovnik, causing millions of euros in damage and hundreds of civilian deaths. Throughout the duration of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro remained in a federal state with Serbia until 2003.

In 1997, Montenegro expressed regret for its part in the wars and the consequent atrocities. However, the process of coming to terms with the past has been selective and superficial.

“Rat za mir” (“war for peace”), was the cynical slogan under which Montenegrin politicians backed the Yugoslav Army’s campaign in southern Croatia.

Croat prisoners in Morinj concentration camp 1991/1992
Photo: rtcg.me

In 2004-05, the ICTY in The Hague found former Montenegrin admiral Miodrag Jokic and General Pavle Strugar guilty of war crimes and sentenced each of them to eight years’ imprisonment. Attacks on Dubrovnik’s civilians bore a special place in the verdicts.

The Morinj camp war crimes prosecution began in 1998 in Montenegro’s Podgorica city, adjourned several times and retried (with same verdicts both times) … a profile of criminal justice process akin to circumstances where denial of crimes and profound lack of will by Montenegrin authorities and politicians to get stuck into the business of delivering justice where justice must be done had littered and undermined any path for reconciliation. Whether this latest verdict will in fact contribute to some semblance of healing for the victims remains to be seen. The chances for that, though, seem very slim as a significant number of Montenegrin politicians look the other way, barely acknowledging that horrible crimes were perpetrated even though an “apology” for the same war crimes had trickled through albeit with muffled resolve some years ago. Perhaps it is due to this pathetic attitude towards crimes that the sentences received by the four men for Morinj concentration camp are so obscenely inadequate. I pray for the health of those victims whose horrific times spent in Morinj must be revisiting them right now as intensified nightmares and horrendous flashbacks – all because justice has betrayed them. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

SERB/MONTENEGRIN ATTACK ON DUBROVNIK 1991/1992