Confronting the past and taking a responsible approach to the events that have shaped our society represent key preconditions for a successful process of transitional justice and overall democratisation. Without grounding in facts and a consistent approach by all social actors – from decision-makers and institutions to the media – we risk leaving the space of narratives about past conflicts open to manipulation and oblivion. Despite the fact that these processes should be led by institutions, they are today carried mostly by the civil sector, it was conveyed at the matinée discussion “Who Speaks About the Past, and How?”, held within the 16th FAST FORWARD Human Rights Festival Montenegro 2025, organised by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE).
The discussion, moderated by Maja Marinović, Programme Associate at CCE, featured Sabina Talović, peace activist; Ervina Dabižinović, coordinator at the Centre for Women’s and Peace Education ANIMA; Milena Perović Korać, Editor-in-Chief of the weekly Monitor; and activist Dušan Pajović.
Sabina Talović pointed to differences in how much the local environment shapes activist struggle for truth and justice, emphasising that confronting the past is not equally demanding in all communities. “I come from Pljevlja, and in such communities it is incredibly difficult to persevere in the struggle for an honest attitude towards our recent past and the crimes committed. It is much harder than in larger and more open cities, such as Podgorica. Despite everything I have been through, and it has not been easy at all over these decades, I have never doubted that this struggle is important and that we must pursue it,” Talović stressed, also shedding light on the personal cost of activism through concrete examples, which included part of her work with migrants from war-affected areas.
She placed particular emphasis on the responsibility towards young people, who today face a legacy they did not create. “Practically the entire burden of the past lies on their shoulders, and many of them had not even been born when the crimes of the 1990s were committed – and in their name,” she noted, warning that it must not be expected that young people carry a burden for which no one prepared them. “The challenges today are enormous, perhaps even greater than before, which is precisely why we must remain in solidarity, persistent, and principled,” Talović concluded, with a message that, despite pressures, the struggle for truth and human dignity must continue.
Ervina Dabižinović believes that confronting the past is sustainable only if there is a clear, institutionally grounded framework of facts upon which society can build a shared understanding. “The past is always what we choose to remember. But if we do not have a system of established facts that enter education, then we are not actually speaking about the past – we are speaking about personal interpretations, about parallel ‘truths’ that further divide us and push us backwards,” she said.
Dabižinović reminded the audience that the institutional process of dealing with the past in Montenegro has never gained a real form or strength and that there is a lack of a mechanism that would be independent, credible, and sufficiently stable to lead these processes in the long term, without political pressures and selective approaches. “We do not have political will. For years, responsibility has been avoided and space has been denied to the truth of facts. And as long as political will is absent, institutional commitment will also be absent,” she stated.
She also stressed that such a situation particularly affects young people, who grow up in an environment full of gaps, silences, and blurred narratives. “Only when we truly confront the past – not formally, not declaratively, but substantively – will we be able to produce knowledge that gives young people a clear, accurate, and responsible picture of what happened. And without that knowledge, they remain hostages to the mistakes of others,” Dabižinović concluded, warning that a society that does not learn from the past risks repeating it.
A similar view was expressed by Dušan Pajović, who emphasised that the key obstacles to confronting the past in Montenegro are created “from the top down”, primarily by the political elites who have shaped the narrative of the 1990s for decades. “Because of such an approach, the wider public has never received complete and verified information about the wars of the 1990s. This is evident in public appearances, in everyday speech, and even in school textbooks,” he noted, emphasising that the space of knowledge is deliberately left incomplete.
Pajović assessed that both the opposition and the government contribute to this situation in different ways. “The opposition avoids going into details because it seeks to wash off the burden of its own complicity – either through silence or through active participation in that period. At the same time, part of the government still celebrates and nurtures the ideology that produced those wars,” he said.
Such a discrepancy, he added, produces generations of young people who grow up without key knowledge about recent crimes. “That is why we have today young people who do not know that a certain camp was only a few hours’ drive from their homes, or that persecution of others and those who were different occurred in their own town. This is a direct consequence of institutional silence and political trenches that continue to be maintained,” Pajović concluded.
Milena Perović Korać believes that the media must not be an extended arm of political interests or megaphones of ideologies from the 1990s, although, as she stated, a significant part of the media landscape functions precisely in this way today. “The media should not be a battleground for political confrontations nor platforms for recycling old ideologies, yet many are. This not only distorts the image of the past but selectively shapes our present understanding,” she stressed.
She especially emphasized that journalistic responsibility cannot be reduced to conveying versions of history that suit a particular government, opposition, or interest group. “We must insist on facts about the past, but also about what is happening today, without selection, without adjustment, and without political filters. For the time we live in will very quickly become the past about which generations after us will need a clear, documented insight,” Perović Korać explained. As she added, only media that do not submit to manipulation can contribute to a society based on knowledge, responsibility, and a culture of remembrance, rather than on fear, propaganda, and silence.
This was followed, at the Montenegrin Cinematheque, by the Montenegrin premiere of the film “Completely Different, Exactly the Same”, by Italian director Marianna Giorgia Marchesini, which through an authentic documentary expression portrays Sabina Talović, who spoke with the audience after the screening.
The events were organised within the CCE project “Through Understanding the Past Towards Building Trust and Transitional Justice”, enabled through the regional EU Support to Confidence Building in the Western Balkans programme, funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The views expressed are the sole responsibility of the interlocutors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CCE, the EU, or UNDP.
Alma Novalić, project assistant