Non-governmental organisations and civic activists recall that one year has passed since the unlawful erection of a monument to Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić in Gornje Zaostro, near Berane – a notorious war criminal, collaborator of the Nazis and the Ustaše, who was also decorated by Adolf Hitler. Despite this, the monument remains beyond the reach of Montenegro’s investigative and judicial authorities.
One year later, the police and prosecution authorities in Montenegro still do not know the whereabouts of the two-metre-high bronze monument, weighing several hundred kilograms, which constitutes evidence in criminal proceedings. After being unlawfully erected, it was removed the same day and placed in the village church, before being transferred to the residential quarters of Đurđevi Stupovi Monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC). Since October 2025, according to official information, its location has remained unknown to the competent state authorities. The police failed to find it during two searches of the monastery premises in October and November last year, and the public has since received no information about the measures taken to enforce the court order for its temporary seizure.
This case exposes not only the weaknesses of the security system, but also a profound institutional crisis within the state. The erection of a bronze monument to a convicted war criminal was not the spontaneous act of an individual, but an organised political and logistical operation that required commissioning, financing, production, international transport, preparation of the site and a public ceremony attended by senior representatives of the SOC. The fact that the competent authorities have failed to determine who was behind the entire undertaking not only points to failures by the police and the National Security Agency (ANB), but also raises questions about their actual capacity or political will to protect the constitutional order and the public interest. In such circumstances, the rehabilitation of war criminals ceases to be an isolated incident and becomes a pattern of conduct through which the limits of the state are tested and historical revisionism is normalised. The absence of parliamentary oversight is particularly concerning, as the Security and Defence Committee has not sought political or institutional accountability for an event bearing the hallmarks of an organised operation against Montenegro’s constitutional values. The only person prosecuted was the owner of the land, while the organisers, financiers and logistical network remain beyond the reach of the authorities, leaving the impression that the state has not merely failed, but has accepted that such an act should remain without any meaningful consequences.
The conduct of the judiciary is particularly troubling. It took the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Berane three months and five rejected applications to obtain an order for the temporary seizure of the monument, as Judge Dubravka Popović of the Basic Court in Berane provided a new reason for rejecting the application on each occasion. By the time the order was finally issued, the monument had already been moved to an unknown location, while Metropolitan of Budimlja and Nikšić Metodije, who unveiled it and publicly stated that it would be kept in the church, faced no consequences.
We recall that we warned of such an outcome both before the monument was erected and immediately afterwards. As early as May 2025, seven non-governmental organisations alerted Supreme State Prosecutor Milorad Marković to the increasingly frequent glorification of Pavle Đurišić and the Chetnik movement, while in August of the same year we called for the monument’s urgent removal and for responsibility to be established. The institutional response was delayed, inadequate and, ultimately, ineffective.
One year later, the monument has not been seized, those who commissioned it have not been identified, and the attacks on Vijesti and Pobjeda photojournalists Boris Pejović and Stevo Vasiljević, committed on 8 August 2025, have not been adequately addressed by the courts. The Ministry of the Interior’s Internal Control Department has not examined why the police failed to intervene during the attacks on the photojournalists.
Montenegro, which aspires to become the next member of the European Union, cannot and must not be a state that fails to act in time to prevent the erection of a monument to a war criminal responsible for the killing of at least 8,000 Muslim civilians, including women, children and elderly people, and in which that monument can then be successfully hidden from the competent institutions for an entire year.
We call on the Police Directorate to urgently determine the location of the monument, enforce the court order for its temporary seizure and inform the public of all measures taken to date for that purpose. We expect the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office to ensure that the investigation encompasses those who commissioned, financed and organised the erection of the monument, as well as the manner in which it was brought into Montenegro. We also expect the competent prosecution offices to conclude, without further delay, the proceedings concerning its relocation and the public glorification of the Chetnik movement, to recognise such conduct as the criminal offence of inciting hatred, as we have previously requested, and to inform the public of the outcome.
We also call on the Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms to decide without further delay on the complaint we submitted almost eight months ago, on 25 November 2025, concerning hate speech manifested through the glorification of Pavle Đurišić by erecting a monument and singing songs in his praise in public buildings.
Daliborka Uljarević, Centre for Civic Education (CCE)
Tea Gorjanc Prelević, Human Rights Action (HRA)
Ervina Dabižinović, ANIMA – Centre for Women’s and Peace Education
Miloš Vukanović, Association of History Teachers of Montenegro – HIPMONT
Filip Kuzman, Anti-Fascists of Cetinje
Velija Murić, Montenegrin Committee of Lawyers for the Protection of Human Rights
Maja Raičević, Women’s Rights Centre (WRC)
Milica Kovačević, Centre for Democratic Transition (CDT)
Jovana Marović, civic activist
Dina Bajramspahić, civic activist